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I think it is market forces. Fanless laptops can be made, but the bulk of the market seeks reasonable performance at the best price.

I think it doesn't matter much, as you can take a standard laptop and restrict the clock speed, and the fan will never turn on.

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You are precisely right.

And laptop marketing focuses primarily on CPU speed, which is an error. It drives running CPUs at speeds that create non-linear heat/power graphs without much consideration to total system performance.

Does that really work? I would expect the fan to kick in based on temperature, not cpu frequency?

Or do you mean restricting clock speed based on temperature?

the fan turns on because the cpu gets hot, the cpu gets hot because it’s doing more work, slow the cpu down and it does less work. downclocking to keep the fans from kicking on is the same thing as thermal throttling, just earlier

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