If you use an Apple laptop, you will have noticed one thing (especially if it is made of aluminum): it gets wildly hot working with it on a wooden table as soon as it has to consume a bit of CPU, and the fact is that laptops have two enemies when it comes to dissipating heat: wood (a very bad conductor) and the null conduction of air.
If you look closely, your MacBook releases almost all of its hot air from the back, so our goal has to be to draw that heat upwards and not let it remain trapped in the area where we are working, causing the Mac to hot. But how do we do it?
My solution has been to buy a laptop cooler on DealExtreme, a page of which I am a megafan and that you will surely know many. There are many models, but the one that I have chosen seems to me the best in terms of price and performance, although it does not fit much with the Mac aesthetic.
I am aware that there are great laptop bases for a higher price, but I assure you that this one works like a charm. Encoding video I have gone from 73º to 59º of temperature when putting it at medium intensity, and with the Mac fan forced to work at 3200 rpm so as not to condition the test.
Deal Extreme | Fridge (no ref.)