Boy, 11, urinates on $36K worth of Apple MacBooks

He had the means and the opportunity, but we may never know the motive of an 11-year-old student who urinated on a couple dozen laptops left unattended at Upper Allen Township Elementary in Pennsylvania.

In a report now bemusing Mac fan forums across the Internet, the Upper Allen Township Police Department states that "the cart and computers were damaged beyond repair, resulting in the loss of over $36,000."

The cart in question contained approximately 30 school-owned MacBooks, according to a police department spokesperson I spoke to, who couldn't tell me why the kid did it — let alone how. Because, c'mon — 30 MacBooks, even stacked, make for a formidable amount of square footage to cover, especially for a kid.

Nevertheless, all MacBooks went down as a total loss, and John Brownlee at Cult of Mac educates us on the likely reason why.

We can all surmise that urinating upon your Mac will not be covered by your AppleCare, but here’s an interesting question: If you stand up right this second, unzip your fly and hose off all over your MacBook, can you even pay Apple to service the machines? The answer is no, because Apple looks at micturated-upon MacBooks as a biohazard.

Sure enough, not even dog urine is acceptable. I know this because the helpful woman who answered the phone at the New York City's Fifth Avenue Apple Store told me that no, if my dog urinated on my MacBook, no Apple Genius would touch it. What's more, "biohazard" is the exact word she used, right before she encouraged me to "Google" a repair outfit that would deign to do such dirty work.

Dog urination aside, there are other MacBook pathogens that may surprise you. So if you smoke, heads up. Cigarette smoke-infused Apple products count as biohazards too, as Consumerist reported in 2009.

For the crime of creating $36K in Apple biohazards, the boy in question was charged with institutional vandalism and criminal mischief. While the police spokesperson assures me that, contrary to some reports, the kid was not arrested, his case was forwarded to the Cumberland County Juvenile Probation Department.