For those of us in the northern hemisphere, summer is fast approaching and that can often mean extreme heat which pushes the temperature limits beyond what any computer is intended to operate in. In fact, Apple species ambient operating temperatures for most Macs as between 50° and 95° fahrenheit, this means that anything above 95° goes beyond the conditions the Mac was specified to function within.

Does that mean you can’t use your computer in intense heat? Most likely not, it just means you have to find ways to help keep it cool. With that in mind, here are some tips to keep a portable Mac cool when faced with blazing temperatures, they should be applicable to any MacBook, MacBook Pro, or MacBook Air. Some of these solutions come by way of OSXDaily reader Niladri Haldar, who regularly uses his MacBook Pro in summer temperatures over 100° without incident.

1. Avoid using a Mac on a bed or fabric surface – Anything soft doesn’t allow for sufficient heat dispersion and can even block the air ventilation on many portable Macs, try to always use a Mac on a hard surface of wood, metal, or glass
2. Use a Laptop Stand – anything that raises a Mac away from a base surface allows for heat to radiate out and for air to flow around it, cooling the hardware. I use a Griffin Elevator Stand and on hot summer days it can mean the difference between having the fans blasting or not having them on at all
3. Raise the Rear of a MacBook – No laptop stand? Make do with what you have, and try placing the rear of the Mac elevated by a hardcover book or something similar. It’s not as effective as a laptop stand, but this promotes airflow and can make a significant difference in keeping hardware cool.
4. Place a Mac at the edge of a table or desk – No stand and no book to raise the computer with? Try hovering the rear end of a MacBook over the edge of a desk or surface to increase air flow where Macs blow out their heat
5. Use a Fan – Yes, a standard room fan. This may sound silly but if you’re in an environment without Air Conditioning and the mercury is rising, pointing a fan onto a Mac will blow cool air onto it and help disperse heat. If you’re using a Mac in temperatures over 90°, this is one of the best things you can do to not only keep yourself cool but also your computer.
6. Keep Away from the Sun – Again this may seem like common sense, but using a computer in direct sunlight places an unnecessary burden on the fans. Even on reasonably mild sunny days the sun can cause fans to go into overdrive, it’s best to avoid direct sunlight completely.
7. Frozen Peas to the Rescue – This might sound crazily stupid, but during a heatwave last summer I pulled a bag of frozen peas out of the freezer and placed my then toasty MacBook Pro on top of it so I could play Starcraft 2 despite the 100° ambient temperature. The result was practically no fan usage. You’ll want to be very cautious to avoid condensation from the frozen bag though, so setting a thin layer of hard plastic or something similar between the frozen veges and Mac is a good idea
8. Consider a Cooling Pad – Some third party laptop stands have built-in fans that blow directly onto the underside of a computer, these can be very effective

Finally, a quick word of advice: if you’re in extreme heat and you don’t have any method to cool down your Mac, do yourself a favor and don’t use it at all until you get out of the crazy weather. Heat is one of the most detrimental forces to anything electronic and overheating can lead directly to reduced lifespan of hardware, diminished battery capacity, and other problems. It’s always better to be safe than sorry.

Do you have any special tips you use to keep a Mac cool during intense heat? Let us know in the comments.

Many people equate productivity with screen size and assume it’s difficult to get much work done on a small screen. That simply isn’t true, I use a MacBook Air with the 11″ display and use the following tips to stay focused and maximize productivity with the small screen.

• Hide Inactive Apps – Use Command+Option+H to hide all applications and windows except for the active app, also you can Option+Click out of a specific app to hide it as you begin working elsewhere. Hidden apps are easy to identify if you enable translucent icons in the Dock.



• Auto-Hide the Dock – Hit Command+Option+D to enable auto-hiding of the Dock, summon it when needed by swiping to the bottom of the screen with the cursor. Dock is a great app launcher but keep it hidden when not in use.
• Use Full Screen Apps – Full Screen apps help you stay focused and make the most of small screens. I would suggest the feature was designed with Mac laptops in mind, so don’t forget to use it. Click on the Arrow icons in the upper right corner of an app to enter into full screen.



