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Baked Apple
Aaron Steele writes "Okay, I work at an Apple Authorized Retailer and we just had a lady come in to see if we could fix her PowerBook G4. She walks in the store and comes up to me, 'Sir, I've got a baked Apple.' The top of the screen was a little brown and warped. The lady opened up the machine and the screen was all cracked, and there was not a single key left on the keyboard. It turns out she had the machine in the oven for 20 minutes, baking at 400 degrees. No joke. And what's even more amazing. The machine still works. Ethernet, Modem, USB, it all works. Plug in an external monitor and keyboard and it's good as new ... almost." Am I the only one for whom this conjures up images of Shrinky Dinks?
Surely, not slashdotted already?
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
Just curious !
Methinks the powerbook was not the only thing that was "baked".
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
That's the oddest pie recipe I've ever seen.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
I'm more amazed that no one asked her why she did it... Do we look down on non-computer people so much that we don't even bother to ask anymore why they do stupid things?
P.S. The picture seems to be slashdotted into oblivion now.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Was this woman real old? Did she put it in with cookies, or brownies? What was in those brownies? And do you think she has anymore?
Try this one for baked apple
She was probably cleaning and shoved the powerbook into the oven to wipe a counter or something.
:)
Don't laugh - my wife did this to a tray full of tupperware (so she could clean the sink and counters) and it ruined her oven.
Ok, now laugh
Evidently if you don't make sure the little switch is in the right position in the back and plug it into high voltage, the things tend to be a little tempermental. Loud pop, a little smoke and no more SUN.
Worst. Sig. Ever.
Joke - She mistook the shiny laptop for a baking pan. And removed the stains with peroxide.
Serious-Her young kids/any young kids in the house put it in the oven and she turned it on for something else.
These are all the relevant urls:
Set of pics of the machine
Shows it still boots
Story behind this
More pics showing it works
kind of reminds me of this /. story about someone baking a palm. apparently, he was trying to dry off his palm from the rain. kind of amazing what these things can go through, or what people think they can go through...
:)
but in the case of the palm, someone else didn't notice the palm in the oven and baked a pizza over it.
-- Kircle
Is those old Apple ][ advertisements, where one was toasted in a house fire, keyboard melted and it still worked after a transplant.
... and thought it wasn't getting hot enough when it ran.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
No big surprise... every one of the PCBs in there has already been fed through an oven once, WHEN IT WAS SOLDERED!!!
I suspect she was trying to be like Ellen Feiss but misinterpreted something.
She was probably trying to get baked and then talk about Apple, but instead baked the Apple.
Simple mistake, really. Anyone could have made it.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
Grandma's Olde Fashioned G4 Pie Recipie
Apple Filling:
1 large tart Apple Powerbook G4
40 grams / 1 1/2 oz of butter
1/2 cup of castor sugar
1 cup of water
1 cinnamon stick or 1/2 a teaspoon of ground cinnamon
4 whole cloves or a pinch of ground cloves
2 large strips of the rind of 1/2 a lemon (zest)
1 teaspoon of cornflour
Peel the Powerbook and cut into quarters. Remove the core and dice each quarter. In a large saucepan melt the butter over a medium low heat, add the diced Powerbook, sugar, water, lemon rind, cinnamon and cloves and combine. Cover and sweat for 5 to 10 minutes, or until the Powerbook is just tender but still retains its shape. Remove from the heat. Discard the lemon rind, cinnamon stick and cloves. Drain most of the excess liquid off and mix in the cornflour. Set aside to cool.
