Your Mac accidents

Giaguara

Giaguara

Chmod 760
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Macs have an image of being design objects - thus vulnerable. At least when seen by Windows users.

I think I have heard and seen enough stories that .. speak for themselves. These above are by persons I know enough so I can verify them (and I have seen them, except one of the iPods).

Add yours ;)

[But I don't suggest trying these at home just for fun.]


One friend has a studio office in two levels. He was working on the higher level, and by mistake hit the precious. The iBook, dual USB 500 MHz, dropped to the first floor (14 feet/ 4 m down). The wooden floor up to date has a visible hole where the iBook corner hit it. The iBook worked perfectly after. No scratches, no cracked hard drives or screens etc. A cable needed replacing, but untill that I had thought the iBooks were as fragile as they looked. This happened maybe 2 years ago. I have seen both the iBook that it happened to, and the floor in the studio. The iBook was still scratchless, and looked like new.

Two friends have forgotten their precious to their pocket when washing clothes. So they got very clean music on their iPods. One was a 2nd generation model, the other a 3rd. Both worked fine. The owners let them dry a few days, prayed, and they were back in life. Amazing - but still I'd probably get a heart attack if I found my or anyone else's iPod in the washing machine or among the newly washed clothes. (Has anyone yet tried this on the iPod minis? I hope not..)

The most recent one sounds amazing as well. A lamp fell from the shelf while writing, and it hit a huge tea mug 2 feet from the Powerbook (an alubook, the recent ones). The liquid flew of course to the worst imagineable place, keyboard and not just a few drops. (I would have got a heart attack at that point). A quick forced shutdown, removing the battery and the cables, drying the worst of the spills, and putting the 'Book to dry tilted slightly so that the back and the ventilation holes could get air and help drying the inside. Again, I assume, praying for a day or two, or untill it could have been dry. He put back on the battery, hit the power button - heard the chimes, logged in and like nothing had happened. The clock had moved to January 1970, and the disk utility found something to fix, but nothing else. I can't imagine what normally happens when liquid hits the keyboard, or what happens if it hits a pc keyboard.

And I keep wondering how Macs are made. I find it really incredible that these things can work after such. After being drowned in a washing machine (poor iPods), after having hot liquids on keyboard (PowerBook), after 14 feet free drop to wooden floor (iBook). I haven't heard similar stories about pcs, maybe because I don't frequent pc forums, or maybe because those stories are so rare. What do you think? (Anyone has a Rio, Dell or Vaio to get rid of to get a Mac? ;) )
 
I would like to have such lucky story, but my son killed my keyboard with hot chocolate.
 
I spilled a rather large glass of water into my Apple Pro Keyboard once. It survived -- but the spacebar malfunctioned for a half-hour or so. Letting it dry for about an hour, plugging it in to check it periodically and unplugging it again, did the trick.
 
I've dropped my iPod quite a few times and it's still fine. My G4's also stood up to a lot of moving around. No drops or anything but I did forget it was in the back of my car when I went over some large speed bumps at about 30 mph.

The only accidents I've had involved keyboards. Spilt some coke on the ADB keyboard from my 5200 and it survived, although some of the keys were a little sticky. Did the same with orange juice about a week after I got my G4 (end of 1999 I think) but it killed the keyboard. However my AppleCentre were nice enough to give me a new one free of charge.
 
It confirms that the keyboard is the weakest part of the computer.... all mistakes come from the keyboard... including this message.
 
Oh! I forgot to mention. A couple of days after I got the flat-panel iMac I am using now, I put it in the back of my dad's SUV, thinking that it would transport as easily as my old gumdrop iMac. It seemed to be holding up just fine, but we went around one corner and it fell over. The screen hit a plastic bag with clothes in it. For a couple of months, you could see the wrinkles of the plastic bag sort of imprinted on the screen. You would never guess that that had happened now, though. :)
 
I once spilt a double of whisky on my keyboard (Pro keyboard in white) and it survived. I didn't even have to shut down (suicidal nutter that i am!)
I just found a webpage that detailed how to clean and dismantle the keyboard, disconnected it and fixed it while navigating the page with my mouse!
Bombproof!
Or at least whisky proof! I was gutted though! It was a realllllyyyy good whisky!
 
i just have bad experiences with my first generation iPod. it has fallen down so many times. and some of them were really strong impacts, but the beast kept on playin :)


any powerbook 12" stories ???
 
