Apple fans roast Apple fans

Fix for overheating MacBook Airs

By Richard Thurston • Get more from this author

Posted in PCs & Chips, 12th March 2008 17:37 GMT

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Apple has issued a software update for the MacBook Air, following reports of overheating. The update, released on Monday, "fine tunes the speed and operation of the internal fan" in the MacBook Air models.

This should enable the fan to correctly regulate the temperature and stop the notebook locking up.

Released in January, the super-light, super-thin MacBook Air has won plaudits for its clever design. But many users have complained that the machine overheats and then freezes, with one of the two processing cores becoming temporarily useless.

Writing on one of Apple's forums, Mac Book Air user Deny Dias reported that his system starts overheating as it is playing video.

He wrote: "When MBA [MacBook Air] goes beyond this temperature [73°C], the CPU bar graph of activity shows a slowdown in core number 2, while core number 1 raises right to the top.

"If you keep playing the video for another half a minute, the temperature keeps rising to 75°C and then it freezes.

"After that, you have ten seconds of a working system, then ten seconds of total freeze. Clearly seems to be an overheating issue."

Another Apple user, TeraFloppy, wrote: "This looks very much like a heat issue. Unpredictable behavior in a notebook is common caused when the machine is running too hot.

"When iTunes begins to stutter (and the entire OS), I find cooling the machine eliminates all problems."

Apple could offer no comment on the overheating problems at the time of writing. ®

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