Do you think post-M1, MBA will remain a fan-less model, consistently?

[thadoggfather]

Personally I hope so.

I loved that the 12" MB was fanless, no acoustics at all was/is amazing ! But the performance of Core M wasn't too great

and as long as the silicon runs cool enough, I could see this remaining this way and the MBP being the one that has a fan for sustained performance multicore boost. Especially with how people took objection to the early 2020 i3/i5 cooling methods and continue to modify it to make it suitable fo them :

2020 Air Heatsink Modification Thread

This hobby is going to start for at least one more person. I just bought a 2020 Air this past Spring. Not about to give Apple another $1,500 for their processor when this mod can fix my problem for way less. Besides, I still need x86 for some older programs and a Windows VM. I have a 2020 iPad...

forums.macrumors.com

(95 pages long now)

But if M1 is a lone wolf of fanless, I will cherish this model for a long while!

 

[Apple_Robert]

I think the base model at least, will stay fanless. I think it is the best laptop you can get for the money. Outside of the Apple Watch, it is one of my favorite Apple product.

 

[thadoggfather]

I think the base model at least, will stay fanless. I think it is the best laptop you can get for the money. Outside of the Apple Watch, it is one of my favorite Apple product.

That would be really great. I hate fans.

 

[KPOM]

I don’t see why it wouldn’t. Apple made a point of saying that the MacBook Air is fanless. That’s a selling point now.

 

[Seanm87]

Yes it will stay that way. Putting in a fan later would be going backwards.

 

[Merkava_4]

Yes it will stay that way. Putting in a fan later would be going backwards.

Are fans on their way out? Is the current trend to make processors run so cool that they don't need fans?

 

[Seanm87]

Are fans on their way out? Is the current trend to make processors run so cool that they don't need fans?

I think so yes. Chips are becoming more thermal efficient well apple silicon anyway. We haven't seen the iPad ever get a fan despite getting more and more powerful. The M1 is vastly more power than is even needed for the average user.

 

[Toutou]

We haven't seen the iPad ever get a fan

Well that's mainly because the iPad is a tablet that can't really have a fan because of the target form factor (thin rectangle).

Performance-oriented laptops have historically had fans and as long as customers tolerate fans in them (which they do for various reasons) they will continue to have fans and their CPUs will be as powerful as the thermal envelope allows (more powerful than the thermal envelope of a comparable fanless design would allow).

 

[Seanm87]

Well that's mainly because the iPad is a tablet that can't really have a fan because of the target form factor (thin rectangle).

Performance-oriented laptops have historically had fans and as long as customers tolerate fans in them (which they do for various reasons) they will continue to have fans and their CPUs will be as powerful as the thermal envelope allows (more powerful than the thermal envelope of a comparable fanless design would allow).

Yes performance-orientated laptops like the MacBook Pro will still have fans. I just don't think the air will have one again.

 

[thadoggfather]

Yes performance-orientated laptops like the MacBook Pro will still have fans. I just don't think the air will have one again.

Even that I wonder about, depending on how wild things get because as mentioned powerful iPad Pros, iPhones don't need a fan.

True most people aren't doing the same workload on iPhone as the computer, but for iPad they do sometimes.

I just love that the machine is cool to the touch every time I touch the space between keyboard and MacBook Air logo, and whenever I hear ANY surrounding noises I can always be 100% certain its not coming from the laptop

Even looking at how thermal throttling affects sustained multicore, don't care. These M1's are beasts, and I am really delighted after a week of use with this machine. Glad to have tossed my i5 2020 even though took a loss on it... but really didn't because I got such a great deal on it around launch I didn't even take that big of a loss, or pay that much of a difference that wasn't unbearable or not worth the value add of upgrading.

 

[jerryk]

My guess is the Air will continue to not need/have a fan for a while. If you think it from Apple's perspective they are building the Air for a different market than the Pro 13". So they charge less, and as the lines update the Pro 13" will get higher-powered processors sooner.

 

[JPack]

The MacBook Air sits in the low price/performance category, so no fans in the future. iPhone/iPad are also relatively low-performance devices with 4 cores, so no fans needed. In a post-M1 world of 8/10/12 cores, fans will really increase performance.