MacBook Air owners find latest Apple fix producing mixed results

Users of Apple's ultraportable Mac are increasingly reporting that a firmware update might be taming processor usage, but is still leaving many of their systems too hot to use and prone to software freezes.

While a number of owners at Apple's discussion forums say the hardware patch solved a problem that would force a core to shut down entirely and ramp up the internal temperature, others still note the slim system continues to overheat and in some cases will bog down as the MacBook Air is unable to cope with a given application's demand, particularly an OS component known as kernel_task.

This happens regardless of whether any peripherals are attached that might ask more of the system. Others also notice that their systems are simply slowing down in different ways: instead of switching off a single core, a handful report their systems keeping both cores active under most temperatures but lowering the clock speed, producing much the same result.