Former Apple tech...  Certified and all.

My Mac Pro died once upon a time from the same circumstances. Called insurance,  the whole process took a week. I didn't want to touch it before making the claim. I recovered my data afterwards and all was good.

Don't take it to Best Buy. That will only lead to trouble.

Click on the Service link, then put in your location to find Apple Authorized Service Centers other than Best Buy. Seriously.

https://locate.apple.com/

Accept gifts as cash.  Buy visa gift card with cash for the amount needed.  Use visa gift card to cover costs.  

The suggestion to have a surge protector installed at the panel is solid.  Even though we took the worst possible event, a strike between the house and detached garage, only small gizmos like switches, phones, and WAPs were effected.  With a LAN and phone system shared in both buildings it should have been a lot worse - the underground cabling certainly felt the effects of that multi-tree strike.  I had that gizmo installed a decade ago, it wasn't expensive but required an electrician.  If I hadn't had that, I would have likely lost a quality network server, entire phone system, plus a couple plasma TVs.  They work.  Every time we have a close strike I can hear that gizmo clamp, reminding me that surge was stopped at the panel.

When lightning hits, all it wants to do is find grounds to dissipate - don't allow it to use your electronics to be the the first easy ground.  And when it hits between 2 buildings running off the same panel it can cause major damage - so have the secondary panels well grounded with a long ground rod driven far into the Earth and tight connections to the thick copper wire which bonds the rod to the ground in the panel.

So as mentioned, get a whole home ssurge protector installed by an electrician - it's a small box that is mounted next to the panel, and secondary service fed off that panel to garages, pools, sheds, etc. must be grounded and copper connecting those to the ground rods must be tightly bonded.  The weakest points will be any underground wiring like Cat5/6 or coax that spans those buildings as those systems can pickup the energy between your electric system and take out the gizmos attached.

*I am not an electrician - but I am a network guy who has experienced the fallout from many customer lightning hits.

Lastly, avoid the Best Geeksquad like the plague - just the fact they can augment their income by searching your computer for evidence of a crime while quoting a 7 day turnaround and wiping your hard drive should be enough to suggest you run away.

Yeah, last week a woman called frantically after her pc wouldn't boot.  A geek quoted her 7 days - we had it booting after a half hour... the Windows 10 upgrade she never asked for screwed her system.  No data was lost and she had her PC with all her accounting and photos back the next day - and deleted the Win10 update files which we could prove caused the entire incident.  The Geeks would have handed her back an empty drive with a reinstalled OS - after a week... plus her data could have been scrutinized for evidence of criminal activity - and if found the finder would have been paid extra.  Imagine if their tech needed cash and the woman's daughter turned down a request for a romantic date - she could have been turned into a victim in retaliation, with kiddie porn suddenly found.

See if it's recoverable via a professional Apple Certified service that isn't Geek Squad if not

1.  Is this a renters or homeowners insurance policy?  Business Policy?  

I would read very carefully particularly if you had a personal property rider.

2.  Since you use this for business and is your livelihood find a 0% credit card, find a reseller who does financing

3.  If 2 doesn't work call a company like Direct Capital who does business financing or go to Credit Union and take a personal loan

Don't take it to geek squad, find a apple professional.

Second thing, it seems you are trying to make a full time job out of your hobby and it's not going well financially which is obvious. I would find a real job and I'm saying that as trying to be helpful and not being an ass.

If you say a lightning strike "destroyed your livelihood" moving forward, budget allowing, what are you going to do different?

So, set it on fire dummy.

 This. Poor Planning to say the least.

Sorry, I'm posting (and reading) from my phone at the moment, must have missed this earlier. That is incredibly gracious. Will be following up shortly.

ETA: I will not be taking my Mac to Best Buy

I dunno, I've never had computer issues before (as in never), didn't know they were that incompetent. Thanks for all the well wishes and advice; I'll be calling insurance today to see what they say , but according to what I read in the policy it's not looking super good.

You said it turns on but doesnt display any video?  Is it possible the video card is dead?  Do you have a spare video card around?

Your power supply is possibly shot, and likely wouldn't break your deductible anyway - even with the cost of an out-of-warranty service charge.

Do you take out the cartridge and blow on it?

The fact that the machine powers on does not guarantee the PS is not damaged.

shake the gunk out of the mouse?

Loss of drives (and nothing else), would give him some visible clues during boot.  

Sometimes a failed ram chip will hang boot at a black screen without giving the usual beep-beep ram error, I'd pull the ram (can you pull the ram in them?? ), as a first step and see if it altered the behavior at boot.  If that magically fixes things (for the moment), consider the possibility that the ram slot is dead and not the chip.

More than anything else though, I'd keep in mind that lightning damaged machines are often surprisingly odd with the way they fail, and even if you can miracle it back into working, tomorrow might bring something different altogether.  It's seldom that a machine in this state goes on to a long and happy life after repair.  The only thing worse for your situation than needing a brand new $4k machine is needing that machine after throwing another grand into the pre-existing trashcan.

Yes I'm fucking serious.  If you can't afford to replace your computer what are you going to do when the AC in your house craps out?  That is all your problem now not the landlords.   I applause you for wanting to provide a home for your wife but if buying it means that you have no savings that could protect your livliehood then you are. It financially positioned to buy a home at this point. You will be one water heater failure away from having to sell your computer to provide hot water to your home.   

What you're doing is the same as yelling at a man in the middle of a heart attack that he should've exercised more.  

