We all know that iTunes can be a bit of a resource hog when you’re
playing music through it while Photoshopping cats’ faces onto your
friends’ heads and browsing for pictures. But apparently for some users,
it can be even more of a problem.

If you’ve got the latest Mac
Pros with the Nehalem-based Xeon multicore processors, you may have
noticed it too. According to Ars Technica, a glitch in audio processing
is reportedly driving up processor temperatures to almost double their
usual while sucking hard on the CPU power. The issue in question only
appears to apply to the latest Mac Pros running OS X and does not turn
up in MacBook Pros.

Weirdly enough, the increases aren’t
triggering the fans and aren’t showing up in CPU performance measures,
just heat and power, while triggering corresponding sluggishness in
other programs. So far, according to the article, Apple Care has
soft-pedaled the issue, claiming temperature ranges are within normal,
leaving many users frustrated.

Even more telling, users who have
booted their Mac Pros into Windows 7 have reported the problem is
eliminated. This led someone in the hackintosh community to create his
own power management kernel extension that disabled SpeedStep and Turbo
Boost, completely eliminating the problem.

Hopefully, the more
this is reported, and the fact that a simple hack can resolve the issue
leads to Apple putting out a software update relatively soon to fix the
problem. Meanwhile, if you’re experiencing the same issues with your Mac
Pro, until you get a software update consult the headline above.