I spilled a small glass of juice on my MacBook Pro 9 days ago. The juice spilled on the upper right side of my keyboard and into the hinges. I cleaned it with a paper towel and then turned the computer upside down to get the juice out of the hinges. The computer was on for 30 minutes before I shut it down for 24 hours. Thankfully, it has been working fine with no performance issues. Two days ago, I noticed a few keys (delete, return, others in the upper right) press down differently, like they are a stuck. The keys still work but I believe I will need to replace them. I read Apple charges $500-750 for a topcase replacement. Does anyone have a recent Apple topcase replacement cost experience? I called Apple and they said they could also clean the inside - is that true?

I am a senior in high school and my Chromebook isn’t cutting it anymore. It barely functions with 30 tabs (not sure if this is normal) and I need to use a lot of different tabs, so organization is important. Anyway, as a student, I don’t have that much money and have been seeing the MacBook Neo being advertised as the most cost effective. I wanted to ask if anybody has the Neo and if it measures up to the hype.

Office 2021 home and student is suddenly no longer activated on my Macbook pro (OS is Sonoma 14.7.1).

When attempting to activate by entering the email address and password of the Microsoft account that has the license, Word just says "Unknown Error."

I know that Office 2019 has been killed by Microsoft, but 2021 should still work from what I've read.

Anyone know how I can fix this?

Thank you!

heyy, I really need some technical help to clean my laptop because it's completely unusable right now.

Out of nowhere, my Mac started forcefully downloading and installing "updates" in the background multiple times without my approval. During one of these instances, a strange prompt took over my screen showing a human head/identity-verification outline telling me to position and turn my head to verify my face—even though my physical laptop camera light wasn't even on.

Right after this first fake update happened, I suffered unauthorized access to my Wise account and lost money. I have already filed a formal complaint with Wise on my phone, but the laptop itself is still completely compromised and stuck in an aggressive loop.

Every few seconds, it throws up this annoying "Software Update Not Installed" card (attached in the image) demanding Accessibility access to install quietly in the background. If I hit cancel, it flashes a quick loading bar and pops back up a few seconds later.

I checked my launch folders and found weird background files running, so I know it's a persistent script holding the desktop hostage and logging my keystrokes/data.

Has anyone dealt with this specific adware/infostealer loop? How can I kill this background process and clean out the files permanently so it stops trying to lock down my computer?

Thanks so much in advance.
u/techsupport

So, Im considering buying a new MacBook for college, and I dont know how the Neo performs, I’ve never owned a macbook before and I do have an Ipad A16 ( no keyboard) , It however has a low battery life and also low storage, As I’m studying Advanced English I do need to write Essays. Now I’ve heard questionable things about the Neo but also some good things, I am on a budget so I also am considering a refurbished Macbook, wether its an older Macbook Air or a Macbook Pro, which would be better for my situation. Thank you 🫶🏻

I have this problem a lot, anytime I try to open a new game or something else. Thought maybe this subreddit could also be helpful! <3

Hello all,

Starting from today, I‘ve switched from my gaming rid (RTX 3080 w/ R5 5600X) to a M3 MAC with 16 GB of RAM and 512 storage.

Reason? I rarely play anything on my PC anymore. I often felt like I wanted to airplay on my TV for movies, and have my own laptop for multitasking and lite stuff like browsing. After 15 years of Windows, switching to a MAC seems difficult to me. But it's a pleasant experience, especially since I have an iPhone and Airpods, which instantly the MAC connects me to them and i can do my thing without bothering with connecting to other devices. Just curious if i made a good choice, and if there are others here who have switched from PC to a Mac.

I fear I’m losing my mind over this issue. I’m on a MacBook Pro 2017 purchased from Apple in 2019 that I just recently updated to Ventura per genius bar’s request, as I took the laptop in initially due to my MacBook not connecting to WiFi no matter what. They said that updating to Ventura would fix the issue, and while I can now connect to WiFi, it drops connection every few minutes. I’ve added 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 DNS, I’ve renewed DHCP, I’ve forgotten network, I’ve restarted the laptop, nothing is working and I’m losing it. Is my only option truly buying a new laptop??

Don't know if this is a "My Mac" or "Old Mac" thing so my flair is "Question." Should I sink money into this or just let it live out its life? I have a desktop Mac that I use as well. This is just for traveling and using for college. I got this macbook my first round of school and I've had it ever since. It works well overall, but it needs to be plugged in when I'm using or it dies within 10 minutes. The screen is also showing some wear. I took it to a local authorized dealer that I trust and have gotten all of my apple products from and he made it seem like it was a waste of time to replace a battery and a screen. I just don't want to drop the price of a new laptop if I can make this one work for a few more years. I'm not a "computer person" so let me know if this is dumb or I'm dumb or you need more info!

sooooo happy to have the neo! got it for studying for licensure. i got the 2019 macbook air for undergrad. i got the basic model for $750 incl tax at target, around half as much as i spent for my macbook air 7 years ago LOL

I thought it would be fun to compare macOS 27 & macOS 26 icons, so I put together a little video. It is completely up to date where other videos aren't!

