Friday Feature: Crazy Apple Help Desk.


Every Friday, the staff at Crazy Apple Rumors Site answers common help questions based on our vast experience with Apple products and our fervent belief that we know more than you do.


Q: Hey! I recently followed some advice you gave me on how to fix a printer problem with my mirror-door G4 and have since found out that it voided my warranty! This is unacceptable!

A: Oh. Wow. Really? I’m terribly sorry about that. I don’t know how that could have happened. What did I suggest?

Q: You told me to open the mirrored door and pour pudding into the DVD drive.

A: Pudding? Pudding? No, no, no. I never said that. Never pudding.

Q: OK, OK… tapioca.

A: Tapioca. Yes. That’s what I said. Pudding! Pff! As if!

Q: OK, whatever. The point is, I talked to Apple and putting tapioca in your DVD drive voids the warranty! What are you going to do about this?!

A: Well… did it work? Did it fix your printer problem?

Q: Um… well… yes… actually. I can print again. I don’t know how… I mean, it’s scientifically impossible… but…

A: So why did you tell those beeotches at Apple about it? I mean… what they don’t know won’t hurt ’em, right? Their precious warranty. Ha!

Q: Hey, I might need that warranty!

A: OK. OK. OK. I’ve got a trick for restoring the warranty.

Q: This doesn’t involve pouring anything into my Mac does it?

A: No, no, no, no, no. Absolutely not. You don’t pour mayonnaise.


Q: I have a three-year old iMac that I have turned into a media center. I’ve attached a Firewire drive to hold all of my MP3s, some high-quality speakers and an EyeTV to record my favorite shows. Everything seems to be working perfectly, so why do I feel so itchy?

A: Is it a localized itch or a general all-over kind of itch?

Q: Oh, it’s an all-over kind of itch. Just a dull kind of itch that makes it uncomfortable for me to sit still, you know?

A: Oh, yeah. I got that. See, frequently on these machines that serve dedicated purposes, you forget to apply the most recent patches and updates. This can manifest itself in itchiness. I recommend running Software Update and giving yourself a good scratching.

Q: That’s your answer for everything, isn’t it? That and pudding.

A: It’s tapioca.


Q: I have a 14-inch iBook that I use both at work and at home. I have a docking station at work that connects to a 20-inch monitor. My question is, what the hell is tapioca, anyway? Isn’t it just a kind of pudding?

A: Technically, it is a pudding. But the tapioca beads are a root starch derived from the Yuca plant. So it’s, like, magical pudding.

Q: Magical pudding?

A: Yeah. Magical fricking pudding. That’s why it bugs me when people call it mere pudding.

Q: You don’t work for the tapioca industry by any chance, do you?

A: No. Just a believer. Just a believer.

Q: Yeah-huh. Um… I’m gonna… go… over here now.