Fire Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Daily Update for May 4, 2012

by Steven Sande (May 4th, 2012)

It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player ...

iPhone 4 battery combusts on Aussie flight

by Chris Rawson (Nov 28th, 2011)

Well, this is awkward. Just over a month after I locked horns with Australia Post and called its restrictions on shipping electronic devices with integrated lithium batteries "arbitrary and idiotic," because "Millions of travelers fly with iPhones every year. NONE of them explode," guess what ...

Aluminum iMac survives fire, water

by Rick Martin (Jan 22nd, 2011)

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, ...

Swede's iMac takes a burnin' and it's still turnin'

by Steven Sande (Feb 15th, 2010)

In what should be used by Apple as a testament to the solid construction of their computers, a Swedish man, Anders Norman, suffered a tragedy last Wednesday when his house burned down. To Norman's surprise, his iMac survived the conflagration despite being burned and partially melted. Norman's ...

Want to BBQ with the iPhone? You don't even need an app

by Mike Schramm (Jul 3rd, 2009)

Not really -- if you really are planning to grill up some meat (or mushrooms and pineapples, they're good too) today or this weekend, you'll need a little more heat than your iPhone will give. But it's true, Apple's little handheld can get nice and toasty when it's really working*, and illustrator ...

Mac 101: Tabbed windows in iChat

by Dave Caolo (Nov 18th, 2008)

New to the Mac? Welcome back to our Mac 101 series, which explores the basics of Mac OS X, provides tips and tricks, and dives into key features of Apple's bundled tools. As a Mac user, you've got several options for chat clients -- Adium, Fire and IRC are all worthy -- but in this post we're ...

iPod sets man's pants on fire

by Lisa Hoover (Oct 5th, 2007)

A Georgia man got a surprise recently when his iPod caught fire -- inside his pants pocket. Danny Williams was working at a kiosk at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport when he says he noticed "flames coming up to his chest." It seems the year-old Nano he had in his pocket ...

Late Show writer doesn't find humor in smoking G4 adapter

by Michael Rose (Jul 13th, 2007)

Looks like Justin Stengel of The Late Show with David Letterman picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue... since he was able to detect the acrid odor of his G4 power adapter scorching and sparking its way through the cord insulation. Whoops. The rather laconic response from the Genius Bar ...

One MacBook, Well Done

by Dan Lurie (Jun 7th, 2007)

We've seen scorched Macs before, but nothing quite like this. After a devastating fire at their Boulder home last week, Gwen and Paul returned to find their formerly sleek white MacBook decidedly crispier. From all of us at TUAW, here's hoping that they get back on their feet fast and back to ...

iPod goes boom

by Erica Sadun (Mar 30th, 2007)

Can you think of a better way to start the weekend than with a nice set of photos of a burnt and melted iPod? Nope, we couldn't either. This set of destroyed iPod images is brought to you courtesy of Digg, where the submitter writes that the iPod exploded while charging "in a shower of sparks and ...

MacBook goes up in flames

by Dave Caolo (Mar 12th, 2007)

Yes, we've seen this before, and Apple has issued a battery recall. We thought this was all taken care of. Maybe the guy who owns the crispy MacBook at right failed to replace his flagged battery? Not so. The computer's owner, mattyb, states that his MacBook did not contain a recalled battery, and ...

Fire.app Closes Shop

by Dan Lurie (Feb 25th, 2007)

After almost 8 years in production, the open-source instant messaging application Fire has come to an end. Pre-dating even iChat, Fire was the first multi-protocol client on the platform, and has long had a dedicated user base. The loss of multiple key members of the development team and a reliance ...

12-inch PowerBook batteries can catch fire, too

by David Chartier (Aug 3rd, 2006)

It looks like Dell isn't the only company who can have a little fun with laptops that get just a little too hot. Apparently, the battery of a Norwegian design firm employee's 12-inch PowerBook worked just a little too hard and caught ablaze itself, resulting in the image you see here. Let's hope ...

iBook battery catches fire

by David Chartier (Jun 1st, 2006)

We hear about the occasional battery recall, and there are always the complaints that computers are getting too hot, but things went to a whole new level for a family in Minnesota. As WCCO in the Twin Cities reports, an 11 year-old boy set a running iBook down on the carpet and left the room. His ...