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How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven

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Re: How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven

#181

Post by ScottBurson »

larrys wrote: post #149
mikeash wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think "most" microwaves have a metal rack, although they're not uncommon. It's also not uncommon to see microwave-safe food containers that contain metal. I've seen grocery store deli soups, for example, that end up with a big ring of metal around the top when you open them, but can still be microwaved. Still, "no metal" is a good approximation. "Unless it says you can use it" is probably OK to leave implied.

I've seen that as well. I'm wondering (from my own experiment) if it has something to do with angles vs. no angles [1] in terms of the metal in addition to the blocking by metal of the actual microwaves. [1] Same as with stealth airplanes avoiding radar, right?

You're on the right track. The strength of the electric field around a charged, curved metal surface is inversely proportional to the radius of the curve. Sharp points have a very small radius, so they generate a large electric field, which can easily ionize air and thus cause arcing.

So spoons are okay, as they normally have no sharp points. Forks can cause problems, though.

Actually there's another issue here. If you stick an unopened can of food in the microwave, the microwaves can't reach the food; you get the same effect as if you ran the oven empty, which is that the field becomes very intense and risks burning out the magnetron or other components. The oven is designed to have its output absorbed by something, not just reflected back.

Re: How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven

#182

Post by cgio »

jrockway wrote: post #175
cgio wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it depends on the kind of lightbulb, but I would be especially careful with eco(?) energy saving light bulbs From http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-506347/An-ene... Energy-saving light bulbs are so dangerous that everyone must leave the room for at least 15 minutes if one falls to the floor and breaks, a Government department warned yesterday. The startling alert came as health experts also warne…

My thought while reading this was "this must be an article from the Daily Mail". Then I looked at the link's URL more carefully. FWIW, we were discussing incandescent bulbs, not CFLs, as referred to in your excerpt.

That was the first link I found btw. There are other links like the following from the Environmental Protection Agency http://www2.epa.gov/cfl/cleaning-broken-cfl if you think there is something with the validity of the article linked previously. It raises the same issues.

Furthermore, the discussion was not specifying incandescent, but I specified energy saving just in case.

Re: How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven

#183

Post by dfc »

prewett wrote: post #178
dfc wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will take the Xwindows experience over the Xwindows experience in just about any competitor UI?

The X Windows experience on my MacBook Pro is great! I get a OS that does pretty much everything my ThinkPad with Linux did, plus: * wifi works out of the box and reconnects practically instantly out of sleep [1] * sleep works without me spending two weeks recompiling Gentoo with different kernel options and finally discovering some boot flag that worked until Ubuntu broke it in one of their updates * I don't need to…

  * wifi works out of the box and reconnects practically instantly out of sleep [1]
You had a thinkpad with less than stellar wireless support? I have never experienced any hardware problems with my many thinkpads (close to a decade now).

  * sleep works without me spending two weeks recompiling Gentoo with different
    kernel options and finally discovering some boot flag that worked until Ubuntu
    broke it in one of their updates
Installs gentoo, complains about recompiling...WTF? Personally I do not like sleeping laptops and encrypted hard drives. However I have many friends/coworkers that are less paranoid and they seem to put their thinkpads to sleep just fine.

  * I don't need to edit my XF86Config file (maybe not necessary any more)
Ok, so it has been ages since you used linux on a thinkpad. I need to keep this in mind. I never have had any dificulty with x11 on my thinkpads.

  * no hassle of getting a compositing window manager working (hopefully
    compiz/emerald works better now than in 2008), figuring out how to disable gdm/kdm
    because the window manager options with the distribution are always terrible so I
    just start from .xinitrc because figuring out how to get gdm/kdm/xdm to run what I
    want seems to change every time I have to look.
So you purposefully rejected the distros configuration system and are complaining about having to configure things manually? Xsession management is a breeze for Gnome on Debian (and I am assuming ubuntu). What did you have trouble starting?

  * no more poor battery life
The thinkpad battery is not the best but it is pretty good. Given that it has been atleast 6 or 7 years since you used linux I think you would be surprised.

  * filtering through low quality apps (KDE: crash-happy and UgLy), GNOME: pretty but
    light on the features); still scarred over X-CD-Roast...
X-CD-Roast! Nice you are comparing 2014 OSX to 2001 linux user experience. This is getting silly.

  * AirDrop!
How do you configure Airdrop to work with all of your other unix-like machines? I don't know how to do that with my Debian and OBSD boxes. Maybe it is an FreeBSD or NetBSD thing? Does it share with windows as easily as Samba?

  * no arcane errors about sound because Ubuntu suddenly decided that I needed Jack
    (or maybe it was the other one), when ALSA was working just fine
I have never been forced to install jack. But I do not do professional audio work. This is another problem you created for yourself. No operating system can save a determined user from shooting their foot off. But then again you seem to have trouble with a lot of the unix workflow so I guess I should not be surprised.

  * oh, yeah, whenever I need to run an XWindows program it integrates seamlessly
    into my other programs. So much so that I tend to forget to use Ctrl for the
    keyboard shortcuts instead of that Apple command key with the weird symbol on
    it. It even seems to cut and paste from the rest of the system reasonably well.
What Xwindows apps do you use?