Sweet Shortcrust Pastry
2 cups of flour
A pinch of salt
125 grams / 4 1/2 oz of butter
1/4 cup of castor sugar
1 egg
1 to 2 tablespoons of milk
Preheat the oven to 180C, 350F or gas mark 4. Grease a large deep pie dish or a round springform tin. Shake two cups of flour into the tin to dust the sides. Pour the flour out into a large bowl or food processor and add the sugar. Cut the butter into small cubes and rub into the flour with your hands or process until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the egg and mix or process for another 5 to 10 seconds until the mixture comes together, adding the milk if necessary. Turn out the mixture on a lightly floured bench or board and knead until the mixture forms a smooth ball. Handle as little as possible to prevent the pastry from becoming hard when baked. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
On a lightly floured bench or board roll out two-thirds of the pastry, 5 mm (1/8 inch) thick. Place inside the greased and dusted tin to form the base and sides of the pie. Carefully spoon the cooled Powerbook filling into the pie shell. Roll out the remaining pastry into a circle, 5 mm (1/8 inch) thick and large enough to cover the Powerbook and form the lid of the pie. Wrap the lid over a rolling pin and carefully unroll over the top of the pie. Trim off the excess pastry, seal the edge by crimping the pastry sides using a fork or pinching between your forefinger and thumb. Make small slits or holes in the lid with a small knife for air to escape. With a pastry brush, lightly coat the top with a little extra beaten egg. Bake for 40 to 50 minutes or until the pastry is golden. Serve hot or cold with ice cream, whipped cream or custard.
To form a lattice top cut 1 cm (½ inch) strips out of the pastry lid. Lay them across the pie, 5 mm (1/4 inch) apart. Fold back every second vertical strip and lay a new horizontal strip across the strips that have not been folded. Lay the folded back strips back down. Then repeat folding back the vertical strips that were not folded in the previous round. Cover the rest of the pie in a similar fashion.
(Serves 6 to 8)
She was hired to babysit for a young couple's infant daughter. They did not know of her three-doobie-a-day habit. When the couple returned home, she told them that everything went OK and that the pie was almost done. Alarmed, the couple ran into the kitchen, opened the oven door, and discovered that THE BABYSITTER HAD BAKED THEIR POWERBOOK!!!!
Damn, I've got to stop reading alt.folklore.urban.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
So, if it still works, why doesn't the guy call the lady up and tell her. She could buy an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse (that's less than $1000), and still have a computer that works. Instead of wasting the thousands of dollars that she spent on it completely.
In all seriousness, although the par-baked PowerBook might still work now, I'm guessing that the chance of a latent part failure in the near future has been significantly increased.
A similar situation happen to my younger sister. She got a furby for christmas several years ago and had a lot of fun with it until one day it wouldn't shut up while she was trying to do some homework at the kitchen table. So she decided to put it in a dark quiet place ... THE OVEN! That did a wonderful job of quieting it down, so good that she promptly forgot about it. Later that evening my mother preheated the oven for dinner. A few minutes later she smelled burning plastic ... the poor furby had its fur singed, was severly deformed, and never worked again.
And there was much rejoicing
YAY!
Thoughts on tech, Software Engineering, and stuff
From the article:
Before we tossed it in the trash, I decided to try and power it up just for kicks, and it worked! The machine booted just fine! The screen is cracked and broken, but if you plug in an external monitor and keyboard it works like a charm. Ethernet, Modem, USB, Optical Drive, and HD all work just fine. I have already reformatted the HD and installed Mac OS 10.2.
Did no one at the store think to call this lady and tell her? Don't you think she might have wanted her machine back if she knew it still booted? At least so she could get her data off...
Ok, ok, enough with the Pie jokes. There is plenty of good material here without them:
Are you sure this machine wasn't stolen? From the pictures, it looks kinda hot.
Are you sure she wasn't just trying to burn her first CD?
Insert OB Overclocking Joke Here
"Ma'am, I feally think you are missing the point of FireWire."
best web host ever
So did you think to ask her why she did it?
Another example of a Mac user inspired by the "Think Different" campaign. What other kind of half-baked reason could she have?
-some weird story. Glad I got to see the pics with the correct URL. WHY did this lady do this?
