Apple Thoughts: Magnets and MacBook Air Computers Don't Play Well Together

"We all know to keep powerful magnets away from traditional hard drives, but we recently found out that you should also keep magnets away from your MacBook Air, something that could get harder now that the iPad 2 has magnets built right into it."

It really shouldn't come as much of a surprise that magnets and laptops don't play well together. This is a good example where a small magnet in an iPhone case causes the MacBook Air screen to shut off, and wifi connections to disappear. Remove the magnet, the screen comes back on, but the wifi connections (presumedly) must be reestablished. After some discussion, it appears that the external magnet causes the computer to think that the laptop has been closed - so it goes into sleep mode. It would be interesting to see if this can be replicated with non-MacBook Air laptops.