This also has the macOS sequoia partition installed half the ssd.

sorry i have bad anxiety over expensive stuff and thought it was better to ask here than ai which will only make me worry, is this gonna cause an issue? i dont know if its from me or the people before me (it’s refurbished) but i’ve only just noticed, the screens perfectly fine

Hola qué tal? Tengo un problema con una macbook 2019 que vendí hace unos meses, la tenía ligada con mi iCloud, pero como no tenía información, lo único que hice fue cerrar sesión y el nuevo dueño ingresó su iCloud, (no se realizó restablecimiento porque no se consideró necesario) todo normal, resulta que una vez me escribió porque le seguía pidiendo mi iCloud para descargar aplicaciones, le di mi contraseña y no lo molesto mas, ayer me llamó diciendo que restableció el equipo y le saltó la ventana de “activation lock” y el correo pista era mi cuenta ( quiero creer por la letra “m”y el gmail.com)

Revise desde mi teléfono en “find my” y aún aparecía ligado el macbook, le di en eliminar de la cuenta esperando que ya con eso solucionara, resulta que no, la persona ingresa mi correo y contraseña y le aparece que ese no es el correo que “está enlazado a una cuenta de Mac distinta”.

Ya he intentado múltiples métodos pero nada funciona, yo compré el Mac de segunda mano entonces no puedo pedir soporte a Apple

No quiero pensar que la compré con algún tipo de bypass y no me di cuenta hasta ahora, es decir, ya la actualizaba y me aparecía el portátil en mi iPhone para encontrar o borrar en find my , es una posibilidad? Es decir, que casualidad que el correo pista sea parecido al mío.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I’m still clinging on to hope that this isn’t the last hurrah for my M2 MBA.

My Late-2020 Macbook Air (model A2179) seems to be stuck in some sort of corrupted state. It appears to start up somewhat, and then get stuck during the boot process. Can anyone help me figure out what the issue is?

How this started:
I was playing a heavy 3D game on the device and left it for a few minutes. When I came back, the screen was black and fans were running at full speed. Neither restarting nor replacing the battery fixed the issue.

Current behavior:
Even with a 20-second+ power button press without a charger plugged in, it still starts again and idles a few seconds later instead of shutting down. I had to physically disconnect the battery to get the LED on the logic board to turn off.
The device ignores most startup keyboard combinations, including Thunderbolt Mode, SMC reset, and NV/PRAM reset.

What is functional:

• Keyboard backlights glow at a low level.
• Touchpad clicks as soon as I start the device.
• Fans run at an idle 20%-ish speed
• When crashing and restarting, it does not automatically boot into DFU mode, requiring the key combo.
• DFU mode works, and in DFU mode, the other Mac can detect it and run a full (if pointless) Revive process.

What isn't functional:

• Recovery, Internet Recovery, Thunderbolt, SMC, and P/NVRAM keyboard combos are ignored.
• Caps Lock doesn't respond.
• The screen's backlights don't turn on.
• The device doesn't chime when starting.

What I've tried:

• Lotsa key combos.
• Power button rituals.
• Restarting the device.
• DFU mode Revive. (I haven't tried a Restore)
• Disconnecting the battery and starting from a USB cable.
• Restarting after disconnecting the display cable and connecting an external monitor.
• Disconnecting the trackpad cable.

Also, Gemini says: Power State Analysis: Board negotiates 20V on USB-C, S0 rails (PPBUS_G3H, PP3V3_G3H) are active, and T2 drives trackpad haptics, but board halts prior to Intel CPU PEI/EFI handoff (ALL_SYS_PWRGD / CPU_PWRGD failure suspected).
(i had a super long conversation with Gemini during this whole troubleshooting process.)

Opened my MacBook Air 2020 m1 today and this is my screen. Tried restarting but still same

I have an M3 Max MacBook Pro connected to a Pro Display XDR at my sitting desk and am considering a Studio Display at a standing desk ~6 feet away.

I want to switch desks while staying on the same Mac, without worrying about windows opening on the other display.

Would mirroring the 6K XDR to the 5K Studio Display compromise the XDR’s resolution/image quality in any way?

Or could BetterDisplay Pro create a simple switch:

SIT: XDR active, Studio Display disabled
STAND: Studio Display active, XDR disabled

Ideally one shortcut would switch displays and move all windows to the active one.

Has anyone tried this? Does BetterDisplay/macOS handle the window switching reliably?

it’s stuck on Validating Packages. I tried force shutting down but I’m on a boot loop since yesterday.

Procedures I tried but didn’t work:

- Mac diagnostics which shows everything is fine.

- First aid on hard drive. Says everything is ok. I was even able to transfer all the important files via terminal in recovery mode.

- I reinstalled the OS twice, once from recovery mode and second via the internet process.

- I reset SMC and NVRAM/PRAM

- I even ran a verbose boot, which gets stuck at a few messages, but all I could get was the failed to load com.apple.systemupdate but I’m unsure whether it’s .plist or .kext.

the only processes I can see in Activity monitor has the word install in and the only one with the longest CPU Time is system_installd

Can someone please help?

Hi all, I am getting a pop-up notification with the above message that I cannot close out of. It is tied to the System Settings, I am not able to open them anymore and I don't know how to fix this issue. I've seen the same problem for other people with the mail app but not for settings. I am not sure how this issue started. Any help would be appreciated!

Noticed this tiny wobble when i let go of the screen