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Aluminum iMac survives fire, water

by Rick Martin Jan 22nd 2011 at 12:30PM

Recent incidents of arson in the city of Petaling Jaya, Malaysia have resulted in many businesses losing nearly everything they had. One fire this past week left a certain business owner with little left to salvage, but there was one bright spot to be found poking out from the ashes. Or rather, there were two...

A pair of iMacs survived not only the intense heat of the blaze that night, but also the subsequent water that firefighters used to extinguish the flames. According to our friend Wei who sent us this story, the iMacs were of the mid-2007, 20" aluminum variety.

There's no longer that clean, finished exterior, of course, but the computers miraculously still work (see photo on the right) which is certainly a testament to how well they were made to begin with.

If this story sounds familiar to you, it should. It's not the first time we've featured an indestructible, fire-proof iMac here on TUAW. About one year ago, a Swedish man was also unfortunately hit by a house fire that destroyed his entire home and everything in it.

Everything except for his iMac that is, which was still functional after the ordeal.



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Recent incidents of arson in the city of Petaling Jaya, Malaysia have resulted in many businesses losing nearly everything they had. One...
 

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darren

While impressive, computers should be able to withstand this kind of heat. They are often flash soldered, meaning they are put under incredibly intense temperatures during the manufacturing process, way more than an average building fire.. The water - yeah, that should have killed it, but I'm guessing at this point they were powered down due to the power being cut? ;)

Some one else on here must remember the baked powerbook?
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10342094-263.html

Sadly the pictures are no longer on the site linked to.

January 24 2011 at 6:47 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
kaslings

Ironically, my last iMac died because the graphics card overheated.

January 24 2011 at 11:09 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
San_Ra

Slaves?

January 23 2011 at 4:08 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Lumi

Water, fire, air and dirt...

January 23 2011 at 8:02 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
clasqm

Well, that's good to know. On the other hand, my circa 2005 white plastic iMac cooked itself to death from the inside. Maybe aluminium is a better conductor of heat than plastic? Even so, SMBFanControl gets loaded on the new one the minute I start encoding video.

January 23 2011 at 6:32 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Mohammed Al-Muhaidib

Pff.. I dropped my MacBook Pro off my bed (half a meter) and now the screen won't fully shut
And I remember dropping my previous MacBook Pro from the trunk of my car onto the road (1 meter) and the Wi-Fi won't work after
But either way they both lived very long and they age well

January 22 2011 at 9:48 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Randy

Last year, a pipe broke in one of our campus offices because of the cold. One office had water pouring on top of a white iMac. We brought it to the shop, and I took the back off to inspect for water damage. It looked clean inside, so I took the chance, and it powered up fine. It's still going to this day.

My guess is that the cooling slot in back on the top was situated in such a way as to keep the water out.

January 22 2011 at 7:57 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
CHRiS

George,
Please don't feed the biggest troll on the internet.

January 22 2011 at 6:43 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Aaron

And which locally made computer are you using?

January 22 2011 at 5:30 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Abhimat Gautam

I think this comment is worth repeating from the article about a year ago:

“Because of Flash on the Mac, every Apple computer is designed to withstand this kind of heat.” — Adam

January 22 2011 at 4:09 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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