A few drops of water on my Macbook Pro

Question

I was quietly working on my Macbook Pro today when my misguided colleague (what goes through some people's heads sometimes, I'll never understand) decided to have some fun with the plant water sprayer, he wasn't aiming in my direction but a few drops of water ricocheted off the plants and onto my Macbook (and on me - but that's less worrisome altogether), on the screen, the case and the keyboard. Now we're just talking a few stray drops, and everything seems to be working just fine but is there anything I need to do to prevent potential damage? This was more than six hours ago and I've since turned the MBP off and back on and haven't noticed anything unusual. Any word of advice would be appreciated. Also is there anything I can use to protect my MBP from similar incidents in the future?

EDIT: It is a 15-inch 2012 MBP and the drops landed on the trackpad, on a couple of the keys, also one landed between the keys and a couple landed on the screen. Altogether, I noticed 6-7 drops tops. I didn't immediately turn the MBP off, I finished what I was doing and turned it off about an hour after the incident occurred. I turned it back on a couple of hours later.

Answer 1

In general - drops will not find the sensitive places and unless you live in an area with salt spray saturating the air - it won't gather much salt and be corrosive before it dries.

Statistically, there are only a few places where water will get wedged into a small crack (capillary action also can move a drop quite some distance from where it lands) and cause corrosion before it evaporates.

You did well to power it off. The only other thing would be to flip it upside down after closing a cloth between the keys and the screen.

You can edit your question to specify exactly where the liquid landed and what model (year and size) and I'll see if you need any more details in the answer.

In short - don't worry. Let the water dry, and use the Mac. Take it in to a genius bar or someone well used to repairing that mac. They will be able to educate you on the risks of using it (not much - and back up your data anyhow - something will eventually fail spills, accidents or perfect maintenance nonetheless).