ibook smell

Some plastics can smell really bad. I have a toolbox full of older (1970s) Craftsman screwdrivers and the oder can be overpowering if the drawer hasn't been opened in a while and it's still detectable if left open.

John

Well, it's been almost two years since I bought my iBook. Yep...another one bites the dust. I might as well stick my face in some sweaty person's armpit and dwell in there for hours at a time. I tried calling Apple's phone support and a local Apple store for help. I was told the only solution would be to pay the $150 for a new keyboard and installation. Thanks, Apple. You've been no help at all. I mean, it's not my fault. I'm a clean person. I'm getting frustrated.

Is iKlean for more than just screens? I think I'm going to the store today to see what I can't buy to help this problem out.

One suggestion if Applecare won't replace your keyboard: if you have an Apple Store in your city, I've found that sometimes if you go in and go to their "Genius Bar" and be pleasant but firm, you can get them to do repairs or replace things that Applecare's phone support refuses to help you with. Go during the daytime, when the manager is likely to be around. Once a real human being gets a whiff of the keyboard they're much more likely to symathize than Apple's phone drones.

Also, if memory serves, earlier in this thread someone proposed a way to remove the sticker that causes the odor - rubbing alcohol? You might want to grit your teeth and hunt through the previous several hundred posts.

I believe, after almost a year of trying to do battle with apple and their always changing excuses, that i have finally discovered the answer to this embarrassing problem. i was at the apple store the other day with my ibook g3 trying to get a copy of the os that came with it so i could downgrade from 10.3 back to 10.2 due to performance issues, which also proved to be fruitless due to their "********" reasoning, but that's a totally different story. well, between frustrating debates with the tech rep at the "genius" bar i happened to make an off the cuff remark about my frustration with the problem i have had trying to solve my odor problem with the ibook. he immediately replied with what seemed to be rays of sunshine coming from the crack of an opening treasure chest and it was finally revealed. at that momment, rather than becoming clear to me, it became more confusing. why had apple not just said this to me during one of my many calls to its apple care line or had it documented in one of its famous critically acclaimed troubleshooting threads or been revealed to me by any one of the many apple technicians in the past that i had to tell this to and had them laugh at me as if i were crazy and doing weird things to my laptop. why, oh why apple? well, no matter what the reason is, i now knew. what was revealed to me by the apparently loose liped rep was that apparently there is an odor problem caused when the hands of smokers come in contact with these keyboards. yes, its just that simple. whatever material they are made of causes and odor after heating up the residue from the hands of cigarette smokers. i have recently quit smoking and i can tell u that it is true. the smell is virtually gone and i have not smoked for just two weeks. i hope this thread helps u guys out there. good luck and just go cold turkey!

Well, good try, but wrong. I haven't smoked in 20 years, and my iBook never left home where no one smokes, and it smelled. (I got Apple to replace the keyboard, and the smell is gone - see up-thread).

Kirk,

Maybe the smoking connection is only one of a number problems.

This may help some people out (especially if they quit smoking just to see if it works--whether or not it keeps their iBook from stinking, it will keep them from smelling as bad).

It has worked for Andrei so it may work for others, even if it is not the solution for you.

We use baby wipes (you know, the things you buy to clean up baby's butts...), because they do not contain alcohol (which rots many plastics) -- alcohol would dry out baby's skin, so that's pretty much something you can trust across all the brands out there.

So for cleaning external keyboards, telephones, mice, and other peripherals (printers, physical desktops, doorknobs and our own hands come to mind) these things are a life-saver. (I'm a Help Desk technician at a large organization that includes users both fastidious and... well, not... so we are constantly cleaning our hands to avoid picking up the bubonic plague, etc.) And although there are a lot of wipes marketed specifically for this purpose, I have personally found them to be a little too 'dry' to get the job done in really active work environments (i.e., equipment used in a warehouse, by frequent travellers, around the house with children or pets, etc.)

