Did Apple take a wrong turn?

[SpotOnT]

Can you post one of the other reviews that reproduced the problem?

So I am not exactly sold on the 108C temperature reading (I mean has TGPro even been updated to support the M2 MacBook Pro yet?), but the early reviews I have seen all mention thermal throttling and loud fan noise compare to the M1.

Here is one example: Notebookcheck notes that under heavy load the wattage gets throttled down from 35W to 28-30W while the fans are completely maxed out (and the fans go a lot faster than the 13" M1 MacBook Pro).

Notebookcheck

 

[neuropsychguy]

I think it's reasonable without doubt at this stage.. it's the thermal throttle limits M2's performance to be only ~10% faster in the 13-inch MBP.

Those are helpful numbers. Thanks. Doesn't this mean that in the most demanding task that resulted in throttling, the M2 was still 10% faster? Wouldn't it easily be 18+% faster in less demanding tasks? If someone is not maxing out the CPU and GPU for an extended task, wouldn't we expect less throttling and therefore faster performance?

 

[boak]

I don’t get what’s the problem. It’s still faster than the M1 MBP. The M2 will be used in the iMac and Mac mini, which might throttle less and max out the M2’s potential.

 

[Tyler O'Bannon]

High points:

M2 paired with 1 256Gb SSD is a huge bottleneck. 512GB+ and you’re good.

M2 thermals and 13”MBP fan should be plenty manageable. Sounds like a bug or update inbound. If fans would kick in sooner and run a bit more aggressively, M2 should have no thermal problems.

 

[XboxEvolved]

I have just seen reports of the M2 MBP severely throttling due to inadequate ventilation and the M2 overheating.
How are they expecting this SOC to work on the new Air and, possibly, new iPads without crippling its performance down to M1 (or worse) levels?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1542188250697039872

Isn't this guy always making a bunch of clickbait? And besides, I would wait until more actual journalists and analysts get ahold of it. There are some conflicting tweets that argue this guy is blowing it all out of proportion. I mean look up the guy's YouTube channel and look at the last two thumbnails for his latest video. The guy is a hack. lol

https://twitter.com/x/status/1542498302763081728

 

[hans1972]

I agree, but it's the thermal throttling that is concerning, not the comparison in itself.

With the M1 Apple has positioned the base processor as the one to be used with all base devices, including the fan-less ones.
If this level of throttling is observed on a machine equipped with a fan and originally designed to cool down a power hungry Intel processor, how crippled will it be on the Air and on the iPad?

No, slowing down the CPU/GPU is a good thing or else it would overheat!

It's better to have less performance and no sound. That's why computers without fans are the best.

 

[Andropov]

Isn't this guy always making a bunch of clickbait? And besides, I would wait until more actual journalists and analysts get ahold of it. There are some conflicting tweets that argue this guy is blowing it all out of proportion. I mean look up the guy's YouTube channel and look at the last two thumbnails for his latest video. The guy is a hack. lol

https://twitter.com/x/status/1542498302763081728

HEVC is hardware accelerated, though. So probably not an apt comparison.

 

[J InTech82]

If you’re going to come up with an excuse for Apple, at least familiarize yourself with Apple’s marketing materials first. They mention 8K editing throughout the product page.

MacBook Pro

MacBook Pro laptop with M5, M4 Pro, and M4 Max chips. Built for AI and Apple Intelligence. Up to 24 hours of battery life. Liquid Retina XDR display.

www.apple.com

uh The poster did say "base model" so yes, I do not think the M2 MacBook Pro 13" with just 8 GBs of memory is intended to do 8K video projects. I do not see the specs of the M2 machines anywhere in Apple's marketing materials so I highly doubt is the base model with just 8 GBs of memory.

Why Max Tech would even push the base model this hard is purely clickbait.

 

[JPack]

uh The poster did say "base model" so yes, I do not think the M2 MacBook Pro 13" with just 8 GBs of memory is intended to do 8K video projects. I do not see the specs of the M2 machines anywhere in Apple's marketing materials so I highly doubt is the base model with just 8 GBs of memory.

Why Max Tech would even push the base model this hard is purely clickbait.

We're talking about thermal performance, not memory.

Do you think the 16GB and 24GB machines have better cooling? 😄

 

[yitwail]

With the M1 Apple has positioned the base processor as the one to be used with all base devices, including the fan-less ones.
If this level of throttling is observed on a machine equipped with a fan and originally designed to cool down a power hungry Intel processor, how crippled will it be on the Air and on the iPad?

If you define throttling as crippling, then the M1 Air was already crippled. So it's a question of whether M2 Air will be more crippled than M1 Air, and no one knows until M2 Air gets tested, but if I had to guess, I doubt it because my understanding is M2 uses A15 efficiency cores rather than A14 efficiency cores like M1, and A15 was specifically designed to improve iPhone 13 battery life over iPhone 12.

 

[exoticSpice]

It’s moving air, the internals of the computer are designed to funnel the air by convenction.

Would it cool *better* with a pipe to the heatsink? Yes.

Will it cool without that connection? Yes (not as well) as it’s drawing moving air over the heatsink.

The fan is not there “for nothing”.

So apple cut costs cause by your admission it would cool better with a heatpipe. Apple cut costs on a $999 laptop.

Windows laptops that are $999 have heat pipes.

 

[mr_roboto]

the most heat is produced by the SoC...so the SoC must be cooled down, not the area around the fan, speakers, or battery or something else....it is bad design, bad understanding how an real active cooling means
Is like an F1 car is design to cool just the HALO and the breaks and engines blows up ))))))

Do you guys who always bring that computer up have some kind of terrible problem understanding the basic physics of a duct?