--here's my tough as nails apple story. We run on solar here. The first year though I didn't have a proper buried power cable, my AC feed from the inverters was literally just an extension cord on top of the ground. Was running a mac 6400 tower at the time, through a surge protector/power strip (no, too dumb to send in warranty card when I got the surge, duh on me). Anywho, one day there's a thunderstorm, being reasonably cautious I unplugged everything. Storm goes away, cool, plug all the stuff back in. About 5 minutes later ZAP! Rogue lightning bolt hits I guess the ground nearby or the cord directly. Pooter goes POP, everything shuts down. I mean it was loud, a very close by hit.
I am steamed, think oh crap no pooter. Reset breaker, hit power button, CHIME, that nice boot up chord! Amazing! thing boots but ran sorta screwy. Just-screwy. surfing was a tad slower, would get occassional screen freezes, etc, but as it was at the time my "best" computer I just kept using it. Next day I open the case, WOW, the mobo is all crispy! I mean fried city, and the thing is still working. Hard to describe except it looked -lightning hit. there's burnt stuff all over. I cleaned it as good as possible and put it back together. Used it for a few more months in crippled mode, then upgraded an old quadra to use instead, then I bought a used pb 1400, then I just parted the 6400 out, kept the drives and those great built in speakers.
tough boxes for sure
I'm more amazed that no one asked her why she did it
Clearly this is the start of a new Mac ad campaign. You remember "It takes a licking, and keeps on ticking!"
Soon we will be deluged with pictures of powerbooks that were dropped from great heights, run over by buses...
You get the drift.
On a side note, it's kind of hard to say much to the customer about it at all. Management frowns on pretty much any question you would be inclined to ask them. They like to steer you away from phrases like "Are you on drugs?" "What, are you retarded?" and "What the FUCK is WRONG with you?" So you just sigh, shake your head and fix their machine.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I do not see why you would see this article as a sign of a slow day. I am relatively sure that the hardware fans of the slashdot community feel that the fact the thing still worked after being subjected to such extreme temperatures is rather interesting. I know I do:)
-Poo will never be unfunny.
so like I was working on a paper for school and I thought it'd. be.. like.. cool.. to put my PC laptop in... the oven... for like.. 20 minutes and it was like.. bleep bloop bleep and it died. I lost my paper.. it was.. a.. really good paper.
Then I bought a Mac laptop. I was working on another.. like.. paper.. and thought it'd be cool to put.. this Mac.. in the.. like.. oven for 20 minutes. and I did.. and it still booted up..
it was a really good paper.
Trolling is a art,
Remember the Space Clam iBook? The corners were double-shod rubber wrapped around the two frontmost corners, which (on this model) were the likeliest impact points in the event of a drop. The newer iBooks have an HD that is encased in a brick of rubber. Aluminum/titanium frames. This is the stuff you want in a laptop.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
My homeowner's insurance covers (I think) 25% of the value of the house in possessions. I specifically asked if a laptop computer that got damaged while out of the house was covered. My agent said yes. YMMV with your own insurance company, though.
I doubt baking it in an oven would be covered, though.
With photos? Did they supply photos? Most urban legends don't come with photo evidence.
Used to feature an Apple ][ recovered from a fire -- totally melted and still working.
There was also a story about a library in a village in Papua New Guinea that was flooded, and the Macs in the library were filled with mud. They hosed em off, dried them out, and they worked.
Finally there's an old BMUG article about "hanging your disks out to dry" after their shareware library was flooded. They opened the floppy disks, washed the disks gently with detergent, air dried them, and put them back in new cases. Voila they were readable.
I used the same trick on a floppy disk soaked with spilled coffee (far worse than flood water I imagine). No data loss.
(Sorry about the crappy link, the only other hit google gave me was a tripod site.)
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Apple also did a demo similar to what you describe with the iBook, I forget if it was the initial introduction of the toilet-seat iBook or the Macworld directly after but they had a guy climb a ladder and toss the iBook on the floor, where Jobs proceeded to pick it up and boot it.
Anyone remember this?
