Tell HN: MacOS turns off the fans when Siri is listening

[sudhirj]

This is something that struck me a few moments ago, because it's very logical but completely unexpected. I have a Macbook Pro that's doing some hard work with the fans on loud, and calling Siri turns the fans off the period that Siri is listening.

It's pretty amazing someone thought of that.

[n1000]

It's been around for a while already. The dictation feature in OS X 10.10 already knows that trick. The thought of the little thinks is what still makes me stick with OS X.

[hashkb]

> The thought of the little [things] is what still makes me stick with OS X.

This rubs me the wrong way because it's a vicious (positive, I guess) cycle. You keep buying iPhones, they stockpile billions in cash, and they can "think of the little things" (which is really just "How can we make OS X more like iOS and less suitable for power users?").

It's sad... but I can't imagine anyone taking the time to hack this together on their *nix laptop, and even if they did, it's not likely to be portable until a handful of other tinkerers donate their time. This will bring the downvotes, but the way we're stuck on Apple these days is far worse than the MS lock-in we revolted about in the 90s.

[moepstar]

Should be in there since 10.9.x, albeit in the form of the dictation feature, not Siri...

[kstenerud]

They have to. Any time my MBP is working really hard, say, compiling, or talking on skype, or watching a video, or loading a web page, or browsing the filesystem, the fan ramps up like a turbine. It gets so bad that the microphone can't accurately pick up my voice.

[cordite]

My fan rarely turns on, and it is barely audible.

It seems the tolerance is far beyond leg-scalding for my MBP, though it only gets to that point when recompiling a bunch of version specific libraries in a sandbox for over 10 minutes.

[alexbock]

Are you using an older model that hasn't been cleaned in a while? I use an early 2013 15" MBP and the only time I ever hear the fans is when I'm doing compilation with 8 threads (100% CPU usage on all four cores).

[coldtea]

I have an MBPr and do frequent 1080p/4k renders that utilize all 4 cores to max, and I can barely hear the fans...

[crymer11]

And only if you're using the internal microphone. I was trying to test this and couldn't reproduce it until I realized I was using headphones with a mic. Unplugged the headphones, activated Siri and the fan instantly turned off.

[AstralStorm]

I wonder how they prevent their CPUs from burning up when they do this and there happens to be some kind of heavy load in the background...

Is someone up for a free warranty Macbook replacement? ;)

[stuaxo]

They probably thought of it because they were getting unexpectedly bad results using the internal microphone.

I guess it ramps the priority of everything else down as well.

[fractal618]

So, can I overheat my friends laptop, by saying "Siri" and proceeding to read war and peace?

[wingerlang]

If they thought about turning it off to increase the clarity of the speech, they probably thought of turning them on in case the computer is about to explode.

[DiabloD3]

My MBPr 13" (Late 2012) turns off the left fan and left speaker when the microphone (which is on the left side) is in use.

This is entirely in software, and Windows 10 does not also do the same. OSX has done this since 10.8, which came with the MBPr.

[Unklejoe]

I guess Windows is at a disadvantage here since it doesn't know the physical layout of the components on the hardware it's running on. It would be up to the laptop manufacturers to include a driver to do such.

[jxy]

Does it stop the CPU hungry process too?

[jxy]

Why the down votes? Isn't it important? If I'm running some CPU intensive processes, I would hope it could send a SIGSTOP to the process so it wouldn't burn itself.

Throttling CPU frequency would help, but I expect siri needs some CPU too.

[n1000]

Whenever the CPU gets too hot the Macbooks throttle. So I would say so.

[carlosfvp]

Good point, otherwise the hardware might damage with constant usage of Siri, or is this the actual plan of Apple?

[ianbertolacci]

Is there a timeout?

[DigitalJack]

yes. I've got 3 cores pegged now, fan shuts off for a few seconds and if I don't say anything it bails and the fans come back.

just takes about 10 seconds.

edit: I was able to keep activating siri and have the fans off while 4 cores pegged for quite a while. I don't know if CPU throttling kicked in or not, not sure how to check.

[vorotato]

and thus an exploit was born.

[sudhirj]

Siri itself has a timeout, at which point it tells you it can't hear you and goes back to sleep.

[nikolay]

It's kinda stupid - instead of intelligently filtering the noise (it knows the acoustics, the RPM of the fan, etc).

[sclangdon]

Since when were simple solutions considered stupid? If filtering audio (which will probably only work the CPU, and thus the fan, more) is smarter than stopping a fan, I must be as dumb as bricks.

[mnovaes]

Hopefully not for long enough to fry your circuitry. :)

[jsonau]

Would noise cancelling(ANC) help in this case, even if the mic and fan are near each other?

[AstralStorm]

Yes, a lot. This is a simple case for a noise canceller. Stationary known wideband source of noise.

[p333347]

Never used a Mac but this seems more like a workaround for the noise filtering problem.

[nom]

Yes agreed, it really sounds like a workaround. They improve the detection rate by reducing the noise floor. I find it interesting that they took the time to implement it, it must have cost a considerable amount of work that they could have put into filter algorithms instead. Fan noise sounds like an artifact that is easy to filter, but I'm probably wrong.

[bdcrazy]

My car does this when doing voice commands for radio or Phone.