• Use Virtual Desktops – Create new Desktops through Mission Control by hovering over the right corner and clicking the + button. Use this with Full Screen apps to create a great desktop workflow that can be quickly swiped between



• Assign Window Positions & Split Screen – Utility apps that assign window positions and split the screen between active apps are very useful for laptops, I use DoublePane but free options are available. Use these anytime you need to see two apps at once.



• Use an External Display or AirDisplay * – When possible, connect a portable Mac to an external display. For me that’s an Acer 22″ display or the iPad and Air Display. Is this cheating? Maybe, but your productivity doesn’t care.

Have any ideas on how to make the most of a Mac with limited screen real estate? Are they OS X tips or hardware tricks? Let us know in the comments.

Macs have pretty amazing battery life to begin with, but following a few simple tips will help you to get the absolute best battery performance out of a MacBook, MacBook Air, or MacBook Pro.

The primary goal here is to reduce overall power consumption on the Mac laptop and we’ll cover a few different techniques to do this. For casual Mac users simply reducing screen brightness is typically more than adequate to get great battery life, so the tips below are intended for true road warriors who demand the absolute best battery life possible out of their portable Macs.

1. Reduce Screen Brightness – The simplest tip can save some of the most battery life. Reducing screen brightness to 50% or less provides a massive boost to battery life. On most newer Mac keyboards, the F1 and F2 keys allow for brightness adjustment, aim for the lowest value you can tolerate for maximum battery life
2. Disable Bluetooth – Both searching for available Bluetooth devices or broadcasting a Bluetooth signal can drain battery, disable Bluetooth if you don’t use it. Open System Preferences and click on “Bluetooth”, uncheck “On”
3. Turn Off Wi-Fi – If you’re doing something that doesn’t require internet use, turn off wireless networking and you can pick up a nice boost to battery life. The easiest way to do this is to click on the Wi-Fi menu and choose “Turn Wi-Fi Off”
4. Disable or Reduce Keyboard Illumination – For Macs with backlit keyboards, reducing the keyboard illumination or turning it off completely can help to lengthen battery life. Open System Preferences, click on “Keyboard” and uncheck “Illuminate keyboard in low light conditions”
5. Eject Disks from the DVD Drive – For MacBook and MacBook Pro users with a SuperDrive, eject any disks to prevent needless access and drive spinning
6. Avoid iSight Camera – FaceTime, Skype, Google Hangouts, and Photo Booth are a ton of fun, but the front-facing iSight/FaceTime camera is a major battery hog. Avoid using anything that taps into the Macs front facing camera and you’ll avoid major battery drain
7. Quit Unused Applications – Leaving unused apps open in the background use both RAM and CPU cycles, both of which cause power usage and directly impact battery life. Quit any applications that are not actively in use, and try to keep running apps to a minimum to prevent any usage of Virtual Memory
8. Close Unused Browser Windows & Tabs – Even inactive web pages can use a lot of system resources by running complex scripts, ads, videos, or other page elements. Remember to close unused browser tabs and windows and you’ll avoid draining battery unnecessarily.
9. Enable “Click To Plugin” in Web Browsers – Flash and HTML5 movies can use a lot of CPU cycles thereby causing substantial battery drain, enabling these ClickToPlugin features let you selectively load plugins by clicking them, thereby preventing unnecessary plugins and videos from loading
   • Enable Click To Plugin in Chrome
   • ClickToPlugin for Safari
   • FlashBlock for Firefox

Bonus Tip 1: Use an Ad Block Plugin – Going beyond ClickToPlugin, using an ad blocking plugin for the preferred web browser can make a substantial difference in battery life by preventing unnecessary movies, Flash, HTML5, JavaScript, and other page elements from loading. You can find a good list of ad block plugins here – and yes we’re a website supported entirely by advertising revenue, but using ad blockers can make such a big difference in battery performance we’d be doing a disservice to our readers to not mention their utility.

Bonus Tip 2: Use the Battery Indicator Menu – Use the battery indicator menu to show you remaining battery life, this helps to give you battery feedback on settings and usage habits, plus you won’t be caught off guard if you’re suddenly at the tail end of battery drain.

If you enjoyed this, don’t miss our tips to get the best battery life with an iPad or some more general tricks to maximize battery life on iOS devices, including iPhone.

Have any battery saving tips? Let us know in the comments!

