Filed under: Portables, Macbook Pro
What does a whining MacBook Pro sound like?
I don't have a MacBook Pro, so I'm not able to listen to its infamous "whine." Luckily for me, some enterprising soul had the idea to record his whining laptop and post the audio to the web. He notes that the sound his computer makes in person is a bit different that what the recording presents, but it's still pretty annoying. He also notes that he has since returned the MacBook Pro. Check it out for yourself.
[Via Cult of Mac]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
andy said 11:09AM on 5-08-2006
well i must be deaf lol
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richard said 11:37AM on 5-08-2006
have the 17" macbooks shown any sign of the whine?
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Ryan said 11:38AM on 5-08-2006
I give apple's lawers 10min till they send a cease and desist to the guy hosting the sound file, probably the sound is copyrighted apple matiarial :-P
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matt said 11:42AM on 5-08-2006
how can anybody put up with that noise !!!!!!
their ears must bleed when they switch the Pro book on and hear the deafening start up tune
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stefan said 11:46AM on 5-08-2006
i think my 15 1.67 powerbook caught the whine a while ago. only when I'm using the scrolling trackpad, and when its plugged in. we will see if this gets fixed in a week or 2 when i send it in to get the broken ram slot fixed :-(.
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fishstix said 11:56AM on 5-08-2006
How do we know that this whine isn't an issue with the Core Duo as opposed to Apple's engineering?
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Andy Lee said 11:56AM on 5-08-2006
I can sympathize. The fan on my old TiBook makes a roaring noise, I swear like a plane flying overhead. When it's on long enough I start feeling stressed and irritable, even if I'm not consciously thinking about the noise. Even a small whine would bug the heck out of me.
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Daniel Jalkut said 12:02PM on 5-08-2006
Very cool. Incidentally the Quiet MBP program he uses for this demo is available from my page dedicated to MBP complaints:
http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/macbook-pro-noise-complaints/
Daniel
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Wheels said 12:25PM on 5-08-2006
The only whining I hear is from the narrator/owner. Noises happen. If you don't like the noise give me the MacBook.
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mkumemr said 12:45PM on 5-08-2006
Good heavens, what a fuzz for all this whining. As a musician, of course I am quite deaf, but, seriously, with an open window to the street, the environmental noise is really more annoying. But the Apple whining; I am willingly standing it. Besides, if anyone wants to get rid of his loud machine - donations welcome... :)
mk
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Hawk said 12:47PM on 5-08-2006
#6: The whine isn't due to the Core Duo, or else iMacs would whine.
Maybe they do. Mine doesn't. Does anyone have one that does?
It very faintly 'purrs', clicks, and the cd drive makes all kinds of noises when it's working.
I actually read a review of the Intel Core Duo iMac from someone on CNET who said that it was the noisiest PC he'd ever owned. That's completely preposterous. My partner's PC drowns it out more than completely. My G5 PowerMac would have drowned it out with all its fans on low.
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John Muir said 1:07PM on 5-08-2006
Noises like this are so annoying on otherwise epically neat laptops. Fortunately my very own "Rev.A" 867MHz 12 inch PowerBook G4 has absolutely nothing, which is why I have the hard drive set to a 1 minute idle time to enjoy the 1970's calm of quiet computing! Thank goodness we're past loud floppy disks and cassette storage though ;-)
I doubt the Core Duo itself is responsible for those noises. They could have to do with the electronics responsible for charging and discharging the battery. Otherwise all Core Duo laptops would have rumours like this flying around and get the chip a bad rep.
Anyone got a clip of the mysterious "moo"?
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Franco said 1:13PM on 5-08-2006
When I took my MBP in because of the heat and noise, the guy at the Genius bar told me they have a recording of the whine so they know what to listen for. Just a thought.
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Craig said 1:28PM on 5-08-2006
Ryan, it's possible something like that could happen, but a settlement would probably be the result, and then we might all be able to purchase the whining noise through the iTunes store.
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Ryan #2 said 2:09PM on 5-08-2006
I also have the whine listed above but oddly enough it turns off simply by having bluetooth on. When I turn bluetooth off, the whine starts. When I turn bluetooth back on, the whine is gone. And so it goes and has gone. Since I have bluetooth on most of the time, since I rarely need more then 3 hours of battery at a time - it hasn't bothered me too much. But when I am trying to conserve battery life, time for some noise reduction headphones and artificial silence sadly. It's not bad in anything but silence for me, so if there's other noise such as found in class and most public places, no lost. Only would be bad if I was on a red-eye flight with people around me sleeping, but then again the monitor brightness and my typing would be more annoying I'm sure. Also, the processor whine isn't as bad a the monitor whine - at least for me, but I've heard that the monitor whine could and should be fixed with a future firmware update so I'm still waiting so I don't have to send my MBP in and wait 10-15 days to get it back. With school, I won't be able to realistically part with my laptop for that long until mid-summer.
P.S. has anyone else only had the processor whine when having bluetooth off, but it stops when bluetooth is on? It'll also stop if I turn do something that uses the iSight of course. But mine is easily controlled by bluetooth, which isn't too bad - although bluetooth is a battery hog and the MBP's battery isn't a stellar 4.5 hours as they claim, although I can get about 4 hours with no airport or bluetooth lowest screen brightness, 3.5 hours with only airport and lowest screen brightness, and 3 hours with low screen brightness and airport and bluetooth both on. Full brightness, everything on only yields about 2.5 hours though. There's my personal experience with a 15" 2.16 CD 7200 HD MBP.
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Ryan said 6:11PM on 5-08-2006
This is the "whine" that everybody complains about? Dear god. My AlBook 1g made that noise like clockwork within certain programs (Dreamweaver for one). Apparently it's not the cpu at all if I heard this on my G4, and probably more related to graphics or something within the system acting badly, but it did exactly what they complain about and goes away with increased cpu usage. This was confirmed by others I talked to who had the same machines of the era, but a giant fuss wasn't made about it. While annoying if I was actually paying attention to it, it wasn't a deal breaker. Just have some music in the background to drown it out.
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zack said 7:30PM on 5-08-2006
Just to let you know.. I'm thinking it's in the optimization of the Intel chipset. Mine has the whine under battery in OSX. Under WinXP, no such luck.. purrs like a kitten.
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Jansperus said 7:32PM on 5-08-2006
My MBP has a whine occasionally, but it's not as common as it once was. Still, it doesn't bother me at all. Of course, I always have the TV or the stereo on. I rarely ever use my computer in complete silence.
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Mike said 7:36PM on 5-08-2006
I have to admit this is the one issue that might keep me from punching in my credit card number as soon as the MacBook Jnr is announced (maybe tomorrow?).
Buying sight unseen is a danger given Apple's track record of releasing flawed laptops. Back in the day, I had a iBook G3 700MHz with the bad logic board that needed 3 repairs before it was okay.
On the other hand, my PowerBook G4 12" from 16 months ago was absolute perfection. No complaints whatsoever and a very aesthetically pleasing design, which I only sold because I want a laptop with the Intel chip.
So, buy immediately and take a "Rev A risk" or wait a few weeks to see the mood in the forums? It's a hard call, given the hit & miss nature of Apple's quality control these days.
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Peter Payne said 11:50PM on 5-08-2006
Other products to whine. I had a Newton MP2100 that had a buzzing whine that was hard to put up with in a quiet room, but unnoticeable at any other time.
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