uberamd
macrumors 68030
Thank you. How many tens of millions of iPods are in circulation? 15 incidents? Wow....
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Apple Legal Reportedly Hinders Reporter's Investigation of iPods Catching Fire
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Thank you. How many tens of millions of iPods are in circulation? 15 incidents? Wow....
donlphi
macrumors 6502
Amy Clancy of KIRO 7 TV in Seattle reports on her investigation of complaints of iPods overheating, smoldering and catching fire. The complaints, made to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, amount to over 800 pages of documentation covering 15 incidents that Apple's lawyers repeatedly tried to prevent Clancy from accessing under a Freedom of Information Act request.The complaints cover a broad array of iPod models over the years and include incidents that occurred while the devices were charging and not.
I'm sure Amy Clancy didn't have to do too much investigation on this, considering Microsoft is in their backyard, and they have a division that does nothing other than look for problems in Apple technology to use as leverage when it's time to market their new ZUNE HD.
Considering there are only 15 incidents out of millions of iPods, Apple is doing just fine. As for Apple's legal, they are just doing their job - covering their butts until they have an answer. Nobody knows the cause for these 15 incidents. It's just KIRO 7 trying to help their hometown heroes (MS). Amy needs to use her B.A. in Creative Writing for something other than causing hysteria for iPod owners. Why not report on MS VISTA sales, or the Red Circle of Death on XBOX 360s. This is a joke.
DELLsFan
macrumors 6502a
15 incidents times $5 Million in punitive damages awarded to each owner. Now add another $50 Million in fines ...
I'm just making up these numbers, but if it were real (and don't think the victims haven't lawyered up) this is still quite a bargain in the wake of such exploding quarterly profit at Apple. 😀
There are lots of ways for iPods to fail. The way I would like for them to fail *least* is by catching fire inside my pants.
Total crap
15 out of 175,000,000 is statistically meaningless and this story is sensationalistic crap. It's silly to think it means anything at all, and especially ludicrous to disparage Apple's safety without any comparison of the incident-to-sales ratio of other devices with lithium-based batteries.
A red flag of sensationalism is emphasizing that there are "800 pages" of reports when all those pages document 15 incidents.
The writer even points out how many iPods have been made and then fails to reason that 15 out of 175,000,000 means absolutely nothing.
15 out of 175,000,000 is statistically meaningless and this story is sensationalistic crap. It's silly to think it means anything at all, and especially ludicrous to disparage Apple's safety without any comparison of the incident-to-sales ratio of other devices with lithium-based batteries.
A red flag of sensationalism is emphasizing that there are "800 pages" of reports when all those pages document 15 incidents.
The writer even points out how many iPods have been made and then fails to reason that 15 out of 175,000,000 means absolutely nothing.
DMann
macrumors 601
Bubba Satori
Suspended
1. who makes the battery?
2. the media here drool over MS's every word-
probably because MS now keeps the 2 dying papers here going;
MS practically owns the dead and now web based Seattle PI-which may still fully die with Microsoft Blogs MS Report etc
sort of like ZDNet-or 'MSNZD' as I like to refer to them, sister network to MSNBC
They already have a monopoly on all 500 PCs in the recently built, Billion dollar "World Class"
Seattle Public Library HQ- AD's pin-up of the month...
When asked about being a 'World Class library'-yet having no Macs-as I stood across from the "Bill & Melinda Gates Lecture Auditorium" I listened to the Head librarian state with a straight face
"We dont know how that system works-were not equipped for it-and nobody uses it anyway"
That may have changed but was true when I was down there a few years ago
World Class....
2. the media here drool over MS's every word-
probably because MS now keeps the 2 dying papers here going;
MS practically owns the dead and now web based Seattle PI-which may still fully die with Microsoft Blogs MS Report etc
sort of like ZDNet-or 'MSNZD' as I like to refer to them, sister network to MSNBC
They already have a monopoly on all 500 PCs in the recently built, Billion dollar "World Class"
Seattle Public Library HQ- AD's pin-up of the month...
When asked about being a 'World Class library'-yet having no Macs-as I stood across from the "Bill & Melinda Gates Lecture Auditorium" I listened to the Head librarian state with a straight face
"We dont know how that system works-were not equipped for it-and nobody uses it anyway"
That may have changed but was true when I was down there a few years ago
World Class....
