Apple SMC firmware update

Wed, 17 May 2006

Today Apple released SMC (System Management Control) firmware updates for the Mac mini, MacBook Pro, and iMac. I’ve got to read about it earlier today while at work and updated my MacBook Pro as soon as I came home.

Even though I haven’t experienced any of the ‘known’ issues I am hoping that it will help a little with heat problem. OK, to be honest, I wasn’t very worried about heat as my computer runs only slightly warm, the only time when it really gets hot is when charging battery. At the moment I’m running on battery and will wait until it goes nearly flat to hook it back to power adapter and see if it goes any cooler.

Interestingly, when I ran update for the first time, it has failed, the computer just rebooted and came back to the update window with instructions again. However, when I ran it for the second time I’ve learned how loud full-on fans are and it all went very smoothly.

Update: I never measured the temperature but before installing SMC update the laptop would be slightly warm (some 40 degrees Celsius) when operating in normal mode but would get pretty hot when charging, I’d say some 60 C or maybe even higher. When running on batteries, the laptop is usually fairly cool, somewhat cooler than the body temperature (37 C).

After installing SMC update I have used it on battery for just over an hour and it runs cool, same as before. But when I plugged the power supply and charged the battery for about an hour, the laptop never became hot, it was about the same temperature as it was it while operating on power supply before SMC update. So, the update has surely had some effect on the temperature the computer generates.

Stumble it!