ksz said:
But it *does not work*. I said the nano should offer even a modicum of scratch resistance against the rigors of normal use, but it does not. If you're uncertain what "modicum" means, please look it up.
Having yet to see a nano horribly disfigured and destroyed by scratches, and having my own nano in perfectly reasonable condition for not being protected, I'm not inclined to believe that the nano is lacking in a fundamental way its resistance to scratching. Judging by the fact that it has superior scratch resistance to many CDs, I believe the nano has more than a cursory level of scratch protection. I have worked with many softer plastics and know that polycarbonate is not sitting at the bottom. Compared to the standard laundry list of plastic weaknesses, frankly this is the one I'd most want. Perhaps you'd choose a different weakness...but there will always be some sort of deficiency, and since all plastic scratches and the difference in sensitivity at the high end is not dramatically large, any other deficiency would be worse and it still wouldn't be scratchproof.
Do you own any other portable electronics device whose appearance gets tarnished after 2 days of normal use? I certainly don't.
I don't own any device whose appearance is flawless after a short period of time, nor do I own any device, all iPods included, that I could define as criminally or disproportionately tarnished after such a time. The worst condition of anything I own after the shortest period of time was a pair of Fossil sunglasses which got scratched in my glove compartment after less than two hours. Runner up would be my car, which came with a number of small and faint scratches and collected some minor paint damage on the way home from where I purchased it (it was a 90 minute drive).
If scratches accumulated SLOWLY on the nano, taking years to accumulate 100 scratches, I would be OK. But my nano accumulated 100+ scratches in just a few days. A scratch here and a scratch there might be okay, but 100 scratches?
There's no time factor involved. Honestly. It's all about the environment and the conditions. And furthermore I know of nothing, save my most expensive watch, that took years to scratch. And even that "scratchproof" watch has a small scrape from a run in with a computer part.
These scratches HAVE NOT TARNISHED the appearance of my car.
And if they had, you would have to live with it, so count yourself lucky on the car and not so lucky on the iPod.
If my 545i was a scratch magnate and broke out into a hive of scratches after the first week whereas my friend's Camry or Lexus or Mercedes or Audi developed NO scratches after the same period of time, do you think I would be dissatisfied to say the least?
Sure, dissatisfied, possibly even angry. But you're also talking about something that's easily double the price of a Camry. By that logic, there would have to be something half the price of the nano with similar function and features in order to be upset about the nano over any other product of the same type. That is not the case, so the "premium" tactic doesn't apply. And you probably want to look up "magnate" since this is at least the third time you've misused it. Meanwhile, my dictionary continues to collect dust.
So why would I be dissatisfied? Simple. Because in this hypothetical case my BMW would be accumulating scratches at a rate that is disproportionate to other comparable items and these scratches are ruining its appearance.
Dissatisfied fine, but entitled to nothing in the way of compensation.
If the hypothetical BMW case stated above were true, don't you think every such owner would be upset at BMW?
Sure they would be upset. One or two might even try to sue and possibly demand a share of BMW's profits. But they'd be entitled to nothing, and aside from being upset, life goes on and BMW continues to sell the exact same car.
What other portable consumer electronics device you own has had its appearance tarnished in just 2 days of normal use? Name it. If the scratches on my nano took 2 or 3 years to accumulate, I would not be complaining, but these scratches accumulated in just days.
Your scratches are not inconsistent with several months of use. It's unfortunate that they occured sooner rather than later, but the time factor is random. The abrasion factor is not. I don't have any device, including my nano, which today became two nanos, which I consider to be heavily damaged within two days. That said, I have seen people inexplicably damage something brand new, and myself have had $75 sunglasses damaged within hours, left in a glove compartment that I thought to be clean. I was upset, but sometimes that happens. If people talked about sunglasses or watches that often, I'm sure I could find plenty of people on the internet to say "hey! me too! what's up with that?" about scratches from nowhere.
Bad analogy. Polycarbonate is NOT the only material available to Apple from which to make a successful iPod. The mini was the most successful iPod and it was made from anodized aluminum.
The nano is fast taking its place. They went with a different design. Although transparent aluminum may be available now, I don't think for a second that it fits the design of the nano. If you don't like the design, there are plenty of alternatives. And if your nano really scratched that much after two days, why not return it? If the restocking charge was more valuable to you than the iPod's appearance, you've just put an extremely small value on aesthetics and shouldn't be anywhere near this upset.
However, cell phone companies HAVE TO USE the EM band set aside by the FCC for consumer mobile communication. Can you give them an alternative technology for wireless? I'd like to see that!
But there are other EM bands they could have chosen from, and to think that there wasn't an extensive discussion before adopting them would be foolish. Another EM band could provide a longer range, or a higher data rate, but for whatever factors, they chose these specifically. No different with the nano. There are many slightly different characteristics, all very similar overall, but this was the one deemed best, all things considered.
My mobile phone works inside my house and inside my office. However, there were deadspots a year ago which have been fixed. My phone company (Cingular) listened to my complaints about deadspots, acknowledged that those deadspots existed and had been reported by others, and told me they're working to improve coverage in those areas. And they lived up to their promises.
Fine. But you didn't try to sue them over it, and although your dead spot may be gone, there are thousands or millions more. People have been complaining about problems with plastic for a long time, and the materials industry is working on it. They've made some impressive improvements, but they're not done yet, just like Cingular. Suing them won't really help matters when they're already working on the problem. As soon as better materials are in the pipeline, Apple will use them. They have a good track record of keeping up with the best that's available to them. Nobody sued them when they didn't produce a 3.0 GHz PowerMac in over a year, and in that case, Jobs even
said so. They don't need to sue to draw attention to an issue, because it's already known that plastic scratches. Glass breaks, but sometimes it's still better than plastic, judged by the engineers behind a given product. Iron rusts. It's an obvious shortcoming that can affect appearance (and integrity, if sufficiently bad). But people don't sue when it happens (unless it affects integrity, and even then they must prove that they actively took reasonable care of the item rather than simply watch it rust away until it was bad enough to sue).
You have every right to be upset about your nano. But one simply doesn't have the right to accuse Apple of foul play or to demand compensation unless their choice of material makes the product unsafe or unuseable. For aesthetic concerns, your wallet is the court.
That is called an issue and it is apples fault.
