I am stuck using an otherwise old but theoretically bearable PC at work running Windows 11 from a spinning HDD. But I'll tell you, when I dug through the registry to turn off all the background indexing nonsense, it became damn near usable.

I haven't used a mac for over a decade, but for the decade or so before that it never happened to me once, either on an iBook or MBP. Perhaps something changed in the meantime.

If a screen is connected that's another thing, though even that can lead to overheating. For example, a lot of modern laptops suck in air through the keyboard and having the lid closed while working messes up their thermal performance, and heats up the screen to an unhealthy degree.

But having it wake up and try installing an update while sitting in a bag, closed and disconnected from a screen, is a straight up fire hazard, and it happened to me multiple times with windows laptops.