FOIA Documents Detail iPods Overheating, Catching Fire 314
suraj.sun passes along a report from a Seattle TV station that has been investigating reports of Apple iPods overheating and bursting into flames. "An exclusive KIRO 7 Investigation reveals an alarming number of Apple brand iPod MP3 players have suddenly burst into flames and smoke, injuring people and damaging property. It's an investigation that Apple has apparently been trying to keep out of the public eye. It took more than 7 months for KIRO 7 Consumer Investigator Amy Clancy to get her hands on documents concerning Apple's iPods from the Consumer Product Safety Commission because Apple's lawyers filed exemption after exemption. In the end, the CPSC released more than 800 pages which reveal, for the very first time, a comprehensive look that shows, on a number of occasions, iPods have suddenly burst into flames, started to smoke, and even burned their owners. ... Apple refused to comment, and refused to answer all of the other questions [the reporter] has been asking of the company since November."
iPods should definitely be contraindicated (Score:4, Funny)
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contraindicated ...
the iPod should be made inadvisable for people who sniff gas?
What?
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No. It should be recommended.
One week, and all the sniffers would be gone trough natural selection. :P
Hijack (Score:4, Informative)
Company policy (Score:4, Funny)
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Probably due to the new marketing phrase
"Is that an iPod in your pants or are you really happy to see me?"
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It wasn't Apple's fault, it was user incompetence. They should know better than to play a playlist like this:
Nevertheless, at least one Apple employee will be fired.
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- Dragonforce: Through the Fire and the Flames
- Jimi Hendrix: Fire
- Kings of Leon: Sex on Fire
- Prodigy: Fire Starter
- Jerry Lee Lewis: Great balls of fire
- Deep Purple: Smoke on the Water
I could go on all day :D
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- - Prodigy: Fire Starter
Also from the same band:
As I have the entire Prodigy discography on my iPod I could be perceived to be in danger....
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Re:Company policy (Score:4, Funny)
I AM THE GOD OF HELLFIRE and I bring you......flaming iPods!!!!
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Yeah. The employee that is completely unrelated and is just a scapegoat. While the real person responsible for it will get a raise for finding that scapegoat.
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# [can't think of the name of the artist]: Fire On The Mountain
The Grateful Dead. It's most often preceded by Scarlet Begonias and some delicious segue jamming.
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aka "scarlet -> fire" as its commonly written on tapes.
(tapes? sorry for the flashback.)
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[can't think of the name of the artist]: Fire On The Mountain
Nevertheless, at least one Apple employee will be fired.
Marshal Tucker?
Meanshile, in Redmond... (Score:5, Funny)
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Wait - those little buds go up your nose? Damn - I've been doing it wrong!
Sniffing iPhones (Score:2)
Things we can learn from this? (Score:5, Funny)
Apples can and do still go bad.
public perception (Score:2, Insightful)
ALARMING! (Score:5, Informative)
Summary:
> Investigation reveals an alarming number of Apple brand iPod MP3 players have suddenly burst into flames and smoke
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Article:
>When the documents finally arrived more than seven months later, they included more than 800 pages of information, including 15 burn and fire-related incidents blamed by iPod owners on their iPods.
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> After conducting its own preliminary investigation, the federal agency determined that, with more than 175 million iPods sold, âoethe number of incidents is extremely small in relation to the number of products produced, making the risk of injury very low.â
.
I'm ALARMED!
Re:ALARMING! (Score:5, Insightful)
So 1 in roughly every 11 million iPods has this sort of problem.
Out of curiosity, are there other products that burst into flames spontaneously at rates lower than 1 in every 11 million? I'm just thinking that if I bought 11 million of anything - including fire extinguishers - I wouldn't be terribly surprised if one went *FOOM!* one day.
Out of every iPod burning (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple has quashed reporting of 100% of them.
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It would be nice if they didn't obstruct access to the information if somebody wants it.
Apple has done nothing but make the situation worse. Instead of letting them just have the information and giggling as they tried to make 15 fires seem like a huge risk to our children!!! Apple decided to give them a half-page story about how they did everything in their power to stop a news agency from getting government consumer safety reports (as if they had any chance of that working in the first place) before the
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Humans themselves allegedly burst spontaneously into flames at frequencies not drastically smaller than that :-D
Not quite time to splash out on that asbestos iPod sleeve just yet I think.
