Should Apple release a M4 Air SKU with fan and vents?

[joeblow7777]

I thought most users would prefer a fan?

Consider this: Do you think that people would prefer a fan in their iPad? Or iPhone?

I don't think that a fan is a feature so much as a compromise. It's an additional moving part, thereby adding more weight and drawing more power. The vents that it requires also provides another opening to collect dust, dirt, and other debris. Why wouldn't anyone prefer a fanless device if it meets their performance needs?

 

[chrono1081]

No. They're not needed. I ran some seriously heavy stuff on my M2 Air and it handled it beautifully without even getting perceptibly warm. I'm talking things like Houdini, Final Cut, Unity, Xcode, Blender, etc.

Fragmenting a product line into fan/fanless is just not a great move. Product lines should be simplified if anything (especially the iPad lines).

 

[DeepSix]

Consider this: Do you think that people would prefer a fan in their iPad? Or iPhone?

I don't think that a fan is a feature so much as a compromise. It's an additional moving part, thereby adding more weight and drawing more power. The vents that it requires also provides another opening to collect dust, dirt, and other debris. Why wouldn't anyone prefer a fanless device if it meets their performance needs?

Yes the Pros have fans but the best part is that it's super easy to remove the back cover to blow out the dust from inside. I plan on doing this every 6 months.

 

[Howard2k]

I've had the M4 Pro for 6 days now and there has been zero fan noise. The only time I've been able to get the fans going is by running Cinebench to benchmark it.

The air isn't any quieter. Both are completely silent. So now I no longer see the air having an advantage over the Pro for silent operation.

Which just means you're not stressing the machine. If you stress it you will generate heat and that needs to be dispersed.

 

[joeblow7777]

Yes the Pros have fans but the best part is that it's super easy to remove the back cover to blow out the dust from inside. I plan on doing this every 6 months.

Which is kind of my point. Most people aren’t like, “Yay! I get to clean out the inside of my laptop every 6 months!” Not needing to do this is generally seen as a benefit.

 

[DeepSix]

It's actually the whole point. If you have used a Macbook Pro for even moderate loads like compiling code, etc... you'd know the fans are very eager there. Even on the ARM version, fans are very eager to kick in for long compilation or batch photo operations.

I'm not chasing every single second on a device I use for leisure and hobby, so I would prefer absolutely zero noise and minimal chances of dust getting in (via the vents). And thus the Macbook Air is that device. Yes, I do in fact have a maxed out M2 model that is still going strong.

I don't feel even an ounce of need for more speed or performance even with the tasks I mentioned (long code compilation tasks for bigger projects or long batch photo editing operations) so... fan + vent would be against the whole point.

When I picked up the M4 Pro last week, I was expecting to hear the fan at all times, even if it was a slight whine. To my surprise, the Pro is completely silent when not pushed.

Idle, web browsing, email, watching videos, even running Adobe apps etc...the Pro is dead silent. I was blown away. I stick my ear to the laptop and can't hear anything. You would think it's a MacBook Air but nope it's a Pro. Once I discovered how silent the Pro is, the Airs zero noise operation was no longer seen as an advantage.

When the Pros fans do go on (and that's only when really pushing it), I'll take that over throttling for my use case. I rendered a 1h 30m video the other day and the fans still didn't go on. I was very impressed.

 

[redfirebird08]

I'm a very light user. MacBook Air without the fan is basically the gold standard for me. I have the 2012 MacBook Air with a fan. Intel chips run too hot, so the fan kicks on for basic web browsing. But now I got the "M2" MacBook Air last week and I'm loving it. No fan, cooler feeling machine, and about 5X longer battery life. For light users, it's a perfect computer.