A note to Mac users: Stop letting your pets and your kids use them as toilets.
I really don't know what the hell is wrong with people, but in the store I work in, I've seen a few Macs come in in really sorry shape.
One iMac came in for repair because it stopped booting. It was a major equipment failure caused by overheating. The convection vents at the top were completely blocked. That prevented the fans inside the iMac from venting the hot air.
The reason they were blocked? Apparently the owners of the iMac also had birds - large ones, from the look of things. And they let the birds perch on top of the computer when they were working, to keep them company. And the birds went to the bathroom.
The back of the iMac was literally caked with guano.
Now I ask you, what kind of person does that? And what's more, what kind of person thinks it's reasonable and appropriate to present a computer covered in bird crap to a repair facility? For goodness' sake, take a damp rag to it and wipe it down first.
Some people utterly lack common sense. Or, for that matter, any semblance of decency.
More recently, we had a laptop come to us for service that wasn't working right. When we noticed there was a peculiar odor coming from the keyboard, the owner reluctantly admitted that her pet dog had peed on it.
Peed on the computer. Why did the dog pee on the computer? Did she have a fire hydrant screensaver?
Didn't she figure we were going to discover what had happened eventually?
But one of my coworkers had a story that topped them all. He'd first worked at another area Mac retailer — another independent shop like ours. Apparently a father had brought in his teenage daughter's MacBook Pro after she said it mysteriously stopped working. As soon as the tech got the machine on his bench, he was hit with the overwhelming stench of vomit.
Once she was confronted with a question about the source of the vomit, the girl tearfully confessed that she'd gotten drunk with friends, thrown up on the Mac, and done the best job she could cleaning it up.
Needless to say, none of these events are covered by Apple's warranty or by AppleCare. So in each and every case, the owner of the Mac was out of luck at getting their computer fixed without spending
That dog pee one was the straw that broke the camel's back at my store. That one made my boss at the store implement a new "no biohazards" policy. We are not, under any circumstances, to accept any machine that's been contaminated with the excretions or secretions of any creature, human or non-human.
Obviously accidents happen. I've seen more than one MacBook come in that isn't working because liquid has been spilled on it. Sometimes it's soda, sometimes it's wine, whatever it is, liquids and Macs don't interact too well. Still. we get used to having the Mac around our food and beverages sometimes, since we use them so much. As much as I hate to see it happen, I can at least understand why it happens.
But it's still much more mystifying to me as to how and why these things get contaminated with really nasty stuff.
The bottom line is that if you puke, poop or pee on your Mac — or if someone or something else does it for you — don't count on getting it working again, at least not with the help of your friendly neighborhood Mac repair shop. We have quite enough to do without having to don biohazard suits to clean your Mac.
