5806 Temperature Monitor is an application to read out all available temperature sensors in Macintosh computers. The program can display and visualize measured values in a large variety of fashions. The application supports the following operations on the measured readings:

• display in a default window
• output in a screen display in front or in the background of the screen
• tabular display in an overview window
• display in the menu-bar
• display of a maximum of two readings in the Dock
• graphical display of short-term and long-term history curves
• speech output of readings
• display of minimum and maximum values
• export to text files

Moreover, the application can display additional technical information about your computer. Among other information this includes:

• Processor type
• Processor and bus frequencies
• Manufacturing information

Of course the application can read out the data only if your computer is equipped with the necessary sensors, and if Mac OS X can access them without needing third-party device drivers. Beginning in summer 2002, Apple has begun to massively drive forward the use of monitoring probes in the PowerMac series, the Xserve series, and in portable computers. Some models are equipped with 38 and more sensors. But Temperature and Hardware Monitor can detect sensors on many older systems as well if they are available.

Apple has restricted the use of monitoring applications on Intel-based Macintosh systems. Thermal management of those computers is no longer done by the operating system, but controlled by an undocumented hardware device, the Apple System Management Controller. Only a few sensors are accessible by application programs.

We try to detect all sensors on as many Macintosh computer types as possible. However, a prediction which sensors are available in which models is not possible, because Apple very often releases "silent product updates", where the hardware equipments of some models are changed but the names are not (specifications are"subject to change without notice"). The particular graphics card and hard disk configuration used is also important because these parts can include independent sensors, too.

Please note that Apple does not support an official or standardized way of reading out sensor data in Mac OS X (the only exception is the Server Monitor application for the Xserve series). Moreover, there is no documentation or other technical note about the individual function of the sensors. For this reason, the development of Temperature Monitor and Hardware Monitor is very costly because the necessary data has to be determined by reverse engineering and tests run on a variety of computer models. Please support the development of the applications by purchasing a registration key for Hardware Monitor.

New in version 4.9:
• Added support for the new Intel Mobile Core i7-600, i5-500, i5-400, i3-300 processor series ("Arrandale").
• Added support for the new MacBook Pro (2010) computers.
• Added new feature to detect if a processor supports Intel Turbo Boost technology. The list of supported overclocking frequencies can be displayed in the "Processor > More Info" sheet of the System Information window.
• By user request, the splash window being displayed while the application is starting up can now be suppressed.
• By user request, the sensor window will no longer resize itself to show all configured sensor values when it is being opened. It will keep the previous size preferred by the user until it is being reconfigured.
• The command line version of the program will now use the special output value "-" to indicate a sensor which has been detected but cannot retrieve any values at the moment.

System requirements:
Mac OS X 10.2.5 or later.

System support
PPC/Intel

Free

For more information, visit:
http://www.bresink.de/osx/TemperatureMonitor.html

For my full review of TemperatureMonitor, visit:
http://www.macopinion.com/columns/roadwarrior/06/04/04/index.html

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