In what might be considered as the ultimate drop test, a MacBook Air recently fell 1,000 feet from a plane before smashing into the ground at great speed.
And while its high-velocity meeting with terra firma understandably left it with a few dents, scrapes and scratches, the extraordinary part of the story is that after hitting the power button, the machine was still able to fulfill its role (just about) as an all-round computing device.
No, the drop wasn’t a deliberate act, after all, you’d have to be a bit daft to chuck a $1000 laptop from such a great height, unless it was really annoying you or you just hate Apple products, in which case such an act would be entirely understandable.
The tale of the high-flying MacBook Air was told this week by a Reddit user in South Africa going by the name av80r. Apparently the Apple computer, together with a logbook and pilot’s license, flew out of the plane when the canopy on the single-engine aircraft suddenly opened during a recent flight in South Africa.
A farmer who came across the items on his land contacted av80r after finding his number in the paperwork.
After collecting his belongings from the farmer, the pilot-with-a-canopy-issue quickly realized that electronics aren’t really made to fall from great heights and so, assuming the battered Air was done for, prepared to send it to the great scrapheap in the sky. However, upon hitting the computer’s power button, the thing lit up like a Christmas tree (ie. the screen came on).
Taking a closer look at the damage, the tickled-pink pilot could see that the glass trackpad had shattered and the unibody casing had bent out of shape. The cooling fans had also been damaged in the fall.
But considering its speedy journey back to Earth, and assuming av80r’s story is exactly as he tells it, the idea that it still works is certainly pretty impressive for a piece of tech gear.
[Via 9to5Mac]
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