fire-hazard posts

Reader's unibody MacBook Pro catches fire!

by Christina Warren (RSS feed) on May 20th, 2009

At 1:30am, Ken Brinkman awoke to the smell of burning plastic. His unibody MacBook Pro was on fire. As he details in his Mac-Forums post,

"Smoke was pouring out the seam between the unibody and bottom enclosure. I actually burned my hand pretty badly ripping the adapter out. Oh man. This is reallllly scary because what if I didn't wake up? It could of burned my house down."

Ken e-mailed us this morning, understandably freaking out. Two weeks ago, Mel reported on a San Jose lawsuit alleging that the MagSafe power cables Apple uses for its portable computers are a fire hazard. We've seen Flickr evidence of melted or scorched MagSafe adapters in the past, but Ken's pictures take that to another level.

Ken's primary concern, after his safety, of course, is what Apple will do about the problem. Personally, I think a new computer is a given -- though I would also want some sort of assurance that Apple is testing its MagSafe cables for consistency. No one wants to wake up to find this on their desk.

UPDATE: Ken wrote in to clarify what happened and told us he's getting a replacement. Read more after the jump.

Thanks Ken!

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Tags: fire-hazard, macbook pro, MacbookPro, magsafe, unibody

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