Macbook questions?

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Macbook questions?

Hi, so I recently got my macbook pro trackpad fixed, but I have been paranoid that I ruined my trackpad again. I was eating oily food, and my hands were oily, and I forgot to wash, and I touched my trackpad maybe even on the side. I mean, it makes the clicking side, and it's not particularly hard to click, but I am pretty paranoid. Can my trackpad stop working from my oily hands? Also, I am paranoid because the top sides of the trackpad is harder to press. Is that normal? The bottom sides work fine. Also, I was wondering on how to take care of my Macbook battery. If I were to set it down somewhere, would a bed sheet or pillow be ok? I usually put it on my lap when I am working or on a pillow when I am drinking liquid, which was a few months ago. There has been a time when I have spilled a liquid beverage on my keyboard, but all of my keys work perfectly. I do not have any problems with my keyboard, but I am paranoid that it's damaged even though it works. Also, I want to know if I can troubleshoot my trackpad to see if it is properly working and not messed up in any way. If so, how do you do that?

Btw, I have a keyboard cover

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Mid 2014), OS X El Capitan (10.11.2)

Posted on Feb 2, 2016 9:56 PM

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Answer 1

Feb 3, 2016 4:45 AM in response to MarvelComics

Rule 1: never eat and/or drink over you computer. Expensive accidents can happen very easily.

The trackpad should be Ok with the oil, but you should also make sure that you clean it off. I would only use a water damp (not wet) microfibre cloth to clean it off. Turn off the computer before cleaning.

On that, the same goes for the display. Only clean it with a damp microfibre cloth (not the same one that had the oil on it), The display has an anti-reflective coating on it and is susceptible to damage if chemicals are used to clean it.

The trackpad should not stop clicking from your oily hands, but you shouldn't use it with oil on your hands either. See Rule 1

The trackpad pivots from the top, so it is expected that no click movement occurs at the very top.

There are a number of settings available in System Preferences > Trackpad that you can use to aid your personal use of the trackpad.

You can set the trackpad to accept a tap rather than having to push to click

But if you go through all the Trackpad Preferences under 'Point and Click', 'Scroll and Zoom' and 'More Gestures' there a many preferences available to set the Trackpad as you wish. Each preference has a small video showing what the preferences does.

There is also a more hidden setting to allow dragging using the trackpad. it is found in System Preferences > Accessibility > Mouse & Trackpad - Trackpad Options. Setting 'Enabling dragging' has a few options. The without and with drag lock allows dragging with one finger, the three finger drag is well... for three fingers.

Battery care is discussed in this Apple article.

http://www.apple.com/au/batteries/

You Macbook has ventilation point on it to aid cooling.

Looking at the bottom of the MacBook, you will see ventilation holes on the sides near the front and also across the back under the display hindge. It is important that you keep these clear as cool is sucked into these points. If you use the computer on a pillow, you will block these points and cause unnecessary heating.

While it may not kill the computer unless you are doing something that cause the CPU to drive hard and subsequently cause large heat buildup, such as watching flash videos, editing movies or photos, or number/code crunching, it will more than likely reduce the life of the computer.

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