I was in a car "incident" once where a dog ran out in front of me so I slammed on the brakes and my Power Tower Pro 225 was thrown into the dashboard. (I had been carting it back and forth from work to home). Once at work, I realized it wouldn't boot, so I opened her up and started playing around. Turns out the whole box had ben knocked out of whack so the PCI slots were off kilter. With a bit of nudging a hammering, I got it more less back in shape and everything worked again.
 
chevy said:
but my son killed my keyboard with hot chocolate.
Click to expand...

I can beat that :p

One day last year I had a power failure, at night, and decided to use the time to clean my apartment and wipe my keyboard while my computer was off since it's usually on 24/7.

Being night time, I had to light candles to see what I was doing. I had one about 15 feet away, which to me still seems a reasonable distance, even though it obviously wasn't. As I was air-dusting my keyboard a tiny bit of propellant met the candle and flowed back to the air duster, effectively turning it into a flame thrower.

bye bye keyboard :rolleyes: but thank God it wasn't bye bye hand as well !

The possible lessons: (i) be paranoid about fire, or (ii) never clean anything. I'm leaning toward a mix of the two...
 
my dad threw coffe once on my apple pro keyboard.
he opened the whole thing (damn its got lots of screws and really complicated to put back) but it worked fine after he cleaned it !!!
 
My upstairs neighbor had a funny maccident a number of years ago. After just a few months of use his Lime iMac suddenly refused to boot, even from the install CD. After rather a few hours of frustration he finally just really lost it; ripping all the cords from the machine he tossed it from the doorway of his apartment and kicked it down the five flights of stairs to the street. The iMac showed only some scuff marks but my poor neighbor looked completely bedraggled. Oh, well, I guess you had to be there...

I wasn't there last summer when another one of my neighbors decided to make use of my then inactive ethernet cable. Don't remember exactly how long I had been using it but it was strung from the window of my apartment around the face of the building and up into my first neighbor's apartment, where our router is. Now perhaps this CAT 5 was not up to the wear and tear of the great outdoors, for some time after transferring its terminus through his window to his computer, it must have developed a tear to its sheathing. After a particularly heavy downpour, this second misfortunate neighbor found water streaming from his PC, which, you can imagine, was quite shorted out.
 
My parrot pooped on my spacebar once while I was playing Quake III... the spacebar never worked again. I guess parrot poop has more corrosive elements in it than coffee or juice does... ;)

I was happy to get rid of that keyboard (it was the first generation G4 keyboards -- the ones with the tiny little arrow keys) and purchase a new Apple Pro Keyboard (black).

Needless to say birds aren't allowed near my computer anymore.
 
The roof leaked at work about 2 years ago, while my iBook was on my desk, powered up. The screen got soaked - still works, just not very bright. It still works when connected to a monitor, but they bought me another one anyway ;)
 
my trusty iBook copped an entire cup of Latté into the keyboard once. I pulled the battery, lifted the keyboard panel and pulled the AirPort and RAM and mopped up as much as possible. The Trackpad was a bit sticky afterwards, but that got cleaned up by the AppleCentre guys when they replaced the LogicBoard under Warranty.

I also read a story of an old Lady bringing an iBook into an AppleCentre. The Polycarbonite was Black, all the paint had sublimed and the screen was warped and black. It was accompanied by a Zip-Lock bag full of 77 little black lumps.
She had used the Oven to dry it after spilling her tea on it, and left it too high.

The guy at the AppleCentre plugged in an external keyvboard and Monitor, removed the battery and hooked it up to a powersupply and voilá, it worked perfectly!
 
My old Bronze Keyboad G3 Powerbook (Pizmo?) has gone everywhere with me since I bought it 5 years ago. It has been dropped several times , kicked once (not by me) rained on and spit on, the monitor hinge is broken, and the case has a few cracks in it, not to mention a full 20 oz coke spilled on it a few years back. Damn thing still works. Now retired to desktop duty with external drives, it runs Panther, and does an admirable job as a web browsing computer. I only hope the AlumBook that replaced it handles the abuse as well.
 
I have always wondered why birds fly and poo on the same time.

I have heard and seen pics of a fried powerbook. There were pics of it .. it still worked. I guess another oven baked apple that still works.. :p
 
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