Hot MacBook Air

So, after a month of MBA bliss, found a problem. Despite the early adventures I wrote about, various OS X updates have eliminated the click wonkiness, making me very happy with the Air. It is easy to travel with, its battery life has been more than sufficient, and I’ve been able to run everything I wanted on it.

Until last night.

I was testing a friend’s Flash-based game project and discovered that Flash pushes the MBA’s CPU enough to trigger self-protection, turning on the fan and limiting performance. Other people have written about the MBA’s aggressive thermal settings, so it isn’t clear if the Flash performance problems are because the CPU isn’t up to it or if its performance is being clamped.

Either way, it means the MBA may end up not being my only computer.