Alright Tim, pick up your iPhone and speed dial Jony to pass on the following message:
The Design Society defines a 'design flaw' as
...any design-related product property that impairs product quality. What does that mean? A basic definition of quality is the degree to which the expected product properties match with the perceived product properties. Since it is what we call the customer of the product who has certain expectations about the product, there is a mismatch if the designer – who defines the product properties – has been unable to satisfy these expectations. In this context, the spectrum of product properties that influence quality is quite large. It reaches from poor ergonomics (the customer perceives the position of the camera shutter as awkward whereas the designer, for technical reasons, could not place it elsewhere) to the reliability of the product...
Also...
As pointed out in the previous section, a design flaw is generated when designers fail to create a level of product quality that satisfies the customers. This failure can be either due to “poor workmanship” or to designers having a different perception of the quality of the product than their customers. More precisely, designers can have a wrong concept about how the customers perceive specific product properties and/or what product properties they expect.
These definitions clearly tally with the complaints here and what a design flaw is. Whether the plastic sliding around inside is a necessary evil or not (as per the camera shutter example) the customers complaining here perceive that it does not match their expectations of quality. And given the price of Apple laptops are broadly the most expensive in the industry, those expectations are high.
