“Everyone knows that Apple’s Intel powered portable lineup gets hot, but this is insane! An enterprising fellow figured out that it would be possible to actually fry an egg on the bottom of his black MacBook,” Dan Lurie reports for The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).
“Granted, it probably took something like 3 times as long than if he had used a stove, but thats obviously not the point. For bonus points, keep your coffee warm by placing it on top of your MacBook power adapter,” Lurie writes.
Full article with photo of egg frying on a black MacBook here.
“Presumably the Mac that’s auditoning for a job at Mac-Donalds (groan) is one that suffers from the overheating problem tackled by Interrupting Moss at the Something Awful forum. He made his system run dramatically cooler by opening it up and correcting the manufacturing defect — the application of too much thermal paste, as illustrated on page 106 of Apple’s Service Manual,” Jack Schofield blogs for The Guardian.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Jack T” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Would you like a little thermal paste with your omelet? Hey, maybe the fried egg chef just forgot to remove his MacBook’s plastic strip? Look at it this way, with a Rev. A black MacBook, you’ll save money on both stove use and the cost of a frying pan. 
[ UPDATE: July 17, 10:05am EDT: Original story post confirms it’s all a joke: http://www.sagags.com/?p=441 ]
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this is great news! especially for my colleagues in Dubai and Doha. This time of the year you can actually boil an egg on the street.
I think you meant “fry” an egg on the street…would be rather tough to boil one that way…
Dubai and Doha? Screw that! I’m in New England and it’s 98 degrees F.
[Gore] With this unprecedented global climate change it’s abundantly clear that something needs to be done. My new movie, An Inconvenient Truth, spells out the details of our future doom if we don’t act quickly. [/Gore]
Have you noticed that no other notebook company makes laptops that run H O T ? If Dells and HPs are comfy cool, and just as fast and thin as any core duo crap, then why can’t apple do it?
Cool isn’t just about LOOKS.
That hot there’s enough sweat and heat to boil more than your eggs.
Has anybody actually seen the picture? I followed the links and ultimately wound up at a gamer’s site, but no picture.
Well if Apple made them 2 to 3 times as thick they would stay cooler like the PC notebooks, Also the PC notebooks cut processor speed (i.e. run cooler) when on battery power – you can run an Apple at full speed.
you don’t know the history of egg frying. i do.
It isn’t the plastic strip, MDN. The overheating problem is a deal killer for me and lots of others who were eagerly awaiting these intel powerbooks and now can’t justify the purchase, at any price.
Isn’t it time you called for a fix in the next generation? It would greatly improve your credibility as an advocate for the faithful.
Instead, I bet I get one at least one hateful accusations of being a troll since I have to type my input on a PC at my office.
My son just picked up his Black MacBook yesterday from the local Apple store and it runs very hot! You can not keep it on your lap for more than a couple of minutes. Checked to see if the plastic was covering the vent per earlier discussions but it was not present.
Does anyone know if the dulls of the world with the core duo run this hot???
They don’t get that hot – I have on e of the black ones and it is actually cooler than my 12″ powerbook.
Whoop tee doo Basil. Who cares…
Hey, Vizzini — don’t be an idiot. Real scientists have called Gore’s “movie” a joke. He doesn’t know fact from fantasy to save his ass.
Remember 15 or so years ago when Ted Danson made a speech about how, if we didn’t do something drastic right away, the “oceans would be dead by 1999”? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
Funny, that mahi-mahi sandwich I had the other day must’ve been a fantasy too.
Get a clue, Vizzini.
BTW – the MacBook Pro rules!!!!
what’s the deal sez:
Have you noticed that no other notebook company makes laptops that run H O T ?
AHAHAHAHHA HA HA!!
You have OBVIOUSLY not worked with a PC laptop lately.
When one of our folks gets a new laptop we: boot it up, de-install the norton’s crap, install our own AV solution, connect it to the network download the windows updates, install a few other things, by which time…THE MULTIPLE FANS IN THE LAPTOPS ARE ROARING SO LOUD YOU HAVE TO SHOUT…
They also are blasting hot air out the side like a freaking space heater.
MW ‘work’, as in I feel like I’ve been working in a steel mill after setting up those puppies.
Yeah… and Dell laptops actually burst into flames. Great for marshmallows!
I have a dull with the same processor as my personal MacBook and I find them both hot in the same proporcion. Sorry my english.
Don’t put portables/notebooks on your lap, stupid asses.
That you have in the past doesn’t mean you can or should in the present or future.
Whoever coined the term LAPTOP should be shot for generating a horde of fuctards insisting on the right to place multiple GHz processors so close to their crotches and have the CPU somehow not get hot.
Soft, cushioned, fabric surfaces insulate heat. Put them on a smooth, hard, flat surface.
