I work for an ASAP, repairing Macs all day and warning customers to backup their machines, be careful of drinks near their machines and so on. All the usual nuggets of common sense come through automatically - it’s the same few speeches over and over. Well don’t think for a second this doesn’t come from experience.

About 5 or 6 years ago I was sat on the couch sending emails on my PowerBook. It was only 6 months old and I had carelessly left the power adapter cord strewn across the room. The mail came, the dog went nuts and when running for the door, tripped over the cord, ripped the laptop from me and smashed it on the floor. Expensive, but repairable.

A few years ago, Chris, one of our techs got married. He took all the honeymoon photos off the camera (deleted them) and stuck them in iPhoto (pre-Flickr integration). 2 days later his hard drive died - no backup. We tried for weeks to recover those photos but to this day his wife hasn’t forgotten his incompetence.

Yesterday, I was sat at work, minding my own business. I reached over my desk and grabbed my headphones. Somehow, the headphones brought with them a giant mug of tea (ironically, it was a Microsoft Office branded mug). My MacBook Pro fizzed and popped. I managed to get the hard drive out in time to save it (though dropped it and damaged the motor I think). Oddly, my backups were in a state of transition and I failed them (all 4 of them). I’m recovering the data now and a new laptop is on order.

The point is that we don’t lecture for no reason - we’ve been there. We’ve paid the money and felt the pain. That’s why we are so cautious with customer machines.