MacBook Pro Usage – Running Upside-Down in Clamshell Mode

If a unibody Mac is wobbly, I'd have it serviced sooner rather than later. The tolerances inside are crazy tight in some cases, so a warp could cause subsequent damage to sensitive and costly parts. A trained technician can tell at a glance if the damage was external or due to manufacturing issues.

Now, that being said, I've seen dozens of Macs where people reported they were off and most were the table it sat upon, and not a bend in the unibody frame of the Mac. You can test by measuring how many sheets of printer paper fit under the leg(s) that has(have) a gap.

Then rotate the Mac 1/3 of a turn and repeat the measurement. Then take it to a second flat surface and do the measurement one last time if you're not convinced that it's the frame instead of the surface that is off-level.

Any wobble that's less than three sheets of paper is probably nothing to worry about, but what if you needed a logic board repair 10 months down the road and today, your Mac is bent out of tolerance and you were denied warranty coverage since you didn't report the bend until then? Only by getting it checked will you know if yours was out of tolerance and have a service record to point to in case of a warranty repair question later.

Your computer is designed to run all 4 cores and generate heat like a 60 w lightbulb would. Internally, the CPU doesn't get as hot as a filament does - but it does approach the boiling point of water before it will slow itself down to avoid overheating.

This control is built into the chips themselves so even if your fans stop working, the machine should run as fast as it can given the amount of heat that escapes through the warm aluminum frame. The heat that you have noticed may simply be the system working as designed with passive cooling assisting the fans.

Here is an article explaining a bit on how you can measure the internal temperatures, how the loading of work on the CPU spins up (and even sound recordings of) the fans:

• http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-review/12

My guess is your mac is running normal as it can be quite uncomfortably hot and still operating as designed. However, if you are worried, you should call AppleCare and ask them for assistance in determining if it's running safely. Rather than trust that our understanding of how hot your Mac is since you could be someone who is underestimating danger, or another that over estimates it and I'd hate to not have you get a second opinion or know exactly how hot the internals and case are. Consulting the manufacturer would be a great next step for you.