I'm sure many brands will work as well; but we (my wife and I) settled on Huggies-brand (regular scent) butt-wipes for cleaning up our kids (many years ago), and that's what I have always purchased since then for keeping our equipment clean.

We don't clean glass CRT screens with them -- they would probably dissolve the anti-glare coating. But as a general rule, anywhere your fingers belong (you shouldn't be touching the screen with that grubby pointing-finger, anyway) is a good place to clean with a baby-butt wipe!

So the familar white box is present on almost all of our technicians' carts at work; and I always scrub down a phone with one before deploying it to an incoming employee (I will never make a staffer deal with someone else's poor personal hygiene... if the phone isn't clean enough that I'd put the receiver on my own ear, it's not clean enough for it's new owner...).

Hi, Dan. Welcome to Apple Discussions, and what took you so long to get here?

You are a bit behind the times as far as cleaning products go, though. The big thing now for cleaning the trackpad and wrist rest area is the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. No chemicals whatsoever. Works with just a few drops of water on the end of the sponge-like Eraser. And, boy, is it ever great for getting off grubbiness. One wipe does it. It really is like magic.

But if baby wipes work for you, that's just fine. Maybe the scented ones could help with the problem here.

I work in a school district with over 100 iBooks and the smell is random,about 6 of ours have "the smell", and seems to have nothing to do with who uses it, where it is used or any kind of smell coming from fingers. (Although I do hope smokers quit to see if that works!) Some of the keyboards simply start to smell. One was the iBook I use and once I realized it was the iBook (and not me or the person who walked in the room) - I began cleaning and trying many of the ideas listed here. Well, the solution that works, beyond a covering of the smell, is to replace the keyboard, And the good news is that once you replace the keyboard the smell does not seem to come back! It is too bad that Applecare is not covering this. If you have smelled it you know it! and realize how awful it is! We replaced my keyboard thankfully but the ones used by the kids for short periods of time - well you know kids - they don't seem to notice!

If my keyboard were one of the smelly ones, I would try using Renuzit Super Odor Neutralizer on it in this manner:

Remove the keyboard. You don't have to remove it completely, just lift it up and flip it over and lay it on the palm rests and trackpad. I wouldn't put any liquid over on the left side where the shield over the innards is perforated, but on the right underneath side of the keyboard, I would try dipping a Q-Tip into the Renuzit Super Odor Neutralizer and swabbing the under side of the keyboard. Allow it to dry over night before reassembling.

If this doesn't do it, I would repeat the procedure, and, in addition, dab the center of each key with the Odor Neutralizer. Again, allow to dry over night.

You may have to repeat the procedure if the smell comes back.

I have not had this problem, but this is what I would do (if I did) before resorting to buying a new keyboard.

I posted this up above, but I'm going to post it down at the bottom of this thread, too, in case people are intimidated by the length of the thread (or too busy to read the whole thing).

If my keyboard were one of the smelly ones, I would try using Renuzit Super Odor Neutralizer on it in this manner:

Remove the keyboard. You don't have to remove it completely, just lift it up and flip it over and lay it on the palm rests and trackpad. I wouldn't put any liquid over on the left side where the shield over the innards is perforated, but on the right underneath side of the keyboard, I would try dipping a Q-Tip into the Renuzit Super Odor Neutralizer and swabbing the right under side of the keyboard. Allow it to dry over night before reassembling.

If this doesn't do it, I would repeat the procedure, and, in addition, dab the center of each key with the Odor Neutralizer. Again, allow to dry over night.

You may have to repeat the procedure if the smell comes back.

I have not had this problem, but this is what I would do (if I did) before resorting to buying a new keyboard.

Yep...
After posting here a while back I had the problem as well. After taking it to 3 shops, I finally got a new keyboard. I guess it really depends on who is doing the repair so to say. But yah just keep trying guys.....Mines fresh as new. No more smell.
Good luck.

Chewn.

