Thinkorswim on MBA or MBP

[treimche]

My 2014 and 2015 MacBook Pros get hot when I run Think or Swim or Active Trader Pro. I don't really have a choice when I'm mobile but I usually just don't trade when mobile because of the heat.

You don't need to do the Java thing on Intel Mac because they already do everything for you - they have a native Intel macOS kit.

I am really looking forward to trading on the MacBook Pro 16 (I wonder if some people are going to start calling their systems the MacBook Max) and I will check out the thermals. I run ToS on a big Intel desktop. Active Trader Pro too and performance is good. My desktop has a huge air cooler and a bunch of case fans to keep everything cool.

Thank you for the reply. I've been thinking about trading up to the new 14" MacBook Pro with the Max chip.

 

[pshufd]

Thank you for the reply. I've been thinking about trading up to the new 14" MacBook Pro with the Max chip.

The reviews will be out next week and I'll do videos on ATP, ToS and thermals.

 

[pshufd]

I resolved the problem with Active Trader Pro. It turns out that it's a problem with Active Trader Pro; not Windows, macOS, Apple Silicon, Big Sur or Monterey.

One of the Portfolio settings causes it to go into a CPU loop on my Windows desktop and it returns about twenty minutes later. On macOS, it never returns (I assume due to WINE). Changing that Portfolio setting has it start up immediately on Windows, macOS, Apple Silicon, etc. So Active Trader Pro does run fine on Apple Silicon. The main issue with using Active Trader Pro, though, is when Rosetta goes away. People using Apple Silicon will have to remain on older versions of macOS to continue to run it.

I am not expecting Fidelity to fix this anytime soon. They are mostly working on their iOS and iPad versions these days.

 

[Madhatter32]

The reviews will be out next week and I'll do videos on ATP, ToS and thermals.

I use both ATP and ToS on my 2014 MBP (sometimes simultaneously) and my machine generates the heat of a neutron star. I figure if it actually melts down I now have a viable Mac option with the M1 devices. Before those options became available, I was planning to replace the setup with a windows laptop.

Both platforms remain functional for me -- although APT will occasionally crash even with my 16 gb. If you have posted any videos regarding the thermals it would be great if would provide a link in this thread for people to watch. Thanks.

 

[pshufd]

I use both ATP and ToS on my 2014 MBP (sometimes simultaneously) and my machine generates the heat of a neutron star. I figure if it actually melts down I now have a viable Mac option with the M1 devices. Before those options became available, I was planning to replace the setup with a windows laptop.

Both platforms remain functional for me -- although APT will occasionally crash even with my 16 gb. If you have posted any videos regarding the thermals it would be great if would provide a link in this thread for people to watch. Thanks.

I haven't gotten around to it as I've been working on an ATP problem. I have an ATP workaround though.

BTW, I had the same problem on my 2014 MacBook Pro running ATP + ToS at the same time. I will work on a video during the week during the trading day. Weekends don't count. My discrete testing (one program or instance at a time) on the M1 systems indicate that thermals nor CPU should be an issue. I plan to try an all Apple Silicon setup this week.

 

[pshufd]

I resolved the problem with Active Trader Pro. It had to do with Portfolio Display Settings. If I had all of my accounts in one window, it took about 20 minutes to start up. If I used two windows with taxable in one and retirement in the other, Active Trader Pros starts up immediately. I reported the bug to Fidelity a few weeks ago.

I finally hooked up my M1 PRO MacBook Pro 16 to two 4k displays to see how Active Trader Pro and Think or Swim (native) run. Active Trader Pro is a pig on Apple Silicon. It runs normally at 200% CPU or using two performance cores (my assumption). Think or Swim runs at 17% of one core. On my Windows Desktop, Active Trader Pro uses about 1 core where the Apple Silicon performance cores are about 50% faster than on my i7-10700. There's considerable overhead for Crossover, WINE and Rosetta 2 on Apple Silicon. So ATP uses about a quarter of the CPU resources while ToS uses negligible CPU resources.

I will have to test this setup on battery one of these days - but not now as I want to put my desk back together again. I took everything apart and am moving the Windows desktop to another table and it will be the NAS until I can figure out if there are more uses for it. I plan to run ATP and ToS on the M1 mini on my desk and use the MacBook Pro for all of my other stuff as the other stuff uses a fair amount of RAM and I have 32 GB on the MacBook Pro. I will really enjoy having an all Mac setup.

If the ATP setup does use up too many resources, then I may move the charting from ATP to ToS and just monitor my portfolio and do my trading on ATP. That may result in far less CPU usage. I actually hope that Apple de-supports Rosetta 2 faster so that it will force Fidelity to come up with a native solution.

 

[pnd4pnd]

I no longer see the ipad app for TOS available to download on my M1 macbook. Does anyone know how to make it work now? Just copying over the executable doesn't work. Thanks!

 

[cylack]

I no longer see the ipad app for TOS available to download on my M1 macbook. Does anyone know how to make it work now? Just copying over the executable doesn't work. Thanks!

If you kept your old copy as a backup somewhere it will work. I’m running v198.0 of the ios app and it still works. Not sure why they stopped allowing the ios app to run on Mac.