Berks.
My black Macbook has only gotten hot to the touch once and that was while running Windows! While on Tiger, it runs pretty darn cool. Only heard the fan turn on a couple of times while playing movies.
Go figure.
Question: Is that black coating on made of Teflon?
Why doesn’t anyone put the processor behind the monitor?
So what if heat pours off it (check out the back of an iMac sometime). The whole back panel would be a heat sink, and it wouldn’t roast your nuts.
I don’t think anyone would mind a slightly thinker notebook if it could cool itself. Sometimes compact goes too far, like cell phones that you need a toothpick to dial with.
this is why you should be a dell instead. especially now since I’m a stock holder.
I feel sorry for you, No Kool Aid.
Dell is going down with the M$ ship because they cant license OS X and consumers dont want to use linux.
Theyll go bankrupt and you’ll lose your money. Probably serves you right for bumming microshoft.
Hey Funky Dunky, Your an Idiot, Your making your whole argument up. It turns out that real scientist agreed with everything Gore said in the movie, they did say that Gore over emphasized the Hurricane statistics, but 90%+ of the movie was spot on. So shut your mouth, your not a real scientist and nobody care to hear how ignorant you are.
Instead of doing something stupid like that why doesn’t this guy get on the horn with Apple’s service reps and get his laptop repaired because that’s not normal. Now he may have voided his warranty.
I seem to recall stories about a year or two ago about people getting burned by their Dell notebooks, but I’ve used several MacBook’s and there’s no way they get hot enough to fry an egg on them in any reasonable amount of time. Maybe if you ran it full throttle for an hour or more with the vents covered up, but it would still take a long time. The MacBook Pro’s aluminum case would make it much better suited than the MacBook’s plastic case anyway…
“Real scientists have called Gore’s “movie” a joke.”
QUITE the reverse. Quite unanimously. Good science with good conclusions. Hate the man, but don’t hate the facts. Unless that is, hate makes you DO something to improve them.
(What makes you want SO much to put your head in the sand instead of educating yourself? What to you gain by this?)
To make it easy you should buy a Dell. If you have’t seen pics of the exploding dell, it is something to see. You could cook brats or burgers with a Dell.
Well, at least the MacBook Pro won’t cause you cancer, like cell phones will! Check out this MUCH MORE IMPORTANT VIDEO of how to fry an egg with your cell phone!! http://rense.com/general72/cellcook.htm
I have a white MacBook and it never gets hot.The fan, which is so quiet only teenagers can hear it, rarely even comes on. It’s also one of the finest piece of computer engineering I’ve ever seen. Small BUT very fast and powerful. We have a PowerBook G4 in our office and it puts it to shame!
O/T: Facts are now partisan. Didn’t you get the memo?
Hey I LIKE the coffee warmer/power adapter idea!
I’m going to try that at work. I’ll make one less run to the office kitchen microwaver for a warm-up! : )
Sorry guys but many scientists believe that we are in a normal heating cycle. They believe that the evidence indicates that the earth goes through heating and cooling cycles. The last cooling cycle being several hundred years ago. The media doesn’t report on that because it’s not headline stuff that fits their agenda. They report what a minority shout about and ignore the evidence to the contrary.
Back on subject.
I sent my MBP in for the heating issue and it came back running cooler. I could actual use it on my lap while wearing shorts. That was about a month ago. It is back to running very hot. I haven’t had any heat related problems. If I had to choose between a hot notebook with great performance or a slow one that is cool I’ll take the fast one all day long.
“QUITE the reverse. Quite unanimously. Good science with good conclusions.”
The inaccuracy of that statement almost gave me a headache.
Be a little more objective, it’s Al Gore for Christ’s sake!
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/harris061206.htm
Don’t put hot laptops on your lap?
Next you’ll be telling us not to hold a hot cup of coffee between our legs. As if someone would do that.
Hey, why hasn’t some idiot sued Apple over a set of toasted testicles. We’re talking family jewels here.
Agree with the normal heating cycle theory. Gore’s little movie pointed lots of fingers without coming up with any real solutions. I think we should shut down all the coal facilities and start building pebble-bed nuclear reactors.
If Al Gore can invent the internet he can invent global warming.
“If Al Gore can invent the internet he can invent global warming.”
That’s true, why do I keep
underestimating people?
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MW- father (of the internet)LOL
I think we should shut down all the coal facilities and start building pebble-bed nuclear reactors.
Two small problems with that:
1. Coal plants stop polluting when you shut them down. Waste from nuclear plants is far deadlier than mere CO2, and must be carefully stored & guarded forever (10,000 years is close enough to forever for me).
2. It’s estimated if the word switches from coal to nuke plants, there’s only about 40 years worth of uranium to keep them going (roughly the same timeframe as world oil reserves).
