Why Apple Computers Don't Have Cooling Fans

Today I would like to tell you the reason why Apple computers do not have cooling fans in them as like most computer manufacturers.

Part of Apple design philosophy, dating back to Steve Jobs’ first tenure as Apple’s CEO, is a dislike of active cooling (fans) on computers. In fact, this got the company in a lot of trouble during the early 1980s, when Jobs insisted that the Apple III, a business-oriented machine introduced in 1980, should have no cooling fans or even vents.

The computer was built with a heavy cast aluminum case designed to act as a very large heatsink, but this was still inadequate. The logic board would get too hot, and the thermal cycles eventually caused memory chips to creep out of their sockets.

The inelegant solution was to pick up the computer and drop it from a few inches, to re-seat the memory chips, but Apple eventually had to recall thousands of unreliable Apple III’s and fix them.

Most Apple machines from the era when Jobs was not part of the company did have cooling fans, but when he returned, he brought the same dislike of fans and Apple has tried to design machines that don’t need them ever since.