Flagship MacBook struggles for Air

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 14 Mar 2008 at 11:43

The MacBook Air is struggling with overheating problems, according to posts on the Apple forums.

The complaints claim the MacBook Air has a tendency to overheat when faced with intensive applications, such as games or movies. This then leads to problems ranging from corrupted displays to the machine periodically freezing when under full load.

"My MBA would freeze up and then unfreeze and then freeze again, at an interval of about ten to 15 seconds. This happens when I watch video on iTunes, QuickTime or even those flash-based videos such as YouTube... I suspect this is an overheating problem," reports one poster.

"When using the Macbook Air for a while playing a game such as World of Warcraft, it gets hot, as you would expect. However, the graphic then start to fail badly. Some parts of the display are corrupted, and eventually the game is unusable. Exiting a game so it cools down the machine continues to work," says another poster.

Various theories have floated around concerning the problem, with some users suggesting it is to do with the heatsink failing and recommending a replacement MacBook Air, while others suggest it's more to do with timing on the laptop's fan.

For this latter problem Apple has released a patch called "SMC Update 1.0", however, reports continue to filter in suggesting that the problem continues to grumble on.

Apple have not yet returned our request for comment.