I’m devastated. Distraught. Bereft. Less than three weeks after I purchased a brand new MacBook Pro, the poor machine is now lying dormant, unable to power up, utterly f*cked. And it’s all the fault of a Malbec from Concha Y Toro.
Here’s the sequence of events:
2008-2009 - I pontificate, procrastinate and ruminate about buying a MacBook Pro. I really want one but they’re expensive right?
08/07/2009 – An unplanned visit to the Apple Store in London’s Regent Street results in a purchase of my first mac. I’ve finally done it!
08/07/2009 – 29/07/2009 – Love blossoms. I transfer my itunes library to its new home, download Handbrake and start a project to convert all my movies to a digital library. I download Evernote and Omnifocus for work based notetaking and project management. I give my first Keynote presentation with some awesome embedded video – in short I fall in love with everything Mac. What is a PC anyway?
1.30am 30/0-7/2009 – Lying on the couch, watching series 3 of The Wire, I hear the notification sound of a text arriving on my wife’s iPhone. The sound is muffled, so I lift up a couple of cushions, searching, and then… OH NOOO!!! The cushion in my left hand barely touches the glass of Malbec on the coffee table, but the force is still enough to send the Reidel glass of red crashing on to the keyboard of the MacBook Pro. Sh*t!! Panic. Fear. Impotence. And yes, the eyes started to moisten.
I turn the power off. I wipe away as much of the wine as I can. I’m frantic, I feel ill. Meanwhile McNulty is out on a dinner date with the Campaign Strategist in uptown Baltimore. Christ McNulty, you’re always thinking of yourself!
I go to bed. Everything will be fine if I believe it to be so.
08.30am 30/07/2009 – I’m awake. I take the Mac into the garden and power up. It’s working…but wait. I have a working trackpad but no typing capability – the keyboard has shorted. Bloody hell. So I turn my poor Mac off in the vain hope that if I re-boot everything will be ok. Except now the machine won’t even turn on! Oh God, say it ain’t so Joe?
So that’s it. The Apple store say that it’s not covered under AppleCare as my carelessness is classed as “accidental damage”. The repair bill is going to be at least £600 and likely to be more if the wine has touched the hard drive.
I am utterly gutted. After two years of dreaming of a MacBook Pro, I’ve managed to kill mine within three weeks of finally purchasing it.
And the wine? A Winemakers Lot Malbec from Concha Y Toro that I picked up from Oddbins on the way home from work. The wine was pretty average – how cruel that such mediocrity could be responsible for the death of something so great.
It’s all in the hands of the insurers now.
I feel your pain. I’ve killed many a keyboard and laptop with various liquids and the feeling that the floor has just dropped from under your feet is still something I can’t overcome easily. My most recent catastrophe was my external hard drive with my entire Aperture library crashed. I know I went through all six stages of grief before I could think straight and seek professional help. (data recovery service)
In the past, it was much easier to simply disassemble and dry out the components. But with today’s Mac laptops, they’ve made that nearly impossible. My recommendation to you when you get your machine repaired is to invest in a silicone keyboard cover. Though it didn’t prevent me from killing my Apple keyboard with coffee, it offers a little bit of protection when you are “forced” to sip and type at the same time.
Also, I recommend a good external drive with the same capacity as your laptop. A minimum regiment of backing up weekly will at least save all that data you’ve worked so hard to accumulate should a disaster like this strike again.
Best of luck to you.
God, that’s a shocker mate. Maybe the household insurance will do it – or just look for an untended one and swap them over.
I know that Laporte and others have spoken of fixing some electronics by rinsing them with water and then leaving in the airing cupboard but maybe that was just phones!
Good luck though!
Actually, Moray has a good point….I think it was pack the mac in a bag with a crap load of rice and put it in the fridge I think which absorbs the moisture
The PC God gets payback. Return to the dark side
I really am feeling your pain. Contents insurance should cover though…..
Either that, or a Fayre at your local church, selling wine advice might raise at least £1.50 towards…??
Just as heartbreaking reading the story as hearing it! Thank god for contents insurance…
Oh be-jeesus! I am sorry for not being more comforting on the phone when you called – I do feel your pain. The worst thing about this is that it wasn’t even a decent Malbec! You should have for the Filosur Malbec 2007 from Classic Wine Direct!
Wow. You know what might be worse than this story? If you were to spill wine on a friends Mac Book instead of your own, and if it happened while you were pretty much wasted and don’t even remember what wine it was you were drinking or that you even did it. And then wake up the next morning to find that your friends’ Mac Book that had been marinating in that mystery wine all night. And then to have your friend realize what happened and attempt to power up the Mac to no avail… I was that friend…
Oh, I really feel your pain. I have now a MacBook Pro and enjoy it very much. My first Mac was an iBook and on the first day using the machine I slipped over the powercord and took the iBook down. I cried and did not want to start the machine again. But finally I did and it worked, only I had to put in the powercord in a special way, because it was broken. I worked with that powercord almost for eight years. And now I have my MacBook Pro and I put my powercord in a safe way and every liquid (I like wine) far away from it.
I’m writing this with my glass of wine about one meter away from me.
Johanna
My wife did that – but to an entry level notebook.
The key is to remove the battery and mains connection immediately and turn the keyboard upside down and don’t power up until absolutely dry.
Better still disconnect the battery when not in use.