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So 1 in roughly every 11 million iPods has this sort of problem.
No -- 1 in roughly every 11 million iPods has reported this sort of problem.
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I'm terrified! I'm more likely to be killed by my iPod than by my tea cosy!
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Furthermore, it looks like more of these are contact burns from an iPod that's overheated, than are actual sparks flying - letalone spontaneous combustion. I've had laptops that (in normal operation) get nearly hot enough to burn skin.
Macbook tag? (Score:3, Insightful)
Blown Totally Out Of Proportion! (Score:5, Funny)
I mean, my iPod's only exploded what, three times? Okay, four, but that last time my girlfriend loaded some Celine Dion on it, so that falls squarely under self-defence.
That's a far better track record than most of my electronic devices.
Re:Blown Totally Out Of Proportion! (Score:4, Funny)
No, friend, that was a suicide/homicide. If only more devices would give their PCBs to stop Celine Dion...
Just the iPods, and not the owners . . . ? (Score:2)
. . . no Spontaneous Human Combustion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_human_combustion [wikipedia.org] ?
Now, THAT would be real news for real nerds . . .
"Hey, that dude drank too much Jolt, and just like, sorta burned up!"
Spontaneous Human Combustion (Score:2)
It's not the Jolt Cola, it's the Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters.
Not a bug... (Score:2, Funny)
"Apple is about innovation, this is a self destruct feature that
demanding consumers requested"
Anyone else want to take a ride on the "spin machine"?
The downside of high capacity batteries. (Score:5, Insightful)
High enough energy density and you go from energy store to high explosive.
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The parable of the burning ipod (Score:5, Funny)
...and the burning ipod did speak unto Jobs and appointed him to lead the users out of Vista and unto the promised land of OSX.
Just Another Reason... (Score:2)
...to buy an iPod. Those cunning devils at Apple have found a legal way to sell portable incendiary devices! Who wouldn't want one now?
Another non-story (Score:4, Informative)
According to the article (you DID read the article, didn't you?) there has been no serious injuries. The article details how, after 7 months of investigation, the reporter has found bloggers blogging about overheating iPods, but the number reported in the article is about ... 35. That's out of the 175 million devices out there...
Hardly a product flaw. Perhaps some rare individual and isolated parts are flawed, but this isn't a systemic problem.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission conducted its own preliminary investigation and determined that, with more than 175 million iPods sold, âoethe number of incidents is extremely small in relation to the number of products produced, making the risk of injury very low.â
Nothing to see here, move along. kdawson, queue the apple haters. Oh, and start posting real stories or find another job.
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No, drinkypoo, it's not that Apple hid the story, but rather that Apple chose not to talk about it because it wasn't a story. I can't name one company in the world that wants to acknowledge a problem; not Apple, not Ford and not anyone else. They usually don't discuss such matters unless and until they become a publicly visible problem, and 15 units out of 175 MILLION units do not make a publicly visible problem unless somebody goes out of their way to make it one, which seems to be a big purview of anti-Ap
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Real story? 35/175,000,000ths of the systems were reported as overheating and that was without a technical evaluation to determine if the device did indeed overheat and a root cause analysis...and you accuse ME of trolling? Your attempt to make a mountain out of a molehill qualifies as trolling, but outlining the gist of the article is hardly such. There's nothing to cover up 'cause there's no systemic problem.
Please at least attempt to understand the issue before replying, kthxbye.
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Isn't that sort of the point of FOIA requests? Agency has report, you want it, file the FOIA, it gets cleared for release and then is possibly released? The article stresses the 800 pages repeatedly (while barely mentioning the total of 15 events...). I wouldn't expect them to process that request overnight.
And how do you not notice something burning hot in contact with your skin? "At first I thought, how in the heck did I get burned? Right there?" she told Clancy, while pointing to a penny-sized, round bur
Mentioning "Fire" gets the attention of Applecare (Score:5, Interesting)
A while back I had a problem with the power brick for my Macbook Pro. It was running awful hot, and some of the plastic on the cable near the magnetic adapter was starting to melt. Applecare kept trying to tell me that the problem was my fault for unplugging the adapter by pulling on the cable instead of actually grabbing the magsafe plug, and that despite me having paid for applecare, they would not fix it.
