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Put That Puppy Out To Stud (11/26/01)
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Still think they just don't make 'em like they used to? True, Apple's quality control appears to have slipped a few notches in recent years-- Cubes with "cracks," PowerBooks that electrically shock people, etc.-- but every once in a while we hear about some poor Mac that's been subjected to, shall we say, "unfriendly conditions" and bounced back like a champ. Oh, sure, there are always going to be forces too nasty for even the hardiest Mac to overcome-- such as UPS, judging by the photos of a poor, jacked-up G4 that faithful viewer Chris Ashley pointed out a couple of weeks ago. But there are some Macs out there that have been to hell and back and lived to tell the tale. They are the few... the proud... the UberMacs.
The latest UberMac sighting comes courtesy of faithful viewer Wayne Stewart, who notes an article at it.mycareer.com.au which describes a Power Mac G4 that went through a trial by fire-- literally. It seems that an Australian digital music outfit called the Electric Factory suffered a touch of arson last month that left their G4 a "twisted, melted wreck" that was "too hot to touch" when it was found. Not that we like to revel in graphic descriptions of Mac carnage, but we'll press on just to give you a sense of the extensive damage: "the keyboard was melted beyond recognition and all that was left of the peripheral speakers was the magnets... One side of the G4 was melted and the other side fused solid." Oh, the horror...
But despite the G4's massive disfigurement (and a good soaking from the fire fighters' hoses), the company's techs sawed it open in a valiant effort to rescue the internal hard drives. Miracle of miracles: all three of the drives (two IDE, one SCSI) were extracted and found to be in perfect condition, with zero data loss. Even crazier, the RAM and SCSI card checked out A-okay as well. Finally, the techs hooked up a monitor, plugged the G4 in, and turned it on. There was no startup chime because the speaker was fried, but that melty Mac otherwise booted up just fine. In contrast, the Wintels that weren't as close to the fire (suffering only smoke damage instead of a double whammy of full-on flame and water) "don't work at all now." Hey, Electric Factory people-- may we recommend that you send that UberMac back to Apple for breeding purposes?
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SceneLink (3414)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 11/26/01 episode: November 26, 2001: Sure, the iPod's a hot item-- but Apple expects its stores to sell how many every hour? Meanwhile, a scary clause in the Microsoft Product License accompanying Office v.X has some people climbing the walls, and now there's still one more reason to love the Power Mac G4: it's apparently fireproof...
Other scenes from that episode: 3412: Want A Whole Lotta 'Pods (11/26/01) Well, we're back; basically we spent all of last Thanksgiving Thursday split between the baffling ordeal of food preparation and the wanton consumption of twice our weight in Tofurky, Katie's famous mashed potatoes, three kinds of stuffing, and two pies-- after which we caught the last two hours of the Buffy marathon and then collapsed into a profound food coma... 3413: Keep Playing, Keep Paying (11/26/01) You may have noticed that while much of the Mac community celebrated the recent release of Microsoft Office v.X by crying tears of joy and dancing half-naked in the streets, the AtAT staff remained our usual low-key selves...
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