If you have an MDD mac you would know why :)

They are very loud and hot, so many of us MDD (as well as others) owners have swapped fans to quiet it down...and we need to know if it's too hot.

Anyone who upgrades their processor or overloads the tower with goodies, needs to know if it's too hot inside the case.

So essentially what you are saying is that red light cameras should be banned because if you run the red light you will get caught and will not be able to deny it - i.e. If you overload your Mac, it might get too hot.

Simple solution - don't overload or hack your Mac, then you will not need to worry about such trinkets as this. If your requirements are such that you need such hardware, then you should be addressing the structure of the machine beforehand. You should be using an accessory chassis, purchasing a more robust machine, or upgrading the entire machine with more robust power supplies, fans, heat-sinks, etc. to accommodate what you plan to do beforehand. If you can't afford to do this, then you can't afford to push the machine beyond its specifications. Relying on a software utility to protect your machine that has been pushed is like playing Russian roulette or with fire. Sooner or later you will be burned. It is just a question of when.

In any case whether you agree or agree to disagree, I believe that over 90 percent of users have no need for this utility, and that the 10 percent that feel they do, would be better off doing other things to protect there machine.

I had an iMac G5 that was misbehaving as its fans were constant coming on. This wonderful application helped me demonstrate that it was doing it while idling and not under high processor load and allowed me to compare it with a similar iMac and deduce there was a hardware issue and fix it.

Without temperature monitors like this and others I would have never known my (unmodded) 20" G5 iMac was running so hot. Burnout would have been my first clue.

Of interest: Concerned about my overheating iMac I asked Apple how hot the fans should allow the CPU and HD to get? Their response was: "That is proprietary information"(!) They didn't seem too pleased I was able to monitor the internal heat.

It is well that such a tool "saved" the commenter's machines. As I stated earlier, most do not need such a tool but I never denied that it could be useful in special unique occasions. In the mentioned cases above, one possible advantage of not monitoring an overheating, defective machine, is that it will "fry", allowing you to take it back to Apple and get it back with new insides (Apple usually does not fix things at component level), or a new machine, possibly with improved specs or mods to prevent the problem from happening again.

Of course you will need to have AppleCare to avert an expensive repair bill. Whenever I get a new machine I always get AppleCare with it, for support alone, such as it is. Nevertheless it is better than nothing or many of the other alternatives.

Sometimes just talking out problems with an agent will lead you to an idea that will solve the problem, even if the agent contributed little or nothing to the solution. I should also mention that in my experience, the price of AppleCare is one of the few items from Apple, via a 3rd party provider, that is negotiable.

As far as Apple not being enthusiastic about a user knowing as much or more about their own machine as the agent, you are "preaching to the choir." Apple seems to love keeping secret about specs and other useful information that can benefit users. They seem to have the mindset that all users are crooks and hackers, trying to steal something from the company, until it can be proved otherwise. Sometimes, trying to get some information from them, so that you can be more effective with your machine, is like pulling teeth from a live Piranha.

If you do decide you have a requirement for such a tool, I invite you to do some exploring on the subject in MacUpdate. This tool is not your only option for obtaining temperature information.

There are many competitors, some are Widgets,some are free. As for recommending one, I cannot, as I don't use them. I have AppleCare and have not modified or overloaded my machine. I also keep good backups, as everyone should. So if it "fry's" it might be slightly inconvenient, but it becomes Apple's problem.

kids these days

I think JimW is right in a way. But listen Jim, this is a geek thing: We want to know how much memory we heve left, which portion of that is wired or inactive, we want to know how hard the processor is working, and how this effects the temperature of the cpu. It's not usefull, but it's fun.