I had not used a Macintosh for over 15 years. The first of several Macs I’ve owned over the years was a Macintosh 128k I bought in 1984 – about three months after its introduction in the now-famous SuperBowl ad. At the end of the last century, work forced me to migrate to Windows World…
Over time, as Windows improved (despite some dogs), I decided that it was a pretty good system and largely ignored what Apple was doing. Then, a couple of years ago – with a different employer – I was provided an iPhone, an iPad, and asked if I would prefer a Mac or Windows notebook. It was suggested that I might like the Mac. Being forced to use the other Apple products, and intrigued with Apple products’ legendary interoperability, I opted for the MacBook Air 13”.
At a trade show two weeks later, I was still learning the differences between Windows and the Mac OS. Taking a break from working the booth we were manning, I set up my MacBook on a table in the café area to make some expense report entries. The show was a little slow at the moment, so one of my co-workers in the booth decided to get something for them to drink. Passing by my table, he asked if I wanted anything. I drink a lot of coffee, so I decided that a cup sounded good.
As I was working on the report, he came back and sat down for a minute, handing me my coffee. As we talked, I added some cream and sugar to the drink and put the lid back on the cup. He headed back to the booth and I continued with the report.
I reached for the cup of coffee. Having been around computers and coffee for over 30 years, I made it a point to not pass the cup over the Mac. In all of those years, I had never spilled a drink onto a keyboard and wasn’t going to now! I got the cup past the Mac, past the edge of the table, and over my lap, where I apparently squeezed the sides a little because the lid popped off. Without the structural strength lent by lid, the cup started to slip, causing me to react by squeezing it tighter to prevent a McDonald’s-like moment of hot coffee in my lap.
Success! I didn’t spill a single drop on me!
Unfortunately, the triumph was short-lived because the extra squeeze squirted the coffee back toward the table…and onto the keyboard.
I shut down the Mac, dried it with napkins, and turned it on its side to let the liquid drain out. When I rebooted the Mac later, it worked just fine – for a while. It went in for repairs later that day – after some keys started sticking. It now has a thin, flexible, water-proof keyboard skin.
While I successfully installed Java on my Mac, I would suggest finding a better way – and don’t use cream and sugar. But to this day, when I lift the screen, and the smell of coffee wafts upward, I crave a cup…
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