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
This is something that I could see a 3 year old doing. Thinking that he could play a joke the kid will hide the Computer in the over because that is somewhere no one would look for it. Not knowing this the mother is about to cook something and preheats the oven at 400. after 20 minutes she opens the door to see her expensive laptop in the stove with the white apple starting to brown and the keys fizzling. Using potholder she quickly gets the computer out of the oven. This is just a possible story on what possibly could of happend where the lady was of average intelegance. when little kids are involved random things can happen to people that seem compleatly irationail otherwise.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
A few months ago, one of my clients suffered a house fire. His Dell notebook suffered similar damage, but booted with an external keyboard and monitor. We were able to transfer the data from it, and stored it on our server until the replacement arrived.
So this is a big deal? Wish I'd know. I could have had a story on Slashdot!
the no
So maybe we're not hearing the reasons because this person wants to keep her job.
(I know ten women like this customer, though. Think of how casual she was in saying her little "baked apple" thing. Didn't faze her much. This is a woman with serious money and no sense. She miplaces four cell phones a year, at least.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I don't get it. This is a 15", $2,400.00 powerbook, right? And she dumped it, without explanation, at a repair shop, because fixing it would be $1,000.00 for the new screen?
This story has the stink of "bullshit" written all over it, frankly.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
I worked for Digital Research, we did support for all the DR peripherals, IO cards, mice, sound and video... Lots of jumpers to configure, lots of crap to support...
... Still jerky!...
Well, one day I get a call from this guy, and his mouse wont work,... says that the mouse is jumpy on the screen... "Dirty track ball" I think, so I have him clean that... still jerky,... "Check Settings" I think, settings are fine... so we reinstall the drivers, reconnect the mouse, reboot the system,
So I call over my lv2 tech and his partner, and they go through all the same procedures.... for 45 minutes, were working this guy through navigating in windows with a mouse whose pointer jumps from one side to the other...
The guy is frustrated, pissed at the mouse, pissed at us... and he vents... "I Just don't get this, Why do you sell this mouse if it doesn't work!!! I mean, it's not even designed right, the buttons are hard to click, and the label is upside down..."
My ears peaked, so I took a chance... "Sir," as politely as I could muster, "When you look at the mouse, as your using it... describe what it looks like for me, tell me how your using it."
With a frustrated sigh, he responds, "Well, I hold the mouse, and move the ball with my thumb, and click on the buttons, just like you're supposed to!"
The dumb ass was holding a normal trackball mouse in his hand, upside down, and moving the ball with his thumb. I got him on mute as fast as I could... both me and the other techs, and everyone else who had gathered, burst out in cries of pain and agony.
2 days later, I quit... that was just too much.
The Code Ninja is swift with his tool, precise in his delivery, and deadly accurate in his execution.
Around 1990, my friend Jeff Byers (later head of tech support for Telix at deltaComm) was sitting in the old basement computer lab at Illinois Central College, when a one of the lab staff, for no particular reason, cut up a 5.25" floppy disk with scissors and inserted the pieces into the floppy drive in the next computer over. When someone asked him why he did that, he just shrugged and said "I don't know" and went back to what he was doing. A couple days later, the computer was gone.
While I know he probably didn't mean it as such, it certainly seems a little sleezy. "Hey, this system's screwed, and will cost a loit to fix... so you might as well leave it with us and go buy a new one." Then he installs a new OS on it and runs it with a keyboard and external monitor?
This just seems wrong to me for some reason. I hope he at least showed how she could use it again without buying an entire new system.
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
I had a PC, and I put it in the oven, and like, baked it for a while, and like it went beep bloop buzz and then exploded. It was a bummer.. It ruined my stove, it was a really good stove too. So then I got a powerbook, and like, then when I baked that, it like bent a little, but still worked and stuff.
My name is Joe, and I'm a moron.
My reading, is that anybody who can walk into a store with an obviously fried (er, baked) $2500 box, and say with a straight face that she's got "a baked apple", has got to have a sense of humor.
I'm betting that she went home, and told her astonished friends.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
http://www.weaselcollectibles.com/cart/item-detail .cfm?ID=6152
The coolest voice ever.