  > Yeah, I'm totally loving the XWindows experience on MacOS X!
I am glad I have found a happy xwindows on OSX user. Can you help me out with some things:

* Apple's website says "X11 is no longer included with OS X."[1] Do I have to be a Apple Developer to get Xwindows?

* I have had a lot of trouble getting awesome/xmonad/i3 to work in OSX. I swear it is almost as if iTunes is allergic to being a nice tile on my media workspace.

* For the life of me I can not get selected text to paste by middle clicking. How does that work?

* I use vcsh+mr+git to manage all of my config files. This way setting up a new machine is super easy. Can you tell me which directory to point vcsh for my iTunes/Pages/Safari configuration?

* The second step on a new machine is moving all my music over. I have some troubles with iTunes. Is there a special apple+option hotkey to get iTunes to play my flac/ogg files?

* Whenever I ssh into a OSX machine I always have trouble getting iTunes/Pages/Safari to honor my $DISPLAY variable. What am I missing?

[1] https://support.apple.com/kb/ht5293

Re: How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven

#185

Post by aidos »

cgio wrote: post #166
aidos wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually the gas in the bulb expands too much and the bulb itself shatters. In my experience, other than having to clean up the broken glass, the microwave still runs fine. At one point we had a bulb where the glass expanded out enough to ease the pressure created. We could use it again and again. Maybe it's a bad thing to do, maybe there's some horrific gas that's created. Someone on here could weigh in on that. I…

I think it depends on the kind of lightbulb, but I would be especially careful with eco(?) energy saving light bulbs From http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-506347/An-ene... Energy-saving light bulbs are so dangerous that everyone must leave the room for at least 15 minutes if one falls to the floor and breaks, a Government department warned yesterday. The startling alert came as health experts also warne…

Good shout, thanks for the link. I'm not sure the effect would really work with energy saving bulbs so there's no point using them anyway. Thanks for pointing out the risk.

Would be good to find another source other than the daily mail since they're scare mongering racists. They probably give the same advice about immigrants. (If there's one in the room take your family and leave for 15 minutes)

Re: How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven

#186

Post by PhantomGremlin »

prewett wrote: post #178
dfc wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will take the Xwindows experience over the Xwindows experience in just about any competitor UI?

The X Windows experience on my MacBook Pro is great! I get a OS that does pretty much everything my ThinkPad with Linux did, plus: * wifi works out of the box and reconnects practically instantly out of sleep [1] * sleep works without me spending two weeks recompiling Gentoo with different kernel options and finally discovering some boot flag that worked until Ubuntu broke it in one of their updates * I don't need to…

Someone succinctly summarized the situation in a quip I found somewhere on the Interweb:

The products Apple make are the closest thing to 'appliances' you can get in the computer world.

Re: How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven

#187

Post by PhantomGremlin »

pyoung wrote: post #177
danmatan wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally confirming. When shopping around for the past 10 years, I've usually bought used PCs and used parts, both desktops and laptops, but after deciding to try out a Mac in early 2012, buying used just didn't seem to be worth the discount. It doesn't seem to be so bad right now, but part of this may be due to my insistence on getting at least 4GB of RAM for a MacBook Air, which was hard to find on the used mark…

Adding to the anecdotes[1], of the last 5 computers that I have owned, 0/2 of the Macs are still running, compared to 2/3 of the non-macs. Because of this, I refuse to ever purchase a used mac, the discount is not worth the risk, especially considering the fact that it's nearly impossible to repair them on your own. [1]Random idea for a website/service: Computer reliability statistics by model/year. Could be really u…

> I refuse to ever purchase a used mac

Macs are quite variable in terms of good models and bad models. This seems to apply to both laptops and desktops. Unfortunately. I also haven't heard of a website or service that has the reliability statistics you want.

You didn't mention Applecare. It is transferable and is for 3 years. So if you buy a 1 y/o machine from a hipster who wants to upgrade, you would be covered for the remaining time.

Re: How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven

#188

Post by PhantomGremlin »

yardie wrote: post #38
werid wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like the old harddrive trick where a harddrive refuses to start until it's cold enough.

I unbroke an iPod 5G by slamming it into my desk fairly hard. That was about 3 years ago and it's still working. Something about the HDD bearings seizing because of shock. I have a Seagate HDD in the freezer for 2 years now. Every method of recovery I've used has been unsuccessful. I'm waiting to send it into a recovery service, and $1500+ that I haven't got lying around.

If the drive has files that you haven't "needed" in over 2 years, do you really want to spend $1500 or more to access them? Must be personal photos or videos?

I'd hate to lose my personal photos. I'm glad that Apple came out with Time Machine, because I now have backup religion; not only time machine backups but offsite CCC backups.

Re: How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven

#190

Post by PhantomGremlin »

mst wrote: post #82
marincounty wrote: post #58

Did not read story, but if it it what I think; HP had the same problem with a bad nvidia chip, poorly designed cooling system, etc. They denied the problem, until sued. Meanwhile, desperate users where putting their motherboards in the oven, curling the hairs in the nvida chip, and sticking pennies on the hot chip. I will never buy another HP laptop! I'm surprised Apple won't admit to a problem. I think if Steve was…

> Did not read story Then please don't comment. This is Hacker News, not slashdot.

Right. It's not like the story was War and Peace. Not even the Cliff's Notes of War and Peace. It took about a minute for me to read, including time looking at the pictures.
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