what is the worst thing you have ever done to your mac?

[TheMasin9]

intel imac

tried to install windows by messing with efi. imac is now dead. wont boot hds dont spin, nothin. o wait, that was an article i read, conclusion keep windoze where it belongs, on dull little boxes.

 

[andrewag]

dam. what was your computer doing in the driveway? or were ever

I got to the carpark and realised i had forgot my keys, so i put my bag down behind my car, ran and got my keys, jumped in the car and reversed. As soon as i heard the thump, I knew what I had done.

What make's it worse is that it was my machine from work :/ Got a 15" PB next so it's all good.

 

[MukelG]

I got my ibook when I was in the dorms at school, and i had a 'loft' style bed at the time, about 6 feet off the concrete and tile floor. Well, I fell asleep with it on my chest one night and I woke up and it was face down on the floor, ethernet cord still attached [i like to think the ethernet cord slowed it down. thank god that school is low-tech haha] Then it fell off again a few weeks later. THEN It flew out of my hands when I was putting it in my bag to go home over Thanksgiving, it spun out of my hands, hit the desk, then hit the floor.

then, this one takes the cake. ALL THESE THINGS DIDN'T KILL IT! However, when I was packing up to leave before christmas [I was packing EVERYTHING since I transferred colleges] it fell off my desk. I guess the fourth time was a charm, as the hard disk was cracked. [it booted to the 'Mac OSX is Loading' screen, then the blue before login, but nothing worked.

Thank god it was under warranty hahahaha.

This is just one of the reasons I won't ever buy a PC laptop again, this thing took a hell of a beating before the HD died.

 

[euphoria47]

1. i remember when i was like 5, i deleted the system folder off my mums macintosh plus, that was pretty bad heh.

2. ive fried a few power supplies at 220V as well, not so bad, but a pain in the ass to buy and replace.

3. i remember when i had my imac dv (what has made me since wary of slot loading drives) i had bought this weird looking cd: it looked like the blade of a table / skill saw, it was all jagged, looked kinda cool, really.
anyhow, i wanted to rip the choons off of it and slipped it in the drive. the drive proceeded to make that uncomfortable whining sound as it slurped up the cd, but once the cd was in, it kept making that sound.

after a while of pressing "eject", then trying with a paperclip, i very stupidly tried shoving another cd in there, hoping 2x thicker would give it enough traction to spit the whole mess out. it accepted the 2nd cd, and stopped making that sound.

to get the cds out, i had to take the casing apart and with pliers yank out the cds. luckily, neither cd was damaged, nor was the drive!

 

[cnakeitaro]

I was walking into my dorm room with one of those plastic takeout containers from the late night eatery. >.>

Anyways, my desk was right near the door and my iBook was wide open. I don't recall what I was doing with the door, either locking it, or something odd, but since I was full handed, I accidentally tipped the container. I was really concerned about it til I looked at my laptop.

The gravy from whatever I ordered had poured out all over my iBook. I freaked. I started to clean it, but to my dismay it had gone behind every key on the left hand side of my keyboard and some seeped into the system itself. I turned it off, removed the keyboard, and cleaned the inside. I put the keyboard back on, still with the gravy under the keys. At that time I didn't know I could pop those kind of keys off. Remarkably, the keyboard still worked until i got fed up with how the greyish yellow color offset the whiteness of my keyboard.

So I called Applecare and told them my keyboard didn't work. With my Doctorate in BS, I was able to get them to send me a replacement keyboard by telling them some of the keys had stopped responding. Problem solved.

 

[MukelG]

With my Doctorate in BS, I was able to get them to send me a replacement keyboard by telling them some of the keys had stopped responding. Problem solved.

Hahahahaha. I did that too when my powercord for my iBook broke.

It wasn't my fault it broke, it broke before my 'book fell for the first time lol. The lady on the phone was really nice, but really stupid. I told her the ratings at the AppleStore website for the i/powerbook powersupply cords sucked and broke easily, and she had no idea what I was talking about. They still sent me a new one though.

 

[mmmcheese]

While driving to the computer store to get the logic board replaced on my iBook G3, some old woman pulled out in front of me and when I hit her, it took air and smacked into my dash. After that, I called Apple to ask what I should do (I couldn't see any damage on the outside). The woman told me just to not tell the tech, and only worry about it if they question me about it.

The other thing I did to my machine, was just plain pure stupidity. When I work on papers, I tend to (literally) pull my hair out. Of course, since the ibook keyboard is white, the fuzz/hair/etc. that falls under the keys starts to look really gross. So I took it all apart and cleaned it. It looked great, but some of my keys were hyper-sensitive. I guess I got a little overzealous with the toothbrush scrubbing (haha). Oh well, I did a warranty fix on it (Not Apple, some crappy 3rd party warranty that is impossible to deal with).

 

[FoxyKaye]

On the first G3 B/W tower I ever upgraded (circa 2002), I was having a hard time prying off the metal tab that holds the heat sink to the chip. My screwdriver slipped and hit the motherboard. Did some investigation and discovered it scratched the surface of the board - to find out the full extent of the damage, I turned on the tower... at which time a small trail of white smoke puffed up from beneath the chip (the G3, not the upgrade) and the mobo was dead. Luckily, I had a "parts" tower with an in-tact mobo that I swapped out for the dead one. I also re-learned a valuable lesson about metal screwdrivers near motherboards...

