When Apple criticism goes too far

Everybody knows that hating on Apple products is very trendy, and in a lot of cases, it is well-justified. Even I have plenty of complaints about their products and would never buy any of them right now. However, sometimes even valid criticism goes too far, even from people who are very familiar with Apple products. For example, watch this video by Louis Rossman where he criticizes MacBook Air's cooling system:


As much as I love Louis, he really went too far and either failed to see it himself or wants others to ignore the reason for this cooling design. What Apple did with this MacBook Air is pretty rational - the Intel CPU they use has very low TDP of about 7w, so it does not need a large heatsink and the fan does actually work to cool CPU even if it does not have heatpipe with additional heatsink. Here is how it actually works, using photos from iFixit:


There is a foam air guide on the back cover which guides the airflow across the top area. So the cooling design is pretty logical and should work well considering the primary task of this laptop (doing browsing or reading emails or watching videos or similar tasks). Would it perform better if there was a heatpipe and extra heatsink in front of the fan exhaust? Yes. Is it necessary? Not really. Not for 99% of the intended users who will not notice a very small increase in performance while doing those tasks if there would be a better cooling system.

So yea, long story short - Apple does have many reasons for critique, but that does not mean you have to go overboard with it to the point of making fun of rational design choice, especially if you are professional who repairs them ;-)

 

While he does some valid points most of the time, sometimes he goes overboard. His only mission in this life is to put Apple's image to shame yet his business revolves around fixing Macs which obviously means he is a die heard and longtime Apple product user.

 

Could easily been avoided with a heatpipe.

 

Yes but heatpipe and extra heatsink would increase costs. I am sure Apple engineers tried various solutions to find the most efficient in terms of cost and performance.
This isn't even about that, the point is Louis could not understand how this cooling system works and instantly started to criticize Apple for "LOL, look at this fan, it does nothing".

 

So do shoelaces but you dont see a lot of companies cutting them out to save on costs.

 

Once again, you're failing to see the point. This cooling solution is functional and it does work to cool CPU. It doesn't matter how well. Louis failed to understand how it works and just said this fan is "for placebo effect" and did not even mention how the cooling system works (how the air gets pulled from air intake, how it is guided by foam air dam across the CPU and exhausted by functional exhaust fan).

 

Yes not putting a heatsink on the vrms and/or mosfets worked out very well. Just like the xps line up iirc. Something that could've been resolved with a dollar of investment. Instead of settling for "good enough" they could've went for soild build instead. The added weight would've only been remarkable in the products brochure.

Your arguing semantics of someone who didn't get his point 100 percent accurate when the point is its a flawed product.

I don't care for Rossman at all.

 

Louis has made taking Apple to the woodshed his life's mission (even to his own detriment at times). Something tells me he knew why the heatsink was configured for a quasi passively cooled design, but still it does heat up and get uncomfortable with mundane tasks while producing lackluster results. But Apple went with the i5-8210Y for the lower TDP to help with battery life with that retina display on board now.

It's not a very good design and in theory the chip is made for passive cooling but still gets very hot and throttles:

https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookair/comments/atc8np/macbook_air_overheating/

https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookair/comments/cpzq1l/brand_new_2019_macbook_air_overheating/

https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookair/comments/czyl2m/macbook_air_2019_overheating/

And of course it does matter how well it cools the CPU. Working barely within spec and heating up the chassis to cause concern or impede use has merit as a potential problem.

Notebookcheck reports it pulling 10w in single thread testing and then it pulls ~15w in dual CPU benching before dropping to ~10w (Not the 7w TDP, which is not a shocker since TDP's are suspect in notebooks and open to individualization by the maker)

"The CPU runs at up to 3.0 GHz in the Cinebench Single test, which corresponds with a power consumption of around 10 Watts. The maximum value of 3.6 GHz is clearly missed, but the CPU temperature still reaches about 100 °C. The CB score is 131 points, which is just 10% slower than the 2017 MacBook Pro 13 but also just 9% faster than the MacBook 12 and 12% faster than the old-generation MacBook Air.