With traditional clamshell mode for a MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, or Macbook, an external display, mouse, and keyboard must be attached in order to maintain the running closed-lid clamshell state. Thanks to a third party kernel extension called NoSleep we can now remove those hardware limitations and run a Mac laptop with the lid closed and no hardware attached.

Installing NoSleep is easy and places a System Preference panel for configuration, along with a menu bar item that lets you toggle the NoSleep function similar to the Caffeine app, but only impacting lid sleep behavior.

• Download NoSleep from Google Code

Check “Do not fall asleep when lid is closed” and you can freely shut a portable Mac without the machine sleeping, even without a keyboard or display attached. This is great if you have an old MacBook laying around you want to use as a file server or wireless media center, or you just want to close a Mac while it sits quietly on a desk downloading large files or anything else – just remember to keep the Mac well ventilated when running with the lid closed.

If you’re done with NoSleep or just don’t find it useful, uninstalling NoSleep is best achieved through the bundled uninstaller bash script.

This extension was found on Twitter, although I can’t recall who from or the origin tweet. Thanks to whoever it was!

Apple has released firmware updates for 2010 model year MacBook Air, iMac, and MacBook Pro. The EFI update brings OS X Lion Internet Recovery, which is accessible by booting into Recovery mode and allows a user to reinstall OS X Lion, to each Mac from 2010.

The EFI Firmware updates are available to download from Software Update, or directly from Apple:

• MacBook Air EFI Firmware Update 2.3
• iMac EFI Firmware Update 1.8
• MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 2.6

Updating the firmware requires a reboot as usual and the Mac should be connected to a power source before proceeding. The MacBook Air update also includes a minor bug fix to resolve an issue where the machine could inadvertently restart if the power button is pressed when waking from sleep.

Apple describes Internet Recovery as follows:

If your Mac problem is a little less common — your hard drive has failed or you’ve installed a hard drive without OS X, for example — Internet Recovery takes over automatically. It downloads and starts Lion Recovery directly from Apple servers over a broadband Internet connection. And your Mac has access to the same Lion Recovery features online

For Macs that can’t use Internet Recovery, the Lion Recovery Disk tool helps to make a bootable USB device that can offer the same features, although if you want to have the most versatile troubleshooting toolkit, having a fully bootable OS X Lion install drive is ideal.

Apple is rumored to be working towards releasing retina display equipped MacBook Pro’s in the second quarter of 2012, according to a new report from the Taiwanese trade publication Digitimes. Citing upstream component sources, the displays are said to be 2880×1800 pixels and become yet another competitive advantage for Apple’s portable lineup:

While the prevailing MacBook models have displays with resolutions ranging from 1680 by 1050 to 1280 by 800, the ultra-high resolution for the new MacBook Pro will further differentiate Apple’s products from other brands, commented the sources.

Earlier in the fall, Digitimes also suggested that a MacBook Air 15″ model would be released next year, but there is no indication that it would carry the same 2880 x 1800 pixel display.

Hints of Macs with retina displays have existed for a while now. Earlier in the year, we pointed out that wallpapers in Mac OS X Lion are 3200×2000 resolution, greater than any currently shipping Apple hardware. Additionally, many icons in OS X Lion are 1024×1024 pixels, double what they were in previous Mac OS X releases.

Finally, persistent iPad 3 rumors suggest the device will feature a retina display. One could guess that for Apple to release a retina equipped iPad, there would also have to be Macs with equal or greater screen resolutions available to adequately develop retina iPad apps on.

I’ve gotten in the habit of immediately putting my MacBook Air to sleep by shutting the lid, by far the easiest method if you’re on the go. Typically this works without a hitch, but today the Air didn’t sleep when shut. Because the MacBook Air has no moving hard drive or sleep light, I didn’t notice this until I went to use it again about two hours later when I found the machine to be unusually hot to the touch because it never slept as intended. From there on it became a repeatable occurrence, and while I’m not sure of the cause, the solution was just a matter of resetting the SMC:

• Shut down the MacBook Air
• Connect the MagSafe adapter
• Hold down Shift+Control+Option+Power at the same time
• Release all keys at the same time, then hit the power button again to turn the MacBook Air on

The key sequences for an SMC reset are highlighted below, this is specific to the MacBook Air but would also work on the newer MacBook Pro models:

You’ll know the SMC has reset because the MagSafe light flicks on and off, and once you boot up, your MacBook Air should sleep normally again.

