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Comment by ubernostrum | Hacker News Reader

So, reading the order it seems that what happened was:

1. Guy is shopping for a computer for dev use.

2. Guy talks to sales consultant, explaining what he needs to do, and is told "get a MacBook Air".

3. Guy discovers MacBook Air isn't capable of handling the workload he's putting on it, it overheats and shuts down CPU cores.

4. Guy files dispute.

5. Apple says "yeah, the the MacBook Air can't handle this type of load".

6. Dispute judge says sales consultant shouldn't have recommended the MacBook Air, then.

7. Dispute judge says guy can return MacBook Air for a full refund since he was misled into believing it could handle the work he needed to do.

Moral of the story: an ultra-thin laptop which explicitly trades off performance for size probably isn't the ideal machine for compiling lots of stuff while also powering a monitor the size of a breakfast table, and salespeople who tell you it is shouldn't be trusted.

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Nope, not the ideal machine. a $10k Mac Pro would be much better. I was given the impression it would be adequate though, and I picked it for it's portability.

If it's not adequate for the tasks it shouldn't be promoted as such. The web page for the Macbook Air says it comes with Xcode, and runs a large external display. Perhaps I should have known better, but I tried to do my research. ;-)

Yea, I don't think people quite understand what the Macbook Air issue is. As a fellow MBA owner, I can vouch for this behavior. The system will become completely unusable while the 'kernel_task' takes over the system trying to cool it down.

I've experienced the exact same thing running a 24" LCD, firefox, and Entourage. Hardly an uncommon or extreme setup, but it's enough to throw the system off kilter. And when kernel_task goes into "cool this thing off NOW" mode, the system is unusable for 4-5 minutes.

The MBA is a beautiful monster.

Is your MBA a revision A or revision B?

I've heard that the revision B (128GB or 120GB hard disk) is more stable.

a $10k Mac Pro would be much better

or a £2k macbook pro.

or a ~1400$ Macbook.

I run my 22" external monitor, and a zillion other things and have never had speed issues.

"If it's not adequate for the tasks it shouldn't be promoted as such."

I think there's a disconnect here. Yes, it comes with Xcode. Yes, it's advertised as being able to run a large external display. But the question is: "can it do both of these things (in the case of Xcode, most likely building some complex project) simultaneously, and persist in so doing for an extended period of time?"

It appears the answer to that question is "no", and frankly I don't find that particularly surprising. I also don't think it really contradicts the marketing materials. Consider a different example: the MacBook Air comes with a wide variety of applications preinstalled, and this is an advertised feature of the laptop. But if I attempt to launch and use them all simultaneously, the system will become unusable very quickly as it runs out of RAM and has to start swapping. Does that mean Apple is falsely advertising its capabilities by touting the applications which come preinstalled?

This isn't the case with the MBA. You have no idea how little it takes to push it over the edge.

There's a good chance that running anything on the external display is what's pushing it over the edge. If you look around, the most common complaint is that flash video (you know, non-HD youtube) is enough to kick the machine. In my case, it's Entourage.

I've been using the pro mac laptop line (I still catch myself using the much-better PowerBook name) for dev+2nd screen since late 2001.

The fact that the air can't seem to handle a second framebuffer and edit text at the same time is a little ridiculous.

"isn't capable of handling the workload"

I don't know what Xcode is doing, but I am certain even a very dedicated and proactive IDE spends most of the time waiting for keystrokes. There is _no_ reason why Xcode could cause this behaviour.

BTW, I am very happy with my Atom-based netbook for developing stuff with Django. There was a time when developers needed a lot of power, but those days are long gone and today it's the guys who do video editing/encoding, manipulate huge datasets and play games that need the big computers.

He was probably compiling stuff in Xcode, which could in fact make one of his cores overheat.

Yes, but compiling for several hours? Even on my Bondi-blue iMac compiles don't take long enough.

On my Atom-based netbook, compiles don't even increase fan activity.

And why would that be related to a dual-head setup?

That's something seriously wrong going on here.

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