Apple’s always struggled to keep its laptops both cool and quiet. Steve Jobs is notoriously perturbable in regards to fan noise, which means the fans on Macs, when present, kick in a lot less often than on their PC counterparts. A lot of the true engineering genius of the unibody aluminum MacBooks are in the way they effectively dissipate heat while keeping the fans turned low.
It’s a great solution for now, but laptops are just going to burn hotter in the coming years, not cooler. Forward thinking Apple isn’t going to sit on its haunches when it comes to notebook heat dissipation. They’ve filed for four separate patents related to cooling efficiency in future Macs: one for venting heat through open USB and FireWire ports, two addressing a notebook’s ability to adjust its performance dynamically based upon airflow measurements, and one that outlines a plan to use heat conductive hinge assemblies.
As usual, there’s no telling just when, or even if, we’ll see these patents rolled out into actual Apple products, but it’s good to know Apple’s staying on top of the problem as computers continue to burn hotter. After upgrading to a unibody MacBook, I couldn’t go back to my first-gen’s proclivity for scrotum searing if I tried.
