Last week, my 2011 MacBook Pro started acting up. The fan was spinning wildly and the aluminum case was hot to the touch. So hot that, at one point, it left red marks on my legs. I shut down some of the extra apps that were running in the background and kept working. Things cooled down inside my MBP, so I just brushed it off as an unusual combination of warm weather and excess apps. I was wrong — the next morning and again the next evening I experienced the same overheating.
To help diagnose the problem, I turned to iStat Menus from Bjango to see what was going on underneath the hood of my Mac. iStat Menus is perfect for diagnosing problems as it tracks a wide variety of statistics for your Mac. The app sits in your menu bar and can track your CPU & GPU usage, memory usage, disk activity, network activity, battery level and sensor readings like temperature.
I was able to use iStat Menus to monitor my CPU temperature, which once climbed to 99 degrees Celsius before my computer shut down. As the temperature climbed, I could watch both my CPU and memory usage to see which processes were hogging my system. The app also allowed me to check my hardware, particularly the fan to make sure it was working and spinning at the right RPM. I picked iStat Menus over Apple’s Activity Monitor because the hardware readings were important to me. I first suspected a hardware problem as a previous laptop had overheated when the CPU fan .
In just a few minutes, I was able to determine it wasn’t a hardware problem, but a software issue. I singled out TweetDeck as the culprit that was maxing out my CPU and driving my temperature up. As soon as I force quit the Twitter app, my MBP CPU temperature went back down to a comparatively cool 50 degrees. Looking back, my problems started soon after Tweetdeck was updated on June 14, 2013. I can’t lay the blame on Tweetdeck as I am running OS X Mavericks and expect wonky behavior like this. I am happy to report that the latest build of OS X is Tweetdeck-friendly, and my MBP is now running like a champ again.
iStat Menus is available for US$16 from Bjango’s website. There is a free 14-day trial so you can check it out.
Friday Favorite: How iStat Menus saved my MacBook Pro from burning up originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 28 Jun 2013 11:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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