As you can see in the pictures bellow, this is the palm rest wear I have on my Macbook Air after 1 year of (heavy) usage. I use my laptop professionally, almost on a daily basis for many hours a day. This is the result after cleaning the whole case with a cleaner I purchased from the Apple Store. As you can see it does not really help remove these stains, it does work wonderfully for all other stains… but I'm afraid this wear is actually removing part of the aluminum cases surface, if I'm right, I guess there's not much hope in restoring the finish. I would like to know if anyone else has experienced this and what you have done about it if you have been able to fix it. Thanks!
Best Answer
I believe those are imprints of your palm rests.
Since the sweat on your hand is a bit acid, it accelerate the aluminum oxidation.
So the more you'll use your mac, it'll get whiter and whiter on the sides of the touchpad (where you put you palms to type on the keyboard)...you may exchage it for a new one, it wont make a difference, you'll get white spots anyway over time.
No cleaning possible, and to prevent further escalation, recommend to use pads, or foil on those areas.