We see the maximum Turbo of 2x 3.0 GHz during the Cinebench Multi test for the first ~10 seconds at a consumption of almost 15 Watts. However, this drops to just 2x 2.5 GHz (10 W) after another 20 seconds. The results can fluctuate a bit depending on whether the fan is already running or not. We got scores between 267 and 285 points. Both the old MacBook Air with the 5th generation Core i5 and the MacBook 12 with the Core m3 are not or just slower in one Cinebench run. This basically means the new MacBook Air only has a performance advantage for about 10 seconds compared to these two laptops, because the fan control is very slow. This improves the noise levels but not the performance. The old 2017 MacBook Pro with the Core i5 is almost 30% faster and all other competitors with modern quad-core chips are between 80 and 140% faster. The CPU performance of the MacBook Air is not reduced on battery power."

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Air-2018-i5-256-GB-Laptop-Review.357481.0.html

 

I've seen those Reddit posts before making my original post. All they tell is that the body gets noticeably warm. I also seen the Notebookcheck review. Not sure why you post all of this. At all. Could Apple make it cooler by adding more heatsinks and heatpipes? Yes. So could Dell with my own G7 laptop, which gets very warm in middle area when playing games and goes up to 99C, the thermal throttle point, when running Cinebench or any game which uses up all the hardware resources (like Forza Horizon 4), using stock thermal paste. So do many other Windows laptops, from Alienware to Gigabyte to Eluktronics (look at video reviews of MAG-15, that crappy laptop throttles hard in games like BF5 even with liquid metal applied to CPU and with plenty of air intakes from top and bottom areas and heatsinks on rear and side areas). All of which have billions of heatpipes and dozens of heatsinks. That's all irrelevant, though, the original point is that the cooling system does work as designed in this MacBook Air to route airflow through CPU heatsink and Louis did not mention this fact and went with "LUL, this fan does not have a heatsink in front of it which is connected with heatpipe to CPU-mounted heatsink, therefore it does nothing".

P.S: I don't know why I even type all of this or bothered to make this whole topic, majority of people have serious issues with reading comprehension and will either not read my sentence before this or will not understand a single word in it.

 

They sure dont make em' like they used to eh?

 

No, they do not.

Apparently you need some reading comprehension too.

The part you cut from my post acknowledges Louis most likely knew why the design was as is but his anti Apple posts are sometimes to his own detriment:

I doubt you read the notebookcheck review before your initial post. If you did, you would not have made a note to point out the 7w TDP while the notebookcheck review clearly shows it exceeding 7w even in single threaded runs and more than doubling to 15w in dual core runs before hitting a ceiling and throttling.

I've actually used a 2019 Macbook Air and the heat generated above the function keys is much higher than any other notebook I've used in recent times. Depending on user, it borders on being uncomfortable. Apple should have either implemented a proper cooling system to compensate for the larger TDP than rated OR capped the pull. Of course if they capped it to 7w (as you pointed out ), it would perform at best on par with the older models or even worse so.................

Look, I get your argument is that Louis, either for mock indignation, views, true ignorance or an amalgamation of all three, incorrectly pointed out the rhyme and reason the system didn't use a traditional piped cooling system.

You could have left it at that, "Hey, Louis failed to realize the system is working as intended by Apple (warts and all)," but your added extra fodder to your message which opened you up to criticism.

 

The original xbox 360 cooling designs used something similar to this arrangement. Needless to say, it did not work out so well for early revision 360s. This is still poor design in my book.

 

This isn't TDP being misleading.

7 to 15W gap is quite large. Some manufacturers may have wanted doing out of the stated specifications. So since Intel is the one making chips, they can do whatever they want with it and allow it to run higher.

For example the XPS 2-in-1 is at 9W TDP.* But no such numbers exist in datasheets. So Intel is allowing customization beyond simple datasheet numbers.

Laptops are going to get more and more custom work done as time passes by, because unlike on a desktop, the CPU/GPU aren't the only stars of the show. The entire device has to be considered.

*Also as cooling solutions get better and more advanced, they will always try to push the envelope. That means on one hand you'll see smaller, thinner, lighter devices. On the other hand you'll see push for more performance.

 

*Scratches noggin*

I never said it was.

 

I like him because of his interesting fixing videos and such, but sometimes gets to annoying with the apple hate tbh

 

His first videos about fixing things were really good. Now he's just annoying as (insert word here). I don't watch anything he puts up anymore.