So like it or not, coal is our stopgap until some non-combustion power source is perfected (fusion and deep geothermal come to mind).
As for hot Mac laptops, too bad there’s no way to recapture that lost heat energy. Every little bit helps.
lack lung
Pebble-bed nuclear reactors use anywhere from 70-90% less U than water reactors. Water reactors produce the high volumes of waste you correctly pointed out in your response.
Fusion, on Earth at least, will take many, many moons to figure out. There are many problems with controlled fusion, mainly due to heat and reaction physics.
Coal gasification (clean coal) is definatly the way to go. The technology just isn’t ready for prime time yet.
Al Gore probably knows more about why my MacBook Pro runs hot than he does about global warming. His movie was a scientific joke.
Hey, what do you expect, you’re a Mac running on Intel now!
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Only slightly on-topic, a silly question that’s nagged me for years…
Why doesn’t Apple (or anyone making metal-cased portalbes, really) build these things with a ribbed metal plat ont he bottom? Not as deep as CPU heatsink fins
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” /> but enough to increase surface area and ensure an extra fraction of an inch air space under the thing?
Absolute foolishness.
A Macbook is not a lap top computer.
The temperature needed to “fry” an egg is approximately 144 to 158 degrees Fahrenheit. Does the MacBook actually reach a temperature of 144 to 158 degree Fahrenheit? If it did, wouldn’t some eager and ambitious agent from the Consumer Product Safety Commission place an immediate halt to the sale of MacBook. Is there any scientifically-based corroborative evidence to this “story”?
Bare skin exposed to water at 130 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 seconds will cause a burn sufficient to warrant medical care. Bare skin exposed to water at 160 degrees Fahrenheit for 1 second will cause a burn sufficient to warrant medical care.
Oh, yeah, make mine over easy, journalist.
Observation:
Why is it that when you watch the Discovery channel/TLC etc., you see a show about Global Warming and the next week a show about the coming Ice Age?? Happened just this last week. From the information presented on these shows, all I can gather is that Hell is going to freeze over.
Observation:
Why is it that when you watch the Discovery channel/TLC etc., you see a show about Global Warming and the next week a show about the coming Ice Age?? Happened just this last week. From the information presented on these shows, all I can gather is that Hell is going to freeze over.
Fire and ice: I guess the theory goes that if the Greenland glaciers melt fast enough, they will interrupt the northward flow of the Gulf Stream, thus leading to much colder climates in northern Europe, and the rest of the northern hemisphere, which could be what triggers the next ice age. It’s a theory, but if it’s true, this could all happen fairly quickly in geological time, like overnight. Maybe not quite in our lifetimes, but I’d hate to be a kid born today facing that future…
Bottom line: it’s all a theory, but it somehow feels like gambling by simply saying it’s all BS. How prepared are you to lose the gamble, if you’re wrong, and the theory is right? Food for thought. Let’s just hope it’s about science in the end, and not about politics (as usual.)
MDN magic word “horse” – as, quit horsing around with my kid’s future.
At least Mac owners can train for their likely next job.
Would you like Fries with that, or to see my home movies and photo album?
“but it somehow feels like gambling by simply saying it’s all BS”
That’s the problem with most alarmists, conclusions
are based on feelings rather than fact. It’s the ultimate
form of FUD.
Hey Apple, ARCTIC SILVER 5 OK?
What is a real scientist? Do they study reals? What a pin headed comment.
Magic word getting as in “ya ain’t getun any smarta”
OK people, back on topic now. This has been confirmed as a joke by the original site:
http://www.sagags.com/?p=441
They even include a video. Would have been real funny too, except for all the idiots who fell for it. Didn’t anyone stop to think that if the bottom of the MacBook got hot enough to fry an egg we’d be hearing about widespread cases of people getting seriously burned by their MacBooks?
Egg white begins to coagulate at 62°C (144°F) while yolk begins to coagulate at 65°C (149°F). Human skin burns severely when exposed to temperatures of 60°C (140°F) for 1 to 6 seconds.
MDN, how about updating the story so people know it’s a joke?
See post from 14 July, 20:20. Looks like you’re 2 days late!
Science is in the business of experimentation, testing hypotheses, and developing an understanding how natural processes work. What I find disturbing is self-described “scientists” extrapolating poorly or inaccurately sampled data collected over a few decades to thousands of years. Obviously, these individuals have failed to comprehend the basic fact that unrestrained speculation based on untested assumptions using inadequately constructed models for poorly understood processes is about as accurate as a wild guess.
Andy doesn’t C: Sorry, I missed that post amongst all the global warming rhetoric, although my post provides more info. My apologies for the repetitive part of my post.