skype on MBA - fan noise -

[KnightWRX]

I don't know the first thing about auto engineering, but I can get into a Chevy Cobalt and conclude that it is poorly designed because its crash test results are poor, it handles very sloppily, and has very light steering. I can also drive a Chevy Cruze and conclude that it has a much better design because it scores better on the crash tests and has tight handling and steering. User experience may be subjective, but what defines a product as successful in the marketplace is whether it is accepted by the market, and user interface is a big part of that.

If a program doesn't offer a good user experience to most people who try to use it, then it doesn't have a good design. It may have efficient programming and be capable of being a good program, but until the user experience issues are resolved for enough users, it is missing a key element of a good design.

Symbian fans will argue until their blue in the face about how superior the design of their OS is over iOS and Android. From a technical standpoint, perhaps they are right. But that doesn't really matter since the latter two are winning over the marketplace.

Again, none of which have to do with "Memory Leaks" and "Pounding CPU". Why are you purposely ignoring my point ? My point is again for you since you can't seem to grasp it : Don't use industry jargon to pretend your opinion is fact.

"Skype is more heavy on CPU use in my experience, causing heat issues that make the fans spin at max rpm" is a valid obversation, if you've actually bothered to observe it. "Skype leaks memory" isn't, especially if you don't know what a memory leak is.

You want to tell me that I rant on and on, and then you people that answer my posts always put words in my mouth I didn't say. Try to read and understand my rants if you want to answer them and maybe I won't have to post again and again in the same thread rehashing the same things over and over again. Simple concept ? Macrumors forums are such a poor user experience.

 

[KPOM]

"Memory leak" may be technical jargon, but I don't think that "pounding the CPU" is. The latter is just a casual term that CPU activity goes up significantly when the program is running.

 

[KnightWRX]

"Memory leak" may be technical jargon, but I don't think that "pounding the CPU" is. The latter is just a casual term that CPU activity goes up significantly when the program is running.

Just look at my screenshot posted earlier and tell me Skype "pounds" the CPU when it is running. 0.4% CPU isn't pounding. Finder uses more at idle. You'll say "well, you weren't doing video encoding/decoding at the time". Sure I wasn't, but then let's look at the technology choices Skype did in order to understand why it seems to use more CPU. What codec do they use ? What types of API does Apple provide for these codecs ? What levels of compression, quality are they using, etc.. ?

All things that need to be analysed before saying "Skype is badly written software" (this is the industry jargon, saying the code is bad) because it "pounds the cpu". Simply saying Skype programmers are poor coders, especially coming from a non-programmer, is what people should refrain from doing if they don't want to get rebutted. That's all I'm saying.

 

[andrewsd]

well

Yes, use a 3rd party utility to control your fans so they never go over 2000 rpm. However, you might not like the result at all.

The fans start up for a reason, that's because your MacBook is generating heat. There's no fan API that software uses to start or stop the fans, it's all about the heat sensors. CPU usage = heat.



I'd like to see you write an application that both encodes and decodes video and sound in real-time that doesn't pound on the processor. I swear people that say "poorly written software" probably never wrote a damn line of code in their life.

I have used both iChat and Skype(skype a lot) as I am abroad a decent amount. I am also no programmer but I can tell you this that Skype taxes my system a good deal more then iChat and a few other similar applications. So take my 2 cents for what is is, just my 2 cents but Skype usually does cause more fan/cpu usage and system boggle ups.

With that said I am defiantly not saying it is poorly written especially because I couldn't in my right mind do a better job. PLus I use the heck out of skype so even with its "shortcomings" I still say it is an alright program that still needs and could be updated and made to operate more smoothly.