I assure you F1 car designers don't! There's all sorts of ductwork and fins redirecting airflow to do various things. Air doesn't do just totally random ****, people who know how it behaves can design systems which make a fan at place A do something useful at place B where B can be quite far away from A. That's what Apple did in that machine. Insisting that its fan must be useless because it's not "connected" to the heatsink is the level of insight I'd expect out of a very young and naive child.

 

[JPack]

If you define throttling as crippling, then the M1 Air was already crippled. So it's a question of whether M2 Air will be more crippled than M1 Air, and no one knows until M2 Air gets tested, but if I had to guess, I doubt it because my understanding is M2 uses A15 efficiency cores rather than A14 efficiency cores like M1, and A15 was specifically designed to improve iPhone 13 battery life over iPhone 12.

The main problem is clock speed. N5P allows for +5% clock at iso-power. Apple increased clock by 9%.

And it's difficult to compare A15 with M2 because the clocks are different. The M-series keeps the clocks aggressively high.

A14 = 3.0 GHz, 2.89GHz with 2 cores, 1.82GHz with all 6 cores.
M1 = 3.2 GHz P-core, 2.06 GHz E-core

A15 = 3.2 GHz, 3.18GHz with 2 cores, 2.02GHz with all 6 cores.
M2 = 3.5 GHz

 

[hagjohn]

Another YouTuber video, oh great. I understand his point. Cooling has always been Apples achilles heel but how about buying hardware that works with your workflow. Exporting 8K on an air, what do you expect to happen when you are pushing it way behind its intended use?

 

[el-John-o]

This is not even close to new. Not new to the M2 or even new to Apple Silicon.

Right, wrong, or indifferent— it just “is”. The 13” MBP and MacBook Air have never been designed to be able to sustain high level workloads for long periods of time. They’ve always had inadequate cooling and power delivery to max out their chosen CPU’s. Apple has at times offered relatively quick CPU options for smooth experiences in short, bursty workloads. Like smooth scrubbing in iMovie. But you’ve always needed the larger machines to handle something like an 8K raw export.

The only difference is that now, the Air and the 13” Pro are CAPABLE of those workloads. Yes, they thermal throttle. But before the performance was such that there was no practical way to do those things on a 13” Pro or an Air. No dedicated GPU and slow dual (and later quad) core CPU’s just could not keep up. Now with M1 and M2, they can do basically anything their ‘big brothers’ can do, they just do it marginally slower because of throttling. That’s hardly a mistake. That is, in fact, a pretty tremendous improvement.

 

[Odessa]

I'm thinking they intentionnally gimped their base model to have better segmentation of the product line and for cost saving. They obviously don't care much since no windows laptop can go near m1 performance after 2 years. amd 6800u gets close but it is hardly available.

 

[Kpjoslee]

Apple is just trying to clear the inventory of 13-inch Macbook Chassis and probably the only reason M2 13 inch Macbook exists in the first place.

 

[XboxEvolved]

Apple is just trying to clear the inventory of 13-inch Macbook Chassis and probably the only reason M2 13 inch Macbook exists in the first place.

This isn't how "right on time" manufacturing or inventory works though, these are all fresh chassis, and considering it is their second most popular notebook, and one of the five most popular in the world I really doubt it.

 

[Kazgarth]

Apple is just trying to clear the inventory of 13-inch Macbook Chassis and probably the only reason M2 13 inch Macbook exists in the first place.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1542422551669907457

 

[macsforme]

The fan is already spinning at its max 7200 RPM according to the youtuber. I'm not sure how you could further adjust the fan 'curve'

I would say it's not about number of fans. It's the cooling system which is inadequate for M2 and that could cover a lot of things than a fan.

In the video, the fans only went up to max when he manually forced them to max. With the fans at max, the CPU temperature stayed in the mid to high 80’s.

 

[JPack]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1542422551669907457

Apple did the same when M1 came out, by reusing Intel boxes.

If someone can find a box with 2 stickers on top, that would be wild.

 

[sevoneone]

Isn't this guy always making a bunch of clickbait? And besides, I would wait until more actual journalists and analysts get ahold of it. There are some conflicting tweets that argue this guy is blowing it all out of proportion. I mean look up the guy's YouTube channel and look at the last two thumbnails for his latest video. The guy is a hack. lol

https://twitter.com/x/status/1542498302763081728

Isn't there also a more than slight possibility that the temperature sensor outputs of the M2 SOC are different than the M1 and those temps are not accurate???

 

[Alex Cai]

The M1 air have better thermals since it’s not redesigned

 

[kvic]

In the video, the fans only went up to max when he manually forced them to max. With the fans at max, the CPU temperature stayed in the mid to high 80’s.

I'm afraid this is your fantasy

I offer you benefit of doubt. Point us to the video where you got this.

 

[leman]

I have owned laptops of Apples since the powerpc G4 laptops.

They ALL had HEAT issues. even my 16" i9 2019 MacBook Pro has heat issues.

So it does not surprise me that they release a lemon that overheats easy with NO FAN. The M2 MBA.

They never seem to learn their lesson. THIN and good looks over proper engineering and functionality.

EYE CANDY wins again.

That is a such weird stance to have. That M2 laptop approaches the performance of H-series workstations for some tasks, has a GPU that's more than twice as fast as any other solution in it's class, all while delivering battery life and silent operation that you can't get anywhere else. And you are complaining about "lack of proper engineering"? Like... a reality check maybe?

I agree, but it's the thermal throttling that is concerning, not the comparison in itself.

Absolutely, but it doesn't seem the story is that clear. There are other reviewers and users showing evidence that their machine is not throttling under similar usage scenarios. Maybe Max Tech got a defective unit or there is some other problem?