Ya, that's bs. I haven't found a single computer that I haven't been able to use on my lap without issues, including my 13" MBP. And yes, I've used it even on bare skin and it's not a problem. However, out of all the laptops I've had over the years, the MBP is the one that heats up the quickest and cools off the quickest if set on something cold for a few seconds to pull the heat away from the unibody.
Either way, Apple really does need to come up with a better way to shed the heat through the air vents better than it currently does. The current fan/airvent/heatsink designs just aren't up to snuff. Yes, they work at idle/normal use, but if you start pumping out anything through the WIFI card for traffic or spike the CPU just a bit even up to 25% sustained, it gets pretty hot. That's kind of rediculous when you think about it. They need a better heatpipe design on all chips (like the network card) and not just the video/cpu/main chipsets and nothing else.