'Sir, I've got a baked Apple'


MacFixIt (Feb 4) has the story of a PowerBook G4 that was baked in an oven for 20 minutes and still booted. Though all of the keys on the keyboard were missing and the LCD was completely trashed, somehow it still managed to start up.

Mac service technician and MacFixIt reader Aaron Steele relates the story:

"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.' I laugh and she proceeds to take her PowerBook G4 of the bag it was in. The top of the screen was a little brown and warped. I had my manager come up and look at it. He hadn't seen anything like that before.

"The lady opened up the machine and the screen was all cracked, and there was not a single key on the keyboard. I finally had to ask the lady how all of this had happened. As it turns out, she baked the PowerBook in the oven for 20 minutes. I kid you not. She said it with a straight face, and I could hardly keep from laughing. She wasn't joking. The thing was baked. She also kept every single key. She told us that they popped off while it was in the oven and she dug through to save every one.

"We told her that the cost of the screen alone would be around $ 1000 if not more, so she decided to leave the machine with us to discard. 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."

The only apparent detail missing from this rather incredible is just how this woman's PowerMac ended up in an oven for 20 minutes. Personally, I'll attribute it to a lover jilted by the comely charms of Apple's industry-leading pro portable.

What's your take?