Cool down your MacBook or MacBook Pro
by Bruce Elgort
For those of you Apple MacBook and MacBook Pro users out there who find the amount of heat generated by the CPU is too much for your lap (or your furniture), you may want to try out smcFanControl Version 1.2. smFanControl allows you to easily crank up the speed (and volume) of the fans.
smcFanControl is open source and licensed under the GPL.
Comments
Cool. Nevertheless it is a shame from Apple. Controlling the SMC with a third party app to avoid a desk meltdown... Tsss!
Even though this is an old post, I feel compelled to comment. The statement "Controlling the SMC with a third party app to avoid a desk meltdown" is completely false. OS X has software built in to control the fans. The fan speeds are automatically adjusted by the OS, but you can manually make these settings changes yourself, without the tool, it's just not as nice. This tool is just an added convenience for people who want to manually manipulate the fan speeds.
I had a PowerBook G4, and now have a MacBook Pro and it can get really warm if you don't have something between you and the notebook, but I've never had a problem with furniture. I use a pad on my lap, but lately have laid the laptop directly on surfaces when not in my lap with no damage to the surfaces. I've had three previous PC laptops and the heat is no different between my Apple notebooks and PC notebooks. If anything, I think the heat transfer is actually better on the Apple notebooks due to it's aluminum housing.