There was also a time when I was working inside an old Beige G3, and for some reason the computer was recently turned on and the heat sink was off the chip (gods only know why this scenario was, but it was almost 5 years ago, so I forget). I managed to place my index finger squarely on top of the hot G3 chip, which left a very nice, perfectly square blister on my finger. *ouch*

 

[yg17]

Why just this week, I installed a Wal-Mart USB 2.0 PCI card in my PowerMac. The package said Mac compatible, but when I put the G5 to sleep, the fans would kick into high gear and the computer would lock up. I think that was the Mac's way of telling me "get this Wal-Mart piece of sh*t out of me!" (which I did. Returned it to Wally World today and ordered an IOGear card from OWC)

 

[California]

Forgot that I bought a used iBook off eBay that someone had pulled apart and pulled all the screws in the back off of. Somehow, it was still intact. It was pretty scratched up so I turned it over as I was talking on the phone and started to use tire shine on the plastic to get it shiny again.

I talked away as I opened the bottle and poured some on the back of the iBook and watched as I accidently poured the tire shine stuff into the screw hole of the iBook!

Luckily it was not on so I just gently flushed some water in it and turned it over and blowdried it and waited.

It worked fine.

 

[generik]

This was actually a big problrm a few years back. A friend of mine at work had their Ti Powerbook explode while she was charging it at night. Burned down her entire apartment. Fortunately she escaped and is fine but her cat ran away when she opened the windows to get air.

Suddenly you make me paranoid about buying a rev A....

 

[cr2sh]

I had my 17" powerbook for a month and was flying from dayton to houston on the company plane.. and I dropped the damn thing. Put a dent about a 1/4" into the side front right corner.

Bastard.

 

[lucface]

This thread is a good list of users not to buy used gear from!

 

[Mord]

This thread is a good list of users not to buy used gear from!

speaking of which my ibook is now for sale

 

[macit]

- I ditched my emac for my "new" (as of nov. 05' ) iMac and left my emac ( who is not happy) to my mom, (who is very happy)
see here- before using quicken/ turbo tax for mac, she did taxes on a blue and black screened (would that be MS-DOS?) computer from the 80's ( it broke )
... she poked my lovely iMac with a sharpened pencil once ... nothing happened

 

[p0intblank]

Fortunately nothing too bad has ever happened to my PowerBook G4. The only minor thing that happened was at a diner once. I brought it into a diner we go to every Friday night to show my aunt who works there some videos I made in iMovie. I forget exactly what I was doing... maybe putting it away... anyway, I picked up the PowerBook and accidentally hit it up against the jukebox that's attached to the table. It only left a very small and barely noticeable mark, so I'm not mad about it. I'm usually very careful with my Mac.

 

[CoMpX]

Time to revive this thread. On Monday I was calibrating my new battery that Apple sent me, and there were about 30 minutes left, so I decided to push the iBook to the foot of the bed and lay down untilit was done. It was 1 in the morning. Well, I fell asleep, and woke at about 5 in the morning to a loud THUMP! She lay there on the floor, on somewhat thin carpeting, from a raied bed. The screen is a little offset to the right now, but it's OK.

 

[joepunk]

Not long ago I stepped on my PB. It was in my bag and as I was climbing down from my bunk bed after a short nap and I did not pay attention and stepped on my bag. Luckily most if not all of my body weight was still being supported by the bed frame and I only barely put a little pressure on the PB. No marks or dents and ran fine after that.

 

[bradc]

The worst for me...

I switched to a Powermac G5 Dual 2.5ghz December of '04, I was setting it up underneath my desk on this shelf that hangs from the desk, about 6" off the ground. Then I proceeded to plug in my billion external USB/Firewire things and I guess it had wiggled a bit. So when I was done, I went to get up and nailed my head on the desk and in pain I flung my hand to my head but missed and knocked over the G5 and in slowwwww-moooo saw $5000+ of never used computer go BANG onto my hardwood floor. My heart sunk, I put her back up, and then closed my eyes for 2min and pressed the power button, opened my eyes and almost cried, it was alive!

I feel bad for her though, I do craploads of multi-day calculations, simulations and since March 2005, its been running at 100% err 200% for 65% of the time and only been rebooted 20-30 times, a true testament to reliability and build quality.

 

[blueflame]

second that

I installed VPC on it.. it still won't talk to me.

andreas

 

[sugarkane]

my 867 12" PB hit the deck after i tripped over the modem cable while rush packing for a short notice snowboarding trip...


crashed the HD, bent the chassis, cracked the logic board and bent the screen case..

insurance provided me with a 1.33mhz version that has just been sold to a french man to free up desk space for my loverly and very fast MBP


sk

 

[gman71882]

17" Powerbook

A good friend had his 17" Al Powerbook on a desk at school working at it. While it was plugged in it stated to crackle and emit a freakish blue smoke through the keyboard from battery compartment. (lithium battery i guess) it blew some smoke in his face before he could get away from it.
Battery melted a black hole in the desk, and the plastic casing of the computer.

Worst thing that happened was my friend developed an abcess in the back of his throat that was caused by the Smoke. Had to have it drained a few times, which he said was the most disgusting thing hes ever had to do. Apple ended up paying for his Medical bills and a new computer (obviously).
So what have we leared from this freakish accident.
Dont breath the blue smoke!!

 

[exeterbohemian]

i'm too nice to my powerbook... worst thing i ever did was accidentally move my 'home' folder. seeing as how i was fairly new to os x at the time, i kinda had a little bit of a freak out when all of my settings seemed to magically disappear. but i figured out what was up soon enough and remedied everything just fine.

 

[Max on Macs]

Worst thing I did was wonder round my college with my PowerBook G4 at night to use the wireless (this is before they got wireless in the dorms) and someone from the college came to check cause they saw someone moving so we closed it and pegged it and I tripped over something and the poor machine went flying. Lasted another 6 months after that (slightly dented and split and scratched ) before the hard drive went and I got this MBP though

 

[onthat]

I dropped a piece of pizza upside down onto my keyboard.

I just said eff it and went and bought a new one.

...a new slice or a new laptop?