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"Maybe It's a Piece of Dust" (theoutline.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: I was in the Grand Central Station Apple Store for a third time in a year, watching a progress bar slowly creep across my computer's black screen as my Genius multi-tasked helping another customer with her iPad. My computer was getting its third diagnostic test in 45 minutes. The problem was not that its logic board was failing, that its battery was dying, or that its camera didn't respond. There were no mysteriously faulty innerworkings. It was the spacebar. It was broken. And not even physically broken -- it still moved and acted normally. But every time I pressed it once, it spaced twice. "Maybe it's a piece of dust," the Genius had offered. The previous times I'd been to the Apple Store for the same computer with the same problem -- a misbehaving keyboard -- Geniuses had said to me these exact same nonchalant words, and I had been stunned into silence, the first time because it seemed so improbable to blame such a core problem on such a small thing, and the second time because I couldn't believe the first time I was hearing this line that it was not a fluke. But this time, the third time, I was ready. "Hold on," I said. "If a single piece of dust lays the whole computer out, don't you think that's kind of a problem?"

13 of 529 comments (clear)

  1. frist by barbariccow · · Score: 1, Funny

    Frist!

    1. Re:frist by barbariccow · · Score: 5, Funny

      Sorry about that. There was a piece of dust in my "i" key which caused a 1/20ms delay in processing.

    2. Re:frist by bobdehnhardt · · Score: 5, Funny

      If a single piece of dust can spoil your "First!" post, don't you think that's kind of a problem?

  2. wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    You were probably holding it wrong and let the dust in.

  3. I think I know the problem by nomadic · · Score: 5, Funny

    Mac laptops are designed for a very specific operating environment -- sitting in a coffee shop and "working on your screenplay" while desperately hoping the cute hipster girl at the next table over asks you what you're working on, so you can casually mention your screenplay. You probably weren't doing that, thus it's your fault.

    1. Re:I think I know the problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

      Haha! Tired cliche! Ancient repetitive humorless humor!

  4. tl;dr version by painandgreed · · Score: 5, Funny

    Man who apparently breaks the keyboards on all the Mac Book Pros that he has ever owned is upset that all three times he has taken his new Mac Book pro into the Apple Store, the people there have offered him the same solution.

    BUY MACALLAN WHISKEY

    Finally, on the third trip, he allows them to fix the issue and bitches that it is a more involved process now than when he broke the keyboards on his previous versions.

    BUY MACALLAN WHISKEY

    1. Re:tl;dr version by q4Fry · · Score: 3, Funny

      Ah, I see the problem: It's the spirits in his keyboard.

  5. Genius by sdinfoserv · · Score: 4, Funny

    “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

  6. Courage! by Comboman · · Score: 4, Funny

    Only Apple has the courage to remove the dust filters.

    --
    Support Right To Repair Legislation.
  7. Space bar isn't laying out the whole computer... by aicrules · · Score: 1, Funny

    Maybe it's the water you spilled on it that you don't want to admit? Or maybe Geniuses aren't actually thoroughly trained in all computer hardware diagnostics as you seem to think they are? These aren't typically electrical engineers. They aren't dumb, but they aren't likely able to tear down a computer, find and fix a broken connection, and put it back together again. You're just as likely to run into the Genius crew moonlighting as a McD cashier.

  8. Re:A sign of times by Immerman · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah. Genesis just implies it happened about 14 billion years more recently. If you're willing to accept the bible as period-appropriate ancient fairytales constructed to convey deeper spiritual truths, rather than as a literal record of events, then yeah, there are a *lot* fewer conflicts. Unfortunately that interpretation also tends to rob the clergy of much of their political power, and so you don't see it expressed much within organized religion.

    Also, incidentally, there are some theories that assert nothing is still all that exists in aggregate - it's just been divided up in such a way that the pieces no longer cancel out. As a gross oversimplification: gravitational potential energy is all negative - we only see gravitational "holes" that things fall towards, not "hills" that they fall away from. And the positive mass-energy of the "stuff" creating the "holes" would perfectly cancel out the negative energy created by the "hole" itself. Shove the entire universe - space, time, mass, and energy, into a sufficiently powerful blender and hit "frappe", and the whole of it will combine back into non-existence.

    --
    --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
  9. S-Drive by cstacy · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's not dust; it's spores that have "contaminated" the keyboard enclosure.

    You see, spores (such as from Psilocybe cubensis) are the basis of the universe.
    They are everywhere, sometimes manifested in our physical plane, but always existing
    everywhere on the mycoplane of Space. At the lowest level, biology is physics, and
    physics recapitulates biology -- they are the same thing. It's all quantum, you see.

    Your problem is that you've got a stuck spore. You need to energize it properly,
    and it will instantly transmit (quantum spore teleport) the key's signal to any part
    of the UNICODE. Your brain will function as the quantum sentience that directs
    the action, so that instead of a SPACE, you'll get the correct symbol pressed.

    (This is related to why sometimes electronics gear that has not been stored
    properly for a while will spew out "dust" when you fire it up, or why sometimes
    it seems like there are dead cockroaches or mouse turds inside the box.)

    SOLUTION:

    The Genius Bar is actually stocked with dehydrated tardigrades.
    If the moisture (liquid spill incursion) sensor in your Mac has not been triggered,
    an Apple representative can insert a tardigrade into your machine along with an
    eyedropper of water. Using horizontal DNS zone transfer (I think that's what it's
    called; something to do with binding, anyway) the tardigrade will interact with
    and energize the spore, curing your SPACE key bounce problem. This is known as
    a "key de-bounce" procedure. If your tech doesn't seem to know all this just
    have him look it up in the knowledge base; it's standard.

    Just make sure he doesn't hold the tardigrade wrong, or your laptop will
    start spinning and twisting, ad the end result will not be pretty.

    I paid $6 to learn all this, by the way.