Nearly fried my iBook today

[moot]

Came home from work today to find my iBook in mortal danger.

It was sitting closed with the lid down on the sofa, as usual. But somthing seemed just not right. Then I realised the nice comforting sleep light was not blinking and it was humming a little. That's odd, I thought, as I went to pick it up. Then I nearly dropped it, it was that hot. The whole thing was really really hot, everywhere. I managed to get the thing switched off and cooled down really quick but I thought that the thing was now fried and a gonner.

After it was cool, I booted up and everything was fine, to my great relief. I have since zapped the Pram, repaired permissions, forced the periodics and even done the prebinding(for the hell of it)

But what on earth had happenned. I thought an iBook with its lid down must go into sleep mode. (there are no externals plugged in). I thought it had no choice about this. My girlfriend had used it a few hours earlier but only to surf the web and had closed the lid after use. (saw that myself). Why hadn't it gone to sleep or if it had, what made it rewake when it was closed?

 

[Applespider]

Why hadn't it gone to sleep or if it had, what made it rewake when it was closed?

Does it have Bluetooth? And if so, was 'allow Bluetooth devices to wake up' turned on?

 

[moot]

No, unfortunately it doesn't have bluetooth.

I forgot to mention that yesterday I installed Little Snitch. Could that be the culprit?

 

[zach]

Probably not.

I've noticed once or twice my Powerbook not going to sleep when you close it.. Not sure why this happens, probably a hardware problem rather than software.

 

[point665]

Do you have the Screen Spanning mod installed? If so this causes iBook to go into Clamshell mode, thus not sleep when closing lid.

 

[mkrishnan]

It's also possible that the reed switch (I think? The magnetic detector that the iBook uses to tell that it's been closed) is starting to fail...that's the direction to investigate if none of the software issues are possibilities.

 

[Hemingray]

I've noticed on a couple of occasions that if I close my iBook to sleep but it doesn't latch all the way and the lid snaps back up, it will wake up the iBook again and if I close the lid quickly right after that it won't always put it back to sleep. Could your g/f have done that accidentally maybe?

 

[SaleenS351]

Well I don't know what ibook you have but my G3 800mhz has had sleeping problems when closing the lid for a long time on and off, and i finally realized that it was a little metal circle underneath the keyboard. when wasn't completly in the circle and wouldn't make contact the other metal circle tapped to the bottom of the actual keyboard it wouldn't sleep. This may be something completly different just though i'd thow that out there. here are some pictures in case that didn't make sense. but if take it out you'll see it won't sleep when you close it.

 

[Makosuke]

I've noticed on a couple of occasions that if I close my iBook to sleep but it doesn't latch all the way and the lid snaps back up, it will wake up the iBook again and if I close the lid quickly right after that it won't always put it back to sleep.

This seems like the most likely scenereo to me as well. I've seen it happen on occasion, and it's easy enough to miss if you're not paying attention.

There are also programs that can wake a Mac up from sleep automatically (LaCie's Silverkeeper, for example), but you'd probably know if you had one installed.

 

[Bad_JuJu]

As I learned from another site - iBooks use the keybd area as some part of the cooling / venting (as opposed to PBs) - so having it run with the lid closed is not good.

I'm on the verge of buying a 12" PB so I'm reading alot about iBooks / PBs