Left, a Sport Cruiser aircraft of the same type; right, the MacBook Air after the fall
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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Hence its name, MacBook Air
I’ve actually accidentally dropped my MBP from the bed and it survived. Had it been any other laptop, the outcome would have been very different.
no really fanboy.. i drop my samsung laptop from my table and it works just fine…only difference ur shadowed by ur fanboism… and beside this article is bs, how can a system work or turn on for that matter when the FAN is not working? All laptops have a builtin safety where if the fan doesnt turn on it doesnt allow the system to boot up…. FAKE AS SHIT
This isn’t fake at all, the system adapted to the fan’s absence… In the low-end computer world there’s a ‘fan’. It turns on. If it doesn’t turn on, your ‘safety’ kicks in and it won’t boot. Then there are Apple’s machines. are one tool of a very sophisticated thermal management system. Depending on the form factor this includes numerous thermometers (often inside chips and drives), thermal zones with different optimal levels, thermaly dynamic cases (heat dissipation and insulation), decisions about processor core loading, ram read/writing, and so forth all in the name of balancing the hardware into ideal performance and to never overheat. This is far more organic than the modular ‘PC’ notion of computers, and part of why Macs weigh 1/3 of what the same spec Dell does, as well as why Macs (and Ferraris for that matter) are much more dicey to repair correctly than bargain counterpart.
Hey PC fan boy, tinker with hardware more and you will know that macs can start up with out the fan connected. Fans NOT connected to the logic board will NOT prevent the machine from booting up. So um A. Learn how to use proper english and capitalization when typing B. Learn something about the subject before you go run your mouth about stuff you know nothing about. Basement google university tech… smh
Macbook Air! O nome diz tudo! :)
It’s called an Air for a reason… :P
How would a person know the airspeed?
He was flying the plane, which was doing 125mph at the time
It’s math. Drop an object from a given height and it will fall at an increasing speed of 9.8m/sec until it reaches terminally velocity. Or the ground, whichever comes first. Has nothing at all to do with speed of the airplane.
Terminal velocity; although it is probably a bit different if the object is not a human, but a mildly airfoil shaped flat aluminum laptop, which may be “frisbeeing” or wildly tumbling – hard to know.
you don’t really, in theory the speed of the fall accelerates at a constant rate (so 1kg of lead falls as fast as 1kg of feathers), but in practice, the shape of the object and the resistance from the air totally change that. That flat, light macbook probably ended up flying more than falling.
And yet for me, when it was inside my bag, which slipped off my shoulder and fell about 12 inches, the screen broke requiring a £500 repair…
Unlike my iPhone 6Plus which fell from a meter height and split the screen in two.
A split screen is actually a feature some people wish for.
As was said in other comments, it really doesn’t matter if the notebook was dropped from 400 feet or 40,000, once it reaches terminal velocity, it’s a moot point.
You mean a moo point.
Pretty cool. Props to Apple!
Thankfully, it was wearing a parachute.
I’m willing to wager that it hit a soft surface. A surface soft enough, that most computers/phones would survive. Still cool though.