My iBook smells like nasty armpits. I don't think it's being emitted from the keyboard, but from the exhaust fan. I know I wash my hands...so I'm almost positive it's coming from the exhaust fans....

Hi, Jon. Welcome to Apple Discussions.

It is almost certainly coming from your keyboard. And it has nothing to do with how clean your hands are. It's the keyboard, itself, and some sort of decomposition thing going on with it.

This thread is coming upon three years old, and it is the consensus here that this smell is, indeed, the keyboard and replacing the keyboard is the surest way to get rid of the smell. If you want to be sure about this for your iBook, some night before you go to bed, remove the keyboard and put it in a different room from the iBook. In the morning, smell them. See if it is the iBook or the keyboard that emanates that smell.

Thank you to everyone else that posted to this discussion group...your thoughts helped me to understand that this problem was not unique to my iBook G3.

My short version of this story...after a combination of 3 calls to AppleCare and 2 visits/5 phone calls to the Apple Store in Pasadena, CA, and one call to the Apple Store in Austin, TX (my home store)...I replaced the keyboard with one sent to me via Fedex from Apple. The install was very easy and my iBook is no longer an iSmell. So don't give up, hassle Apple till they replace your keyboard and refer to this discussion string to convince them your problem is not an isolated one.

Now for the drawn out -- longer story -- which should be described as an exercise in persistence. My only concern with Apple is if they are going to sell a computer insurance policy like AppleCare, then they should honor it. If they've priced the policy too low -- then they need to charge the appropriate, market-sustainable price for the policy and keep customer hassles to a minimum.

THE PROBLEM
After regular and repeated attempts to alleviate the "BO" coming from my keyboard -- yes, it is definitely the keyboard -- with "safe" cleaning products like Fellowes PC Cleaning Kit I decided that the odor was simply to horrible to live with. After an embarrassing stop at a relative's house to show them some of my photos from Spain, which constantly had to be interrupted by my profuse apologies for the horrible odor coming from my computer, I decided that was enough. My gosh...what were people going think I've been doing with this computer all day long...did I have too intimate a relationship with my computer?

MY FIRST ATTEMPT AT A RESOLUTION
So, I called AppleCare and explained to them the nature of the problem, mentioned this post with 200+ responses, and after their snickering ended, they told me this definitely fell into a user "sensory" issue and that they could not replace the keyboard. They thought that I "perhaps" spilt something on the computer and that was generating the odor. After pressing them that this was more than a "sensory" issue and a real problem, they suggested that I take the computer to an Apple Store Genius Bar to have them look at the computer. Possibly they could confirm the seriousness of the issue. Okay, I decided to do that.

MY SECOND ATTEMPT AT A RESOLUTION
As I was traveling for business, I stopped in at the Apple Pasadena store and scheduled an appointment to visit with a local genius. After about a 2 hour wait I was called up to chat with an amicable, but not quite a technical expert. After explaining the problem and getting past the suppressed laughing, the Genius agreed -- the computer definite had a body odor. But he also believed this was a user issue that AppleCare wouldn't cover. After a little pressing, he decided to check in with his colleagues, all of which were too busy to provide him input. Realizing that at this point they probably were not going to replace the keyboard at Apple's expense, but now thinking I didn't want the iSmell back "as is", I inquired about paying for a replacement out of my own pocket. I think this was the key moment that convinced the Genius that the problem was real -- I was willing to pay for the fix, even if Apple wouldn't. Again, as he was looking up pricing, I gently insisted that this was a real problem and asked if the Genius could ask anyone else to determine if AppleCare would cover this. Well, they decided it wouldn't be a bad idea to call AppleCare and confirm the BO without any presence of spills, or user-created problems. So the genius called AppleCare and 5 minutes later they approved the repair! Excuse me? The combination of an physical Apple employee witnessing the problem gave AppleCare the cover to approve the repair. Great. The pleasant genius ordered the part, I left the computer with the store because they could do the repair locally, and was told the repair should take 7-10 days.