Apple MacBook “Moooing” sound identified and explained.

May 26, 2006 on 2:15 am | In MacBook, apple, technology, videos |

A brave Apple MacBook owner took it upon himself to find out exactly where the “Moooing” sound heard in a lot of the new MacBooks is coming from. By taking apart his brand new Apple MacBook computer and removing some of the casing, he was able to confirm everyones suspicions that the sound is indeed coming from the system’s fans.

It seems that the fans turn on at a specific temperature, like they are suppose to, but only stay on for a few seconds, as the temperature very quickly drop by a few degrees. The “Moooing” sound that is heard is produced by the fans turning on and airflow starting to move through the MacBook enclosure.

It’s entirely possible that Apple had intended to make the fans hyper-sensitive, to avoid draining extra battery power, and to keep the MacBook as quiet as possible. However, if this is something that really is a problem, Apple should be able to fix it by changing the temperature at which the fans go on or off, with a firmware update.

Update: Here is the discussion of this issue over at Apple.com

8 Comments »

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  1. It doesnt take a genius to figure out they should put the fans on at 70degrees and make it stop at 65

    Comment by al — May 26, 2006 #

  2. al: Yes. That effect is called hysteresis, and I find it kind of odd that they wouldn’t have implemented it in this machine when they did so very nicely in the PowerMac G5’s. Instead of switching on and off sharply like this, a G5 tower slowly ramps the fan speed up and down over a period of several seconds, and ( as far as I can tell, never did any real testing ) will only do so when the machine reaches a certain high-temp threshold and will cool it to a low-temp threshhold before ramping the speed down again. There’s nothing quite like the sound of running distributed.net on a G5 just to hear the main fan slowly spool up like a 747. :)

    Comment by Dirk — May 26, 2006 #

  3. […] iBloggedThis » Apple MacBook “Moooing” sound identified and explained. (tags: MacBook) Posted by damanplusi Filed in […]

    Pingback by This is ri-god-damn-diculous! » Blog Archive » links for 2006-05-28 — May 28, 2006 #

  4. […] Die fiepende Kuh im MacBook: Martin Hiegl weist auf ein Video hin, in dem eine Spule zwischen Prozessor und Airport-Karte als Verursacher für das nervige Fiepen im MacBook ausfindig gemacht wird. Auch das berüchtigte Muh-Geräusch ist dabei gut zu hören. Mehr dazu auch hier. […]

    Pingback by MACNOTES.DE - RANDNOTIZEN AUS DER MAC-OSPHÄRE » Archiv » Randnotizen vom 06.06. — June 6, 2006 #

  5. […] If your brand new MacBook mooing isn’t enough of a problem, now there are reports of a casing discoloration issue. It appears that there are more than a few people on Apple’s support site, who are experiencing this issue. […]

    Pingback by iBloggedThis » Apple MacBook discoloration issues — June 12, 2006 #

  6. […] Published on ibloggedthis.com If your brand new MacBook mooing isn’t enough of a problem, now there are reports of a casing discoloration issue. It appears that there are more than a few people on Apple’s support site, who are experiencing this issue. […]

    Pingback by KtecK Blog - Syndicated » Blog Archive » Apple MacBook discoloration issues — June 12, 2006 #

  7. You had to take the machine apart to figure out what the noise was? It was fairly obvious to me. You should have asked me!

    Comment by Larry — June 13, 2006 #

  8. Is this seriously how loud the noise is? Has anyone experienced sitting in front of a rev A imac G5! I had to put headphones on to be able to hear that noise over the whine from my imac. Is this actually the noise that everyone has been complaining about or does the video make it seem really quiet?

    Comment by Pongo — June 14, 2006 #

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Apple MacBook “Moooing” sound identified and explained.

May 26, 2006 on 2:15 am | In MacBook, apple, technology, videos |

A brave Apple MacBook owner took it upon himself to find out exactly where the “Moooing” sound heard in a lot of the new MacBooks is coming from. By taking apart his brand new Apple MacBook computer and removing some of the casing, he was able to confirm everyones suspicions that the sound is indeed coming from the system’s fans.

It seems that the fans turn on at a specific temperature, like they are suppose to, but only stay on for a few seconds, as the temperature very quickly drop by a few degrees. The “Moooing” sound that is heard is produced by the fans turning on and airflow starting to move through the MacBook enclosure.

It’s entirely possible that Apple had intended to make the fans hyper-sensitive, to avoid draining extra battery power, and to keep the MacBook as quiet as possible. However, if this is something that really is a problem, Apple should be able to fix it by changing the temperature at which the fans go on or off, with a firmware update.

Update: Here is the discussion of this issue over at Apple.com

8 Comments »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

  1. It doesnt take a genius to figure out they should put the fans on at 70degrees and make it stop at 65

    Comment by al — May 26, 2006 #

  2. al: Yes. That effect is called hysteresis, and I find it kind of odd that they wouldn’t have implemented it in this machine when they did so very nicely in the PowerMac G5’s. Instead of switching on and off sharply like this, a G5 tower slowly ramps the fan speed up and down over a period of several seconds, and ( as far as I can tell, never did any real testing ) will only do so when the machine reaches a certain high-temp threshold and will cool it to a low-temp threshhold before ramping the speed down again. There’s nothing quite like the sound of running distributed.net on a G5 just to hear the main fan slowly spool up like a 747. :)

    Comment by Dirk — May 26, 2006 #

  3. […] iBloggedThis » Apple MacBook “Moooing” sound identified and explained. (tags: MacBook) Posted by damanplusi Filed in […]

    Pingback by This is ri-god-damn-diculous! » Blog Archive » links for 2006-05-28 — May 28, 2006 #

  4. […] Die fiepende Kuh im MacBook: Martin Hiegl weist auf ein Video hin, in dem eine Spule zwischen Prozessor und Airport-Karte als Verursacher für das nervige Fiepen im MacBook ausfindig gemacht wird. Auch das berüchtigte Muh-Geräusch ist dabei gut zu hören. Mehr dazu auch hier. […]

    Pingback by MACNOTES.DE - RANDNOTIZEN AUS DER MAC-OSPHÄRE » Archiv » Randnotizen vom 06.06. — June 6, 2006 #

  5. […] If your brand new MacBook mooing isn’t enough of a problem, now there are reports of a casing discoloration issue. It appears that there are more than a few people on Apple’s support site, who are experiencing this issue. […]

    Pingback by iBloggedThis » Apple MacBook discoloration issues — June 12, 2006 #

  6. […] Published on ibloggedthis.com If your brand new MacBook mooing isn’t enough of a problem, now there are reports of a casing discoloration issue. It appears that there are more than a few people on Apple’s support site, who are experiencing this issue. […]

    Pingback by KtecK Blog - Syndicated » Blog Archive » Apple MacBook discoloration issues — June 12, 2006 #

  7. You had to take the machine apart to figure out what the noise was? It was fairly obvious to me. You should have asked me!

    Comment by Larry — June 13, 2006 #

  8. Is this seriously how loud the noise is? Has anyone experienced sitting in front of a rev A imac G5! I had to put headphones on to be able to hear that noise over the whine from my imac. Is this actually the noise that everyone has been complaining about or does the video make it seem really quiet?

    Comment by Pongo — June 14, 2006 #

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