Clearly not. Mac users are used to their laptops actually going to sleep when they shut the lid.

My work HP, however, is regularly scorching hot when I get home as it's been on in my backpack the whole time despite me shutting the lid and despite the instruction to 'go to sleep when the lid is closed'. How there's not some sort of thermal cutoff I do not know, but I know for a fact that there is not.

Edit: by 'regularly' I mean a few times a year. Still far, far too many.

If this is not caused by the Windows issue mentioned by TeMPOraL, I might have another explanation:

My former notebook (Acer Timeline 1810TZ) used to wake up from a press on any keyboard button, which I was unable to change. The issue here is that with sufficient pressure (e.g. when I was running with the device in a messenger bag), the lid would bend enough to actually press a key and wake up the machine.

My hackish solution was a script that would automatically put the laptop back to sleep a few seconds after waking up, which I then manually killed after intentionally waking the device.

For the record, this happens a few times a year too with my MacBook Pro.

Then you should probably return it. This is not normal behavior.

VM user?

It may not be the fault of HP per se. Windows itself tended to cause this on every laptop I ever used by randomly deciding it needs to wake up the machine and check for updates.

AFAIK pretty much all Intel CPUs do have a thermal cutoff, and I expect AMDs do as well.

Unfortunately, it's close to 100 degrees. It's only there to prevent damage to the CPU, not the rest of the system (or your back). It also isn't guaranteed to shut down the laptop, just the CPU.

So it really depends on how well the motherboard manufacturer did their job.

No, not anymore except for my 2011 iMac 27 ;)

I did have a 2011 Macbook that did heat up quite a bit, but I always carried it on for fear of damage and theft back then.