I’m not much for reposting web comics as le mot juste on any particular subject, but as a man whose last MacBook Pro resulted in a case of Play Doh melted gonads, all I can do is nod and say: “Yes” to this Penny Arcade strip. Then another nod: “Fuck yes.”
The face-melting aspect of the first MacBook Pros is equivalent to throwing open the Ark of the Covenant in front of a squadron of Nazis. Extra points: the contemptuous eye roll of the Apple Store “Genius.”
Weirdly, though, Penny Arcade’s complaint is about the new MacBook Pros… which are wonderfully cool, I’ve found.
The New Hotness [Penny Arcade]
Only since Apple started using 45nm Penryn processors have their laptops ceased to be crotch scorchers.
This is why Apple actually stopped using the term “laptop” several years ago. I guess their options were to fundamentally change how their machine kept it’s temperature low or change the name to “notebook”.
@2: No company uses “laptop” anymore.
Dunno about the latest models, but my MacBook Pro from last summer (15.4″ 2.5GHz) seems to have been made without the crotch-melting feature. It runs very cool even in hot weather.
I keep mine propped on my knees. My knees are frequently red.
Were the MacBook Pros hotter than the Powerbook? My G4 lasted almost all the way through college until it started to shit out when all of my theses were very much in progress on the hard drive. I gingerly put laptops in the lap now; I remember the burning.
And Penny Arcade: still relevant, even more beautiful than ever before, and witty and sharp. But it just doesn’t seem as funny anymore.
new macbooks don’t have this problem. rather soothing to the lap, actually.
I don’t know. Granted, my new unibody MBP is the first I’ve had, but running video conversions in the background at the local caffine-station in the big easy chair in the corner became uncomfortable pretty damned quickly. I had to switch to a table to get the thing off my legs.
And as for using it propped up on legs in bed? forget it.
I don’t begrudge it the heat. It *is* a desktop replacement-level system. But it is most assuredly NOT a ‘laptop’ machine for any significant length of time, unless you’re wearing asbestos pants.
My first-gen MacBook runs the same way… Don’t even like to think about holding it on my bare legs or nethers.
@3 Dell uses the term laptop on their website. Looking at it right now and one of the options is “laptops”, the term appears all over their website actually
@lizardman
That’s pretty surprising, and must be relatively recent. I’ve done a lot of work in pc marketing (including Dell), and companies have long insisted on using ‘notebook’ because of possible liabilities from people putting them on their laps. Sounds silly, but it’s true.
I have no idea how long they have been doing it, just reporting it is there at http://www.dell.com. Some of the paperwork I have from a machine I got from Dell back in 2001 also says ‘laptop’