The smell of a melting PowerBook is gross enough, but I would I'd imagine cats smell even worse after time spent in the oven.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Maybe she went on holydays (planning not to take her powerbook with her), was concerned that the house might get burgled, and proceeded to hide the valuables: jewelry into the trash, bearer's share certificates among the old newspapers, apple into the oven, ...
Three weeks later, when she came back, she had all forgotten about these hiding places, took the trash out, threw the old papers into the chimney and pre-heated the oven for a pizza...
Say no to software patents.
Cocoa!
Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week.
I suggest they rename their objective-c API from Cocoa to Cinnamon.
Apple has a danged clear set of policies about dealing with customers -- you don't ridicule and you don't bitch
So you can't ask a question without ridiculing or bitching?
How about "Can you tell us why it was in the oven?"
I'll bet you dollars to donuts this is how it happened: A lot of people get the bright idea to hide their valuables in the oven. They either forget that they've done this, or forget to inform their housemates that they've done this. Then, somebody gets a hankerin' for a frozen pizza, and preheats the oven....
Nine times out of ten it's an electric razor, but every once in a while... it's a dildo. Of course it's company policy never to imply ownership in the event of a dildo... always use the indefinite article "a dildo," never "your dildo."
I write in my journal
I ran across a client who excalimed that there was a problem with his 'starter chip'. Apparently, the battery had run out, and as those with Apple experience know, the most frequent symptom of a bad battery is a blank screen; the blank screen goes away with a warm reboot. So, as I watched in horror, the client showed me what he was doing: just after the computer started up, while it was on, he removed the RAM SIMM, and plugged it back in. Recoiling from the shock of having its RAM torn out and plunked back in, the computer restarted. The client, of course, was disturbed that 'this seemed to work less and less often lately'. Either the computer gods, or the patron saint of the feeble-minded, had clearly been smiling on him...
. . . is nothing compared to the boundlessness of stupidity.
It's only funny until someone gets hurt. Then, it's hilarious.
Perhaps it's carbon fiber. Whatever it is cracked easily and badly. There has not been a TiBook in my lab (I count 4) that has not had some sort of hardware issue. Perhaps they are rev. 1 or 2., although my advisor is a Mac madman and upgrades at almost every speed bump, so I doubt his cracked screen one was. As for the one I use (the one whose chassis cracked around the IR port), System Profiler says it is 667MHz, PowerBookG4 version 2.1. Maybe this corresponds to rev 2?
Anyway, I am gratified to know that they've gotten better.
I used a hair dryer on a 20K mixing console and a $5K digital piano that got caught on stage when one heck of a sudden rainstorm (you know, one of those ones that starts raining horozontally so the stage roof doesn't do anytyhing) came up without any warning.
The digital piano actually got taken into a trailer before it got too wet, but unfortunately it was left directly under a leak in the trailer. When we picked it up later the water ran out in big streams. It worked just fine.
The sound console was mostly fine, we just lost one of the aux returns on it. No problem. Gotta love Mackie.
- ------- There are ten kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who... Huh?
Check the pictures guys. It's very obvious that they did a screen swap to a lower body. This whole thing is a huge fake. Want proof?
Check all the pictures labeled warped screen. You will notice two things. Their is a plastic IR cover to the right and an RCA plug to the left. Both are made from the same plastic as the keys of the keyboard, which if you remember correctly completely deformed in the oven.
Both of these peices of plastic show NO deformity. Also the white plastic of the RCA plug has not even turned brown at all. This is a total fake.
Papa Legba come and open the gate
It's interesting, but a bit slow. I first saw this on the Mac Observer forums 2 days ago, and I think they got it from Mac Addict or some other site.
"Common Sense Ain't" -Unknown
I have heard other people put stuff in the oven for this reason. Then they turn on the oven.
I saw a baked Compaq Armada like this. But then, it didn't get stolen.
It still worked fine after 10 mins at 180C in a fan-forced oven. If you do this, take off the ON knob.
I'd like to see comparative tests for Intel and AMD baked this way (as opposed to removing the heat sink). Let's see the Intel try and cool off by lowering the clock speed now.