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Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

> On the downside, it elevated the temperature of the backside aluminum to a high enough temperature to be able to cause burns (something like 80-90C). Not a huge issue if you always use it on a table or something

The bottom doesn't get that hot (90C would cause serious problems) but the additional heat is a downside to consider. Too many people are missing the point that Apple deliberately chose not to create a thermal bridge between the CPU and the case for this reason.

Apple made the right choice. The Air is designed for minimum size, maximum portability, and fanless operation. If you have use cases that benefit from extended 100% CPU load, get a larger MacBook Pro that has a cooling solution designed to sustain these thermal loads.

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You're right, on looking back at the threads it was not nearly that hot. But it was elevated enough to cause issues. People reporting their laptops got uncomfortably hot, compared to stock.

Looks like the actual point where you start to get problems is quite low, somewhere around ~38C, so if the mod elevated temperatures even to 40-50C, you'd be in heavy discomfort or possible burn territory. This paper talks about skin lesions and burns happening around there: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3853603/

There’s a time domain to it also. My old T540P Lenovo gave me a giant permanent burn on my thigh because it “sous vide”d me over a 2-3 hour period.

Never felt it, because it wasn’t hot enough to register as harmful.

jeeze, what were you wearing at the time in terms of pants?

Nothing, I was in bed.

Well... this thread took an interesting twist

damn. Any permanent disability from this besides cosmetic damage?

Nope. But it did blister a lot over the next several days.

It doesn't have to be that hot to hurt. Every macbook I've tried under load since the original unibody has been unbearable on bare legs. IDC that its technically safe for the internals, it physically hurts at whatever temperature its at.

Low-temperature burns are a thing. If you are exposed to heat long enough, eventually it can get your skin hot enough to be burned. The same way you can slow-cooking meat.

leaving a cpu with no cooling solution is a recipe for cpu failure. see the xbox 360 red ring of death as a scenario where inadequate cooling caused issues for the buyers... this is poor engineering and customer hostile.

It has passive cooling solution a.k.a throttling. It is the same thing what your smartphone does.

So you are saying its cooling strategy is to make the device slower for the user so it can cook itself until the ball joints on the CPU fail? Great design.

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