It doesn't matter how right you might be when your timing sucks.

This is not true at all and I came here to tell you to check the power supply 1st. I can't tell you how many machines I have fixed over the years that turned on just fine but didn't have the power necessary to actually make the machine boot. Go to harbor freight and get a $5 meter. Watch a youtube video on how to thoroughly test the power supply.

Give it a shot.

write it off as a casualty deduction on next years taxes and write off the new purchase as well

also write off all the time/expenses required to recover/recreate the data.  If you have someone that does your taxes I would call the immediately to make sure I'm covering all the bases and have all the required documentation for taxes

But you are on ARFCOM, the land of better dead than red.

Try blue type instead.

Very nice offer btw.

Good luck OP.

Unless he has already made the down payment (which some of his statements point to him not having done) it might not actually be too late. 

He is right and likely trying to be helpful before OP goes balls deep in a house purchase with no 3-6 months of emergency savings. I just had to replace the air handler on my 5 year old house, had it not been under warranty I would have been out 3500.  Buying a house without several grand in an emergency fund is poor preparation and a recipe for disaster. Relying on an income from what sounds more like a hobby than a job is also not a great idea.

Find a real IT person. Not best buy.

You don't really understand my financial situation or the way getting a mortgage works when you're self employed. My fiance's finances also play into this; it's too much to get into on an iPhone keyboard, suffice it to say that this timing is beyond awful.

The fact that rent is about 2x what you pay on a mortgage where I live is also a factor; I am buying a home to save money (and also so I'm not just burning 700-800$ every month for nothing).

Dude...tell me that you periodically backup your stuff on an external hard drive!?  Jeesus, man.  I'd even use one of those paid services that are like 10 bucks a month that safely backup all your stuff offsite.
If your business is so reliant upon a single machine, you need backups like a mofo, man.

You're quite literally a lightning bolt away from losing everything at any given time.

No - You need someone familiar with electronics.

Best Buy?  

LOL

Maybe you can lease a machine while you get everything squared away?

What is wrong with what I told you to do?

It looks like he understands it perfectly.There is never a good time for something like this to happen. And with all that's going on youve put yourself in a financially awkward position. In these type situations it always comes in threes. The computer, a car repair, and then the water heater goes out. So be prepared.

Also follow the 2 is 1 and 1 is none rule with mission critical equipment like your computer.

Sorry I'm browsing on my phone; I might have missed it. I hate browsing on my phone.

Turn it on without displays plugged in, then plug one in and try

I had a toshiba laptop that died, they allowed me to pull the HD and save the data before I sent it to them to repair for free.

Maybe your insurance will allow you to do the thing

Been in this situation before, insurance and unplugging everything when lightning sounds close are your friends. I have no faith in whole home surge protectors anymore, they've burned me in the past. The fridge is the only thing that stays plugged in and isn't on a power strip that can be easily turned off when things aren't in use.

Tag to see if OP uses any of the advice or offers posted.

Edit:  When lightning strikes directly it's impossible to stop.  The best thing to do during lightning storms is unplug.  I have seen homes with every single wire inside of them burnt up and every wall smoldering.  I'm not sure what you think would stop that.  You should have good  surge protectors(good ones have ratings and specs on them) on all important electronics as well though.  Power is not that clean and does fluctuate.

Hard to beat a free replacement computer.

Fuckin aye. And I WILL be taking that offer if I exhaust my other options.

_{Meh,I offered him a laptop on the first page}

Yes, I've built many machines using them.  And they're currently $409.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117402

We're talking about a whole machine here.  64 gigs of ram isn't cheap - $400.  X99 motherboards start at about $200. And so on.

OP do you know how to make a bootable USB thumb drive from an ISO?  If so I'd recommend downloading Paladin from Sumari.  It's a forensic tool I use all the time for Macs*.  If the HD got slagged a bit by the lightning you'd still have a chance pulling some of your data off of it...

What part of VA are you in?

*used to be free as in beer....now it might be free to LEOs....let me check...

Sorry, I'm not catching all the posts as I'm browsing on my phone. I more than appreciate the offer though, but my software is Mac only unfortunately

Thanks for making ARFCOM great. I wasn't expecting this kind of generosity.

Central. I think my data might be ok; the first time I turned the machine on it booted up to the login screen but no power was getting to my keyboard so I couldn't log in. I unplugged the MIDI keyboard I use to compose and USB license key from the keyboard (it's an Apple USB hub keyboard) and rebooted, at which point the screens just stayed black(and have ever since).

So I dunno, I'm hoping the hard drive is ok as the last time I imaged it with time machine was about a week ago. I do also manually back up my session files. If the SSD is toast I would lose a little bit of work but not much.

Tried target disk mode?

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201462

Then hook up another mac via thunderbolt and see if you can access the drive...

Rent is higher than a mortgage because the landlord has to cover repairs and maintenance in addition to paying the mortgage.  As a renter, you have the advantage of paying that extra money on a predictable schedule.  As a homeowner, you don't have that predictability and you need the reserves to cover major repairs when stuff breaks.

Good to hear OP has been offered help. There are some really good people on here I've found.

Central Virginia means you shouldn't be more than a few hours from the Short Pump Apple Store.

Not sure about a Mac, but when lightning took out one of my PCs, and it wouldn't boot to windows, after systematically checking hardware, it turned out the video card was the culprit. Once removed, the on board video driver kicked in and the PC booted right up. Just a thought that's probably already been covered in this thread.