No fan of Apple...
But it seems that all devices that use these batteries need some kind of overheat-detection sensor that will beep if the battery is reaching a critical temperature.
But it seems that all devices that use these batteries need some kind of overheat-detection sensor that will beep if the battery is reaching a critical temperature.
GoodWatch
macrumors 6502a
Thank you for proving my point 😛 Excellent! (Remember the outcry when Dell recalled thousands of notebook batteries? Bad, bad Dell. The batteries must have exploded because the notebooks ran Windows).
Wonder how many of them were charged using 50cents charger from China bought from ebay. Also, how many of them were still using the factory sealed battery? There are many factors involved here. Plus as somebody pointed out, how many iPods having this issue vs number of iPods sold? Pretty much any portable device using rechargeable batteries are susceptible to this issue, and I've seen more cases happening with cellphones worldwide than iPods. I'm more interested on why MS have not recalled their 360s for RROD, despite the obvious flaws.
Oh well, we'll see what Apple would do. I was kinda disappointed that my 5G iPod is still running fine. 😉
Oh well, we'll see what Apple would do. I was kinda disappointed that my 5G iPod is still running fine. 😉
RumMunkey
macrumors 6502a
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Safari/530.17)
15?
What percentage do you think that is of the MILLIONS of iPods sold?
There's probably more people killed by kitchen scissors than iPods catching fire.
15?
What percentage do you think that is of the MILLIONS of iPods sold?
There's probably more people killed by kitchen scissors than iPods catching fire.
You're so right! How dare we expect none of the devices to spontaneously explode in our hands? Hey, mind handing me one of those extra pitchforks you got there? Btw, welcome to the forums Nem, you'll see exploding batteries in Apple products is not exclusive to the iPod only... take a stroll back at get acquainted with some older MR news stories.
Xian Zhu Xuande
macrumors 6502a
15 incidents involving how many millions of products!?
You have got to be kidding me. Aside from factoring miss-use/abuse, which I'll wager plays a great role with such a small percentage of related issues, I would imagine such failure rates are common through nearly every big electronics manufacturer. Heck, HP has released laptop models which, on their own, have spawned dozens of flame-related issues (especially back in the P4 days). No company wants this kind of stuff coming out, though...
It is serious business when an electronic device burns or catches fire, but when we're dealing with numbers like this, making it out to be a big deal (not talking about MacRumors, who is reporting here, but rather about some responses this has already garnered) is just silly. Now, if it were 15 out of twenty thousand products...
You have got to be kidding me. Aside from factoring miss-use/abuse, which I'll wager plays a great role with such a small percentage of related issues, I would imagine such failure rates are common through nearly every big electronics manufacturer. Heck, HP has released laptop models which, on their own, have spawned dozens of flame-related issues (especially back in the P4 days). No company wants this kind of stuff coming out, though...
It is serious business when an electronic device burns or catches fire, but when we're dealing with numbers like this, making it out to be a big deal (not talking about MacRumors, who is reporting here, but rather about some responses this has already garnered) is just silly. Now, if it were 15 out of twenty thousand products...
This is not about exploding products. 🙄
uberamd
macrumors 68030
ghostface147
macrumors 601
jmpage2
macrumors 68040
This is exactly why we might see a shift to more companies pulling some of their production capabilities "in house".
When you out source everything, as Apple does, you have no control over quality.
Apple considers quality a high enough priority to hire more expensive US based call center staff that work directly for Apple, and yet Apple shaves costs by outsourcing all component construction and assembly to the lowest bidders they can get.
When you out source everything, as Apple does, you have no control over quality.
Apple considers quality a high enough priority to hire more expensive US based call center staff that work directly for Apple, and yet Apple shaves costs by outsourcing all component construction and assembly to the lowest bidders they can get.
RumMunkey
macrumors 6502a
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Safari/530.17)
Seriously?
This is like saying "I worked for a car repair company and saw a lot of damaged cars".
No kidding. You worked in REPAIRS. Did you get many healthy iPods in to the shop?
Didn't think so.
chuckirons said:
Seriously?