A couple days later while playing a game in bootcamp, I went to unplug it, and was so hot that the power cord's coating actually melted to my hand. I called up AppleCare went through the situation again. I even explained that it had melted, I seemed to get nowhere. Where I had touched the cord it had now darkened considerably, probably from me being able to see the bare cable beneath it. I was trying to describe this to the tech and said something along the lines of, "Well there's melting damage, and the area is blackened a bit as if there was a small fire there"
Suddenly the whole tone of the conversation changed, and I was immediately transfered to a supervisor. I went through about 10 minutes answering a series of questions off a script. "Did the Fire cause any property damage?" "Was there any bodily injury caused by the fire?" "Have you suffered any loss of income due to this problem?" etc etc etc.
I answered no to everything, but simply mentioning "Fire" got me a new power brick, when no other method did. It is something Apple is clearly concerned about.
Re:Mentioning "Fire" gets the attention of Appleca (Score:2, Interesting)
Confirmed, same experience from Apple Store in Tokyo (it's a script). Also told me "no, never heard of this before" while clearly asking scripted questions.
Proof is the shorted power adapter can apparently cause damage to the smart battery (there is a little processor in there), and he knew this. He went right for the battery, and sure enough it no longer reported it's serial no and status... changed that too.
My business partner had the same experience also.
NOW--- the problem as many have said, is that th
Manufacturers are always responsible. (Score:2)
There are ways the problem of energy density can be solved, such as using an embedded circuit breaker. We all use circuit breakers to prevent house fires.
Re:Mentioning "Fire" gets the attention of Appleca (Score:5, Funny)
Suddenly the whole tone of the conversation changed, and I was immediately transfered to a supervisor. I went through about 10 minutes answering a series of questions off a script. "Did the Fire cause any property damage?" "Was there any bodily injury caused by the fire?" "Have you suffered any loss of income due to this problem?" etc etc etc.
I answered no to everything, but simply mentioning "Fire" got me a new power brick, when no other method did. It is something Apple is clearly concerned about.
"Hi, Applecare. I bought a mac mini and a month later you released a better one with more specs. I'd like to return and upgrade."
"No."
"Did I mention it, ah, burst into flames?"
"Fire?"
"Fire fire fire!"
"Holy fuck, we'll get a new one out immediately, just promise not to talk to the press!"
While this is bad... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh no, 800 pages!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
"more than 800 pages of information, including 15 burn and fire-related incidents blamed by iPod owners"
Lets see, according to wikipedia [wikipedia.org], over 173 million ipods have been sold as of last September. Out of these, there are only 15 documented fire related incidents? Not to downplay the impact this had on the individuals but I can hardly see where this constitutes a risk to the public. At that rate, there are probably more ipod related choking incidents. The article keeps referring to the "800 pages" rather than the actual number of incidents which looks like they're trying to create the appearance that this is a big problem. If anyone feels that this is a serious danger then they need to be wearing a motorcycle hemet when walking around the house and and a life preserver at breakfast in case they might drown in their cereal bowl. Living involves some risks but I think this one I'll safely ignore.
Oh my gaaaawd! Choking incidents? (Score:2)
"ipod related choking incidents"
Umm, huh? I think we should be told about this hazard. I mean, I'm used to exploding batteries since Dell, but choking? Did you tell Fox? Or KiroTV? :-)
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In other words: The Universe is out to kill you. iPods, not so much.
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Where they hid news?
If that rate of explosion is so unimportant, why did Apple try so hard, spending YOUR money (you think they're going to take a hit on profits because of this?) to pretend that this unimportant defect rate didn't happen AT ALL?
Very simple. Even a statistically insignificant defect can cause people to react irrationally which could hurt their sales. Basically they were trying to avoid the sensationalism of some journalist running with a few isolated incidents and creating a public perception that there is a major problem. Kinda like this article. It's not necessarily malice although I do tend to be skeptical about things any time a corporation attempts to hide information. Most people have no sense of what constitutes a real
and the numbers... (Score:2)
"...When the documents finally arrived more than seven months later, they included more than 800 pages of information, including 15 burn and fire-related incidents blamed by iPod owners on their iPods."
"...After conducting its own preliminary investigation, the federal agency determined that, with more than 175 million iPods sold, "the number of incidents is extremely small in relation to the number of products produced, making the risk of injury very low."
