Apple is encouraging extreme out-of-spec use of MacBook Pro’s?

In the same time that mountain climber Gavin Bate is tweeting his way to the world’s highest peak on Mount Everest, I came across another news feed item (this time on the Apple Hot News feed) entitled “Extreme editing with Final Cut Pro at 18,000 feet“. Apparently, there’s another team of hi-tech mountain climbers who are using their MacBook Pro’s in a dome tent at 18,000 ft. to edit footage using Apple’s Final Cut Pro.

MacBook Pro Specs

The next moment, I rushed to the MacBook Pro specs on Apple’s website to check out the maximum altitude for the device. As you can see in the screenshot, the climbers are operating their Macs 8,000 feet higher than the maximum operating altitude as well as 3,000 feet higher than the maximum storage altitude (not to mention that I’m pretty sure the temperature up there is by no means higher than 50° F (10° C). Despite all this hostile environment, they’re successfully using their Macs not for some trivial task (i.e. Twitter) but for video editing (perhaps they’re deliberately doing that to use the Mac’s boiling aluminum unibody frame as some form or heat source in the cold tent?).

The funny thing about this, is that since Apple is featuring the story in their feed, it looks like they’re taking pride of the fact that some people are using their products against the manufacturer’s instructions in a hostile environment. I wonder if their attitude would be the same if an unknown mountain climber supplied their Mac to a local Apple Store for service (after freezing the guts out of it in the highs of Everest) requesting free service / replacement covered by the warranty.