This is like saying "I worked for a car repair company and saw a lot of damaged cars".
No kidding. You worked in REPAIRS. Did you get many healthy iPods in to the shop?
Didn't think so.
This whole thing is stupid. 15 incidents WOW! I don't think it has anything to do with it being a Seattle local news station or any Microsoft ties. I live in Orlando & our local news stations have these "shocking" "consumer needs to know" crap stories all the time. I believe they are attempts (p*ss poor @ that) by the local news channels to do "hard core journalism" when they need to stick with the daily crap of this guy is going to jail, traffic on I-4 (here in Orlando, what ever major road is constantly backed up in your city) is crap because of whatever minor fender bender people slow down to look at, local sports, and what ever national headlines are relevant. They don't need to go try and take on major corporations because someone in their city got a lemon product & called the local news about it instead of the manufacturer. These stories cater to those looking for their 15 minutes of fame looking like the victim of something larger.
LOL 800 pages of documentation for 15 incidents... That's a little over 53 pages per incident. Who does that much paperwork for an electronic device catching on fire? These cases must be happening in small towns where the local police & fire department has nothing better to do than paper work.
LOL 800 pages of documentation for 15 incidents... That's a little over 53 pages per incident. Who does that much paperwork for an electronic device catching on fire? These cases must be happening in small towns where the local police & fire department has nothing better to do than paper work.
Right on brother!!! Johnson and Johnson should have said the same thing when only 7 out of 300,000,000 pills were found to have cyanide in them.
japanime
macrumors 68030
Apple apparently considered this safety issue serious enough to issue a recall of the first-generation iPod nano in Japan about a year ago.
They replaced my nano, which would get super-hot during normal use (while listening to music or using the Nike+ kit). The replacement model, also a first-generation nano (manufactured in 2008, according to the serial number) has always remained cool to the touch during both charging and normal use.
It may be that there were only 15 or so documented cases in the United States, but I suspect the problem was more widespread than that. Otherwise, why the recall in Japan?
They replaced my nano, which would get super-hot during normal use (while listening to music or using the Nike+ kit). The replacement model, also a first-generation nano (manufactured in 2008, according to the serial number) has always remained cool to the touch during both charging and normal use.
It may be that there were only 15 or so documented cases in the United States, but I suspect the problem was more widespread than that. Otherwise, why the recall in Japan?
*LTD*
macrumors G4
FUD.
Anyone investigate whether these "complaints" were bogus or whether they failed due to misuse or user-induced problems?
Even ONE iPod incident makes front page news all over the web. It's a reporter's wet dream.
That iPhone discoloration BS turned out to be the case rubbing off. But sure enough, regardless of its veracity it was the top news item for at least a week before the media finally woke up to the truth.
Four cases of iPod problems (probably two of them user-induced) out of over 100,000 units sold in South Korea, and the South Korean government steps in to demand a recall! Ludicrous.
Exploding iPods and melting iPhones. Pure FUD.
As someone said here, you'll probably win the lottery before your iPod ever explodes/melts/catches fire/gives you cancer/rapes your grandmother. Apple should open a formal inquiry in order to investigate the veracity of all these claims, but that obviously isn't feasible.
Anyone investigate whether these "complaints" were bogus or whether they failed due to misuse or user-induced problems?
Even ONE iPod incident makes front page news all over the web. It's a reporter's wet dream.
That iPhone discoloration BS turned out to be the case rubbing off. But sure enough, regardless of its veracity it was the top news item for at least a week before the media finally woke up to the truth.
Four cases of iPod problems (probably two of them user-induced) out of over 100,000 units sold in South Korea, and the South Korean government steps in to demand a recall! Ludicrous.
Exploding iPods and melting iPhones. Pure FUD.
As someone said here, you'll probably win the lottery before your iPod ever explodes/melts/catches fire/gives you cancer/rapes your grandmother. Apple should open a formal inquiry in order to investigate the veracity of all these claims, but that obviously isn't feasible.
johncarync
macrumors regular
Redmond: start your copy machines
Redmond will jump on this. How long until we hear an announcement from Microsoft stating they will begin making Zunes that catch on fire?
Redmond will jump on this. How long until we hear an announcement from Microsoft stating they will begin making Zunes that catch on fire?