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Mid 2009 (or earlier) Macbook Pro Owners: Are any of you going back to OSX Lion?

DoNoHarm

DoNoHarm

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Oct 8, 2008
1,138
46
Maine
For the past year or so, I noticed that my Mid 2009 Macbook Pro was running hotter. So I replaced the battery, which helped somewhat. Then last month, I replaced the hard drive to a 512 gb SSD to free up space, but it was still running hot. So last week, I did a totally fresh install of Mavericks. Still, nothing was different. Even simple web browsing would leave my lap so hot, I'd be worried about maintaining my ability to have children!

So yesterday, I went ahead and did a fresh install of OSX Lion. The machine is noticeably cooler.

Frankly, I would even say that I like the OS more than Mavericks. No more annoying "hey you wanna update?" type messages or pages defaulting to save in the cloud all the time....
 
DoNoHarm said:
For the past year or so, I noticed that my Mid 2009 Macbook Pro was running hotter. So I replaced the battery, which helped somewhat. Then last month, I replaced the hard drive to a 512 gb SSD to free up space, but it was still running hot. So last week, I did a totally fresh install of Mavericks. Still, nothing was different. Even simple web browsing would leave my lap so hot, I'd be worried about maintaining my ability to have children!

So yesterday, I went ahead and did a fresh install of OSX Lion. The machine is noticeably cooler.

Frankly, I would even say that I like the OS more than Mavericks. No more annoying "hey you wanna update?" type messages or pages defaulting to save in the cloud all the time....
Click to expand...

A 2009 MacBook Pro is 5 years old. The thermal paste is most likely degraded and causing poor heat conductivity. I have had 2010 MacBook Pros come in with burnt CPU paste so it really depends on what usage the machine has seen. Documents and Data in iCloud can be disabled in Mavericks as well.
 
DoNoHarm said:
For the past year or so, I noticed that my Mid 2009 Macbook Pro was running hotter. So I replaced the battery, which helped somewhat. Then last month, I replaced the hard drive to a 512 gb SSD to free up space, but it was still running hot. So last week, I did a totally fresh install of Mavericks. Still, nothing was different. Even simple web browsing would leave my lap so hot, I'd be worried about maintaining my ability to have children!

So yesterday, I went ahead and did a fresh install of OSX Lion. The machine is noticeably cooler.

Frankly, I would even say that I like the OS more than Mavericks. No more annoying "hey you wanna update?" type messages or pages defaulting to save in the cloud all the time....
Click to expand...

Mine has been warm recently too (as well as the fan revving up a lot), but I'm also dual booting the Yosemite public beta as well as Mavericks. I've never redone my thermal paste, so I may need to do that. I'm also not sure if the fan has been cleaned out. I tried to take it out a few months ago, but the screws don't seem to want to come undone. It's been a little sluggish too, but that may just be Yosemite. It's not my main machine, so speed isn't crucial to me. That's what my rMBP is for :)
 
I had some of those issues and took it as a sign to buy a 2013 MBP. Moved up to 15" and loving it.
 
Did you consider going into activity monitor and checking on what was using so much CPU that it was heating your computer? Seems easier than randomly installing old OS's.
 
cmaier said:
Did you consider going into activity monitor and checking on what was using so much CPU that it was heating your computer? Seems easier than randomly installing old OS's.
Click to expand...

Boy howdy.

Also, my 2008 unibody has run just fine on Mavs with no temp increase.

There's something else going on here.
 
DoNoHarm said:
Nothing random about it. I just went with the OS that had the longest battery life on older hardware while still offering filevault encryption: www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/os-x-battery-life-analysis-from-snow-leopard-to-mountain-lion
Click to expand...

It's random in the sense that installing a different operating system is probably the last thing someone who was trying to diagnose the problem would do. First you should check on whether some rogue process or app is chewing up your CPU. If so, it's usually easy to solve. Reinstalling the old OS may solve it as well by changing the way the rogue process or app behaves, but that's purely coincidence.

As an example, my 2009 15"MBP running mavericks started "running hot." I checked and saw that a particular process, relating to system stats, was going crazy. I googled and saw that the solution was an SMC reset. Problem solved. In the past I've had issues where particular apps caused such behavior (e.g. dropbox) and solved them by dealing with the app in question. Never would occur to me to reinstall the OS or revert to an OS as the first step. e.g. Random.
 
DoNoHarm said:
For the past year or so, I noticed that my Mid 2009 Macbook Pro was running hotter. So I replaced the battery, which helped somewhat. Then last month, I replaced the hard drive to a 512 gb SSD to free up space, but it was still running hot. So last week, I did a totally fresh install of Mavericks. Still, nothing was different. Even simple web browsing would leave my lap so hot, I'd be worried about maintaining my ability to have children!

So yesterday, I went ahead and did a fresh install of OSX Lion. The machine is noticeably cooler.

Frankly, I would even say that I like the OS more than Mavericks. No more annoying "hey you wanna update?" type messages or pages defaulting to save in the cloud all the time....
Click to expand...
Thermal paste is the key my friend! I have the 2011 model and reapplied thermal paste yesterday. I boy can I tell you it did wonders. Im reaching maximum 88c at maxload comparing too my 102c I got before! as it seemed that the thermal paste apple had did wasn't even on the die och at the edge of it and was rock solid too remove!
 
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