At Apple’s annual shareholder meeting in April, Steve Jobs waxed lyrical about the MacBook Pro, a laptop powered by an Intel Core Duo chip. “Everyone wants a MacBook Pro because they are so bitchin’,” he said. There is certainly no doubt the laptop is one smokin’ hot machine. Literally.

Since early March, shortly after MacBook Pro’s debut, users started posting heat-related complaints to Apple-related internet forums, claiming the machine was too hot to handle at times.

“Many users are also reporting that their MacBook Pros become extremely hot to handle, especially in the area above the F keys and underneath the notebook itself. In fact, my MacBook Pro gets so hot that placing it in your hands is almost unbearable, and leaving it on a bare lap is next to impossible. According to Apple, the MacBook Pro should never become hot to the point of being uncomfortable,” wrote Tuan Nguyen, a writer with DailyTech.com.

Apple also came under fire for not acknowledging the heat-related problem promptly and publicly, along with other complaints that the notebook also makes an irritating whining sound. When a user took his machine apart, and posted an explanation and a link to the MacBook Pro service manual on the Something Awful forums (forums.somethingawful.com) in an effort to help others fix their heat issues, Apple served the webmaster of Something Awful with a cease and desist order, demanding that the link to the service manual be removed on grounds of copyright infringement. “Apple reserves its right to contact your [Something Awful] Internet Service Provider in the event you do not comply with these demands,” said the letter, which the webmaster has posted on the site.

Then the tech giant frustrated more users with another strange move on May 16. The company quietly released a MacBook Pro firmware update without explaining what it does, leaving tons of users to figure it out on their own. “May I know what the MacBook Pro SMC [System Management Control] Update does?” asked a user dubbed Readon on Apple’s official support forum. “It supposedly allows fans to run faster so my laptop finally becomes a laptop, that is I do not have to wear heat guards in order to prevent my MacBook Pro from scorching the skin off my thighs.” True enough; within hours of the update, users began reporting that it seemed to increase the notebook’s use of fans and claimed that their machines were now running a lot cooler.

But that didn’t stop a group of enthusiasts from calling for “a day of action” against Apple, encouraging all MacBook Pro owners experiencing problems to call Apple Support on May 20. “Apple seems to be taking these annoyances very lightly, and as such, something needs to be done,” the group’s organizer wrote on the osx86project.org website. “We need to let Apple know we’re tired of them not paying attention to our complaints…. This is the best way we can hold Apple accountable. It’s our duty to make sure they know we won’t tolerate hacks and unsupported fixes to fix an issue that shouldn’t be there. This is nothing malicious and we do it with the most admirable of reasons – telling Apple we love their characteristically high quality and won’t settle for less.”

Still, Apple is silent. Neither did they respond to our queries on what they’ve done or plan to do about the purported problems and the purpose of the firmware update, or comment on a recent report in Engadget (www.engadget.com). According to the tech site, Apple has included “a warning in the computer’s manual, advising customers not to use their laptops on their laps: ‘Do not leave the bottom of your MacBook Pro in contact with your lap or any surface of your body for extended periods. Prolonged contact with your body could cause discomfort and potentially a burn.’” The word “laptop” doesn’t appear in the MacBook’s manual either, the site added, sparking Apple defenders to point out that Apple has never used the word “laptop” in any of their pages for the MacBook Pro, the MacBook or any of their portables, past or present, always either “notebook” or “portable.”

“For those who feel the heat issues are a detriment to the term ‘laptop’, I think the main draw of these devices isn’t the ability to sit it on your lap, but more so the fact that it’s portable,” wrote one Engadget user dubbed Striggity. Others, however, saw the lighter side of it. “I can see it being a virtue come November,” wrote a user dubbed Gloss, on AppleInsider.com.