I love the media. "Coming up at 11, stunning new go
News Flash ... Lithium Ion Batteries Can 'Asplode (Score:5, Informative)
The article in question does not cite any raw data. Useless.
Nokia had a similar problem with a subset of their BL-5C batteries. Nokia sold 300 million of these batteries, of which 46 million were defective. Of those, only 100 resulted in thermal failure, and all but a handful resulted only in the destruction of the device itself.
By comparison, Apple has sold about 175 million iPods. No doubt, only a subset of those contain a defective battery which could result in destructive failure. This isn't Apple being lazy, or even worthy of the publicity this news outlet is trying to generate. At worse, the chances of YOUR iPod bursting into flames is about 1:100,000
If you want to be cautious anyhow, follow these guidelines for protecting your iPod and any other device with a lithium ion battery:
1. Never leave it in your car or any other environment which would reach temperatures in excess of 120 degrees.
2. When charging a lithium ion device, do so while you are awake and in the room. If you charge overnight, do so on a non-flammable surface.
3. Buy a leather case for your cell phone. Not only does it protect the device, it also provides a thermal barrier should the battery fail while it is on your person.
Re:News Flash ... Lithium Ion Batteries Can 'Asplo (Score:4, Insightful)
Buying accessories to prevent bodily harm from a freaking cellphone or mp3 player seems pretty excessive to me. I'd sooner reconsider my purchase of such a device than go to these lengths...
Then prepare to go without anything (Score:3, Insightful)
Buying accessories to prevent bodily harm from a freaking cellphone or mp3 player seems pretty excessive to me. I'd sooner reconsider my purchase of such a device than go to these lengths...
So what you are saying then is that you'd rather go without a cell phone at all - since pretty much any modern cell phone uses the same battery tech.
Really? You'd really be without any cell phone ever, even for emergencies? That seems even less rational.
Repeat after me (Score:4, Insightful)
R E M O V A B L E
B A T T E R I E S
I think it is plain and obvious to see that the reason Apple doesn't want removable batteries is to prevent a 3rd part market in battery sales but also to make products without removable batteries more "disposable." People can argue to the contrary, but the conclusion needs to fit with typical consumer behavior. Such behavior includes a high failure and low willingness to follow through with warranty claims and procedures among others such as the tendency to throw away instead of recycling. (It is useless to point out that some people WILL do those things. The majority of people will not.)
Re:Repeat after me (Score:5, Informative)
Removable batteries are an even greater fire risk. They can be shorted out, people try to recharge them incorrectly (even if not rechargeable), they throw them away improperly, and a large portion of your device needs an interconnect system with exposed terminals that adds size, weight, complexity and a perfect place for shorts and poor contacts.
No, the reason the iPod has no removable battery is to make it small - the fact that you have to buy a new one when the battery is fully dead is just gravy. (Incidentally you can return your iPod to apple for the cost of a "new battery" and they'll send you an identical iPod back to you - would this programme exist if their sole aim was to "force an upgrade cycle", maybe it would, but generally the product cycle penalises those who are too lazy to send their iPod out for a new battery rather than just buying a new one, in the same way that companies make money from rebates because people are too lazy to mail them off).
A removable battery is no more or less safe than an inbuilt one, it just makes your device larger and has the potential for abuse, by fitting an inferior 3rd party battery that very well might be dangerous (note that not all 3rd party batteries are dangerous - look at companies like PAG providing batteries for pro Sony hardware - you can buy those, or you can buy official Sony ones. Where it gets dicey is the unbranded ones that are 20% of the cost which might be great, but might be pretty deadly).
Bad or good Apple? (Score:3, Funny)
Remember the "Home on iPod" feature? (Score:2)
There was a lot of speculation at the time that it disappeared because it was overheating iPods, but Apple said nothing about it. I can't help bu
Lithium Polymer (Score:3, Informative)
This is Worrysome... (Score:3, Interesting)
but it unfortunately doesn't come as a surprise either. Apple is always reluctant, if not downright shady when it comes to defects. "Deny Deny Deny" is the mantra there, and it hasn't helped me one bit. I've had an iBook G4 for a while, and up until a couple months ago it was dead due to loose solder joints on the GPU (caused after about a year or two of normal use). The solution? Purchase a new logic board at around $250-$400, depending on options and seller. A friend happened to be scrapping his old iBook for some of the parts in the display and was kind enough to give me the logic board. Suddenly, I had a Mac, and I loved it. 1 month later? Same problem with the loose GPU solder joints.
