Left, a Sport Cruiser aircraft of the same type; right, the MacBook Air after the fall
Posted on 02/10/2015 2:41:59 PM PST by Swordmaker
A South African pilot appears to have taken the name of his MacBook Air a little too literally, managing to drop it from the light aircraft he was flying when the canopy flew open. The MacBook, along with his flying license and logbook, fell 1000 feet into the fields below–but amazingly survived the experience.
Admittedly it didn’t emerge entirely unscathed. Pilot and Reddit user Av80r reports that the unibody casing was bent, the glass trackpad shattered and the cooling fans were damaged, but the screen remained intact and the MacBook continues to work …
The MacBook was found by a farmer, along with with the pilot’s paperwork, which enabled the farmer to make contact via Facebook in order to arrange to return the items. Check out the other photos below.
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Looks like Hollywood is angling for a “Gods Must Be Crazy” re-boot.
Dammit! Beat me by that much!
Didn’t drop it far enough—drop it farther (further?) next time so its completely obliterated. Put the hate on laptops! GGGrrrrr!!!
*hated mine, sold it to my spouse’s boss who got it working fine, then keeled it*
My Quicksilver G-4, which I bought an eon ago was working perfectly until the electric companies neutral bar failed, and sent 240 vac, to one line. I have a balance transformer to protect my stuff, but it was a nanosecond too late, and the power supply failed. I love my new iMac, but if I can find a replacement power supply for the G4, I’m going to fire it back up. I’m quite impressed by the build factor and durability of Apple products!
Wow - good to know - I have one and am flying to LA this week. If it blows out the window I’m all good.
Must be a cat of some sort, though there is no tail..
If Apple is smart they use this guy and his macbook in a neat commercial and give him a new one.
That is probably close to terminal velocity for that shape, higher wouldn’t change the impact speed if that is the case.
Id say they should keep in in new machines for life!
Like Timex, take a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’.
Tablets and Iphones will never replace my old school Laptop, as long as I can get it professionally updated and repaired every so often. I never actually place it on my lap anyway. I’m too nearsighted. I have my laptop at arms length in front of me on the dining room table. I like the Big Picture only a Laptop can produce. Of course I still prefer going to see movies on the Big Screen vs watching a full length feature film on my cell phone. The Mini-me version is just not as fullfilling as the Boogie Board sized one.
“Didn’t drop it far enough—drop it farther (further?) next time so its completely obliterated....”
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If you knew anything about the physics of objects falling through atmosphere , you’d know that it would hit the ground any harder from a higher attitude—it had already reached “terminal velocity”.
He probably threw it out the plane because he knows Windows 10 is coming. I think he was trying to collect insurance on this “accident”. : )
No need for defenestration: it’s an AMD64-based laptop. Just wipe the disk, pop in the Windows DVD, and install!
But, keep the Macintosh System Software CDs in case you need to recover it—the recovery tools only run on System X
Macs are more sophisticated than Windows in that regard. No System Software CDs (CDs?) - there is no CD slot on a MacAir. You simply press the Option key on power-on, then choose restore from a backup over the wi-fi. MacAir's automatically continually back up to external storage so you never lose data. Someday Windows will copy that built-in feature, as they do almost every other feature of Macs.
. . . but how was the pilot able to navigate to the nearest airport without it?
What? Wow, I have been gone a long time. My last encounter with a Mac was in middle school—an iMac G3 (the slot-loading variety) on System 9.
Uh, no. Apple doesn't make AMD processor computers. This is my MacBook Air's specifications showing the processor is Intel:
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