New and Noteworthy: MacBook purportedly catches fire; Apple may choose to move to the new energy efficient quad-core

MacBook purportedly catches fire We've reported extensively on an issue where MacBook and MacBook Pro batteries swell and subsequently fail (articles 1, 2 and 3). Now an Australian MacBook user is reporting that his MacBook's battery caught fire, resulting in melted components and a significant safety hazard. "As I was running I saw a fire. At first I thought that the lamp had fallen and set fire to the curtain. As I got closer I realised it was my mac book .... burning! I picked it up and blew on it and swung it around to put the flames out. The book shelf it was sitting on was burnt and there were a couple of magazines that were on fire too. I quickly put those out and calmed down. [..] I have noticed for the past 3 weeks the battery life has been poor. I was only getting an hour to an hour and a half from it (compared to over 3 hours). I also notice the battery symbol had an X showing a couple of times but a restart would sort that out. One last thing I noticed over the last few days was when the battery was fully charged and on the power, it would flicker between 99% and 100% constantly. Nothing would fix this and I was planning on getting it looked at very soon." More.

Apple may choose to move to the new energy efficient quad-core Macworld UK reports that Intel quad-core microprocessors that work at an energy efficient 50 watts per processor will officially be on the market from today, according to the company. "Apple already uses Intel's Xeon chip in its Mac Pro. The company may choose to move to the new energy efficient quad-core Xeon processor. Each of the four cores in the new Xeon L5320 and L5310 will consume just 12.5 watts of electricity, according to Intel. The company claims the new Xeons use between 35 per cent and nearly 60 per cent less power than its existing 80-watt and 120-watt quad-core server products." More.

Previously on MacFixIt:

• Daylight Saving Time changes: Mac OS X issues and fixes
• QuickTime 7.1.5 (#4): Problems starting up; Streaming media issues; TurboTax fix coming Monday
• Finder crashes when control (right) clicking items, fix
• AirPort Extreme Update 2007-002 (#2): Problems connecting to third-party wireless routers, fixes

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