This is the last post I will be making in response to anything Vanilla says.
Originally posted by Vanilla
1. If your cellphone battery dies, you go to your local shop, pick up a new battery, go home, install and recharge it. You have your hardware active at all times with only a restriction in portability as it recharges. With the iPod, if the battery dies you have to package it up and send it to the Apple service centre who will decide whether to fix or replace it and then send it back to you. You are without your hardware throughout this time.
As we have said before, it is not at all difficult to replace the battery in the iPod yourself. I've tinkered around in my iPod before and I'm a klutz if ever there was one.
2. The iPod is a sealed unit, it is not designed for the user to install the battery themselves. Nokia and Ericcsson phones have some of the sleekest, most compact designs in the market yet all provide the user with the means of replacing the battery, so the lack of this facility in the iPod is not simply a design issue, its a BAD design issue.
The cell phone also has a smaller LCD display, no hard drive, a less complicated motherboard, and a much shallower interface electronics panel. Cell phone makers can afford to expend a some space on a removable battery solution. With an iPod, however, a removable battery would increaze the size significantly (latches, second walls, battery cases, electrodes, etc.), would be more prone to failure, and likely would be made out of ugly plastic instead of looking any good.
3. The standard warranty is for one year and - ignoring the fact that you have to hand your precious iPod over for the moment of course Apple will replace/fix a dead battery during this time. Yet it appears that on average iPod batteries are dying during year 2+, which means that everyone should be purchasing the extended Warranty at the very least to cover themselves. The point of course as has been mentioned before is twofold: a/why should the user be obliged to purchase an extended warranty to cover themselves for something everyone is aware WILL happen? A warranty should be there to cover the unforeseen; providing a standard warranty that falls short of covering known issues is bad customer service. B/from what I understand if you live in Florida you cannot actually purchase the extended warranty in any case, having instead to rely on the standard one-year warranty.
Lithium ion batteries have a finite lifetime. For most users, this will extend far beyond two years--my iPod is well over two years old and its battery is still fine. Since lithium ion batteries have five hundred cycles in them, a one-year warranty seems to me to be a reasonable warranty--if the battery fails inside of a year, that's at most about 350 cycles and is far less than you should be getting out of your battery. Over a year, I feel that there's no basis for complaint if the battery goes out because the battery will have lasted something at least sort of close to what it should have.
The Florida issue isn't Apple's fault. Florida requires that companies offering warranty programs actually earmark the amount of a replacement unit in a bank account somewhere. Very few companies offer extended warranties in Florida, and I don't blame them.
5. As for the battery replacement program I reside in the UK and it is not available here. I did actually look on the Australian Apple website but could not find any reference to the program. If you could provide a link to the page I would be happy to apologise for my assumption this was purely US biased.
I have no comment on this other than to say that each country has its own laws that need to be followed in these issues. Terms-of-service agreements have to be written in proper legalese, and all sorts of behind-the-scenes work needs to be taken care of to make these things a reality. This takes time. In short, be patient because it will happen. It's not as if Steve can snap his fingers and it's done. Do you seriously think the U.S. got a battery replacement program within a week of the idea being tossed about? It probably took a good nine months' lead time before the announcement of the program.
1. Extend the standard Warranty to two years for the iPod only, but make the second year purely to cover battery degradation, with all other issues incurring a charge. [This will keep Florida users happy with a timeframe that will cover the vast majority of known battery issues Worldwide]
Like I said before, Apple cannot guarantee the batteries for that long. Virtually all batteries that are truly faulty will fail within the first year of the warranty. Failures after that are due to the battery's natural life cycle being depleted. LITHIUM ION BATTERIES HAVE A LIFE CYCLE OF FIVE HUNDRED CHARGES AND NOTHING CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT AT PRESENT. No other batteries can provide appropriate charge life or load current, so choosing another battery chemistry that has a longer lifetime is not an option. Apple should not be responsible for the replacement of batteries that have simply expended its lifetime.
3. Make the out of Warranty battery replacement program valid Worldwide
It's a matter of time.
But ultimately they should redesign the product to allow the user to replace the battery themselves.
You'd get a unit that runs hotter, is heavier and bulkier, is more expensive, and will be made out of ugly plastic instead of looking good. When the battery is easy enough to change anyway, I'm OK with things the way they are.
Like I said, I'm done replying to Vanilla's posts. You keep repeating the same thing over and over again as canon even though we give you reasonable arguments as to why you are at the best, impatient and unreasonable, and at the worst, flat out WRONG.