Ironically, I had the opposite problem earlier in the year where the MacBook Air wouldn’t wake from sleep.

Future MacBook Air models are likely to be capable of supporting two external displays in addition to the built-in screen, as powered by the upcoming Intel HD Graphics 4000 integrated graphics chipset, according to a recent post on MacRumors. The information comes from a leaked roadmap of Intel’s mobile Ivy Bridge processor plans, which are set for release between April and May of next year, citing the following:

While we’re talking about graphics, as with the desktop Ivy Bridge processors, the mobile processors also support up to three independent displays, although one of these will be the built in display in the notebook, but hopefully we’ll see notebooks with a DisplayPort connector as standard come next year.

The ability to drive two displays directly through Thunderbolt would be a welcome addition to the MacBook Air, particularly for users who require multi-monitor setups. Currently, the MacBook Air can only drive one external display through the Thunderbolt port, although by using USB adapters or even the iPad you can get around this limitation in a somewhat clunky fashion.

In terms of possible CPU capability, MacRumors points to the likely candidates for future MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models:

The 35W-45W (MacBook Pro) processors range from Dual/Quad Core 2.6GHz to 2.9GHz with single core turbo speeds of up to 3.6GHz, while the 17W (MacBook Air) processors range from Dual Core 1.8GHz to 2.0GHz with single core turbo speeds of up to 2.8-3.2GHz.

It’s unclear if any of these CPU choices would appear in the rumored MacBook Air 15″ model, which has also been suggested to debut sometime next year.

Naturally, all of this information should be considered speculative until there is an official announcement from Apple.

Component suppliers have informed DigiTimes that Apple is already gathering pieces to a 15″ ultra-thin notebook that is set to debut as early as the second quarter of 2012.

While DigiTimes cautions they don’t know if the new laptop is a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, Apple openly promotes the current MacBook Air lineup as “the future of the notebook”, and a MacBook Air 15″ would be an excellent compliment to the product lineup.

Assuming a MacBook Air 15″ followed the weight difference (0.58lbs) of the existing 11″ and 13″ models, a theoretical 15″ model may weigh in at 3.54lbs.

On our personal wish list for such a machine would be 8 GB of RAM, 256 GB SSD standard with a 512 GB SSD option, 1680×1050 or higher resolution, a discrete GPU, and Core i7 processors at 2.5GHz or above, while still retaining the stellar battery life that all of Apple’s devices are known for. A built-in coffee maker and personal assistant would be nice too, with the former being unlikely but the latter a possibility through the rumored Siri integration in future versions of OS X.

If you have a newer MacBook Air you should pay attention. Some of the MacBook Airs are shipping with Samsung displays, and some are shipping with LG displays, both are quality displays, but the LG’s default color profile is lighter and a bit flat. Most users probably won’t notice this, but if you sit a MacBook Air with a Samsung display next to one with the LG display, you can see the difference. This is easily remedied by using a custom color profile that has better gamma. This post will walk you through how to check which manufacturers panel you have, and also show you how to add a custom color profile that makes the LG display just as gorgeous as the Samsung.

Check for an LG Display with the MacBook Air

Using the same command to check the make and model of an LCD that works on past Macs, you can check the manufacturer of the display panel of the MacBook Air.

• Launch the Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/)
• Copy and paste the following command onto a single line and hit return:

ioreg -lw0 | grep IODisplayEDID | sed "/[^<]*</s///" | xxd -p -r | strings -6

• Read the output, you are looking for an “LP” prefix to numbers reported back:

LP133WP1-TJA3
Color LCD

• If the prefix is not “LP” then you have a Samsung display and there’s no need to use the color profile or to follow the rest of the instructions, if it does start with LP (like the example shown), then proceed

Add a Custom Color Profile for the MacBook Air’s LG Display

A user on MacRumors forums put together a custom color profile that really sharpens the display of the LG displays in some 2011 MacBook Air machines. Again, if you don’t have an LG display then you shouldn’t use this profile. Adding this color profile is reversible and you can always go back to the default if you don’t like it.

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