This issue has been documented by many an iBook G4 owner, but so far Apple has only been held responsible in Denmark where their version of the BBB did an investigation and found defects in the logic board GPU connections. This is troubling because who knows what other Apple products have had this kind of track record (remember iBook G3 batteries? other iPods pulling this?) and have been kept hush-hush, all at the expense of the customer until enough people get loud enough and then MAYBE they'll do something about it.
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Re:Don't expect to see this in mainstream news (Score:5, Insightful)
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The fact that your iPod may catch fire and burn down your house is not something to keep quiet about, no matter to what extent the problem goes.
Even when the odds are 1 in 11 million + units? You have a greater chance of winning a lottery than you do of getting burned by your iPod. For that matter, at least one of those cases was due to the user sitting down with the thing in their pants pocket. I can't tell you how many Nintendo Gameboys I had to repair with broken screens because the kids sat on them or stuffed them in their front pants pocket. You try sitting down with something about the size of your hand in your pocket; it's going to flex, and
not really unexpected (Score:3, Insightful)
Keeping in mind that Apple doesn't make the batteries, they have to have some degree of trust in their suppliers. I doubt anyone can picture Apple stupid enough to bait PR nightmares and lawsuits when their image is very important to their business model. Apple's typical reaction is the industry best-case product-problem-coverup-job - do everything reasonable to stick a lollypop in the mouth of anyone that screams, and quietly correct the problem so it doesn't happen again. They're unlikely to admit faul
Re:Don't expect to see this in mainstream news (Score:5, Insightful)
Read the article. The long report they talk about says that 15 were reported. That's 15 out of 175,000,000 (175 million).
Cars, computers, flippin' aircraft... I'd imagine a lot of products have catastrophic failures (such as sparks or fires) 1 in 11.6 million times. How often does it make the news (particularly nationally) when some guy's TV shorts out and ignites, or a car battery explodes.
And to clarifiy my position, I didn't jump down Sony's or Dell's or Apple's throat when their laptop batteries were causing major problems either. Though it's obviously good to know, as so many were affected, the most that can be said is that it was the battery manufacturers.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Don't expect to see this in mainstream news (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know how large a company KIRO 7 is, but using the phrase "alarming number of" instead of "15", to sensationalize a story, is certainly unethical.
This doesn't give Apple a pass but we have no way of knowing what they've done internally to address the problem. Could be nothing. Regardless, I don't blame them for not wanting the story widely reported in the media.
Re:Don't expect to see this in mainstream news (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ethical companies get bought out by unethical companies.
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You said fisher price came up with a way of solving it fairly rapidly. Would FP's response have been different if the product carried the inherent risk and they couldn't fix it, or if the product were their bread and butter?
Maybe apple found that there was no way to ensure that no ipod ever would do this. Telling everyone who buys an ipod that it could explode at random seems like the type of thing that might make people buy a Zune instead. Then again, they could just stuff it in the literature somewhere
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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When a TV shorts out it's usually because somebody spilled something; my late ex-mother in law killed her TV watering a plant on top of it. Car batteries likewise don't just explode; they vent hydrogen gas, and clueless users don't know how to safely jump start a vehicle (hook up the red wire to the battery, ground wire somewhere away from the battery).
How many Pintos were manufactured? How many of them exploded? It was certainly news.
Unless I'm mistaken, you can't easily access an iPod battery, ruling out
Re:Don't expect to see this in mainstream news (Score:5, Funny)
Reminds me of Fight Club:
Narrator: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
Business woman on plane: Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents?
Narrator: You wouldn't believe.
Business woman on plane: Which car company do you work for?
Narrator: A major one.
Ties in nicely with the newest story (Score:3, Insightful)
Currently the newest story is "Visualizing False Positives In Broad Screening", regarding how to convey the rarity of events to people not familiar with statistics. While companies shouldn't be fighting to hard to keep these sorts of thing secret, I think we're probably forcing them to as a society since the public is largely unable to put these kinds of rare events in perspective. The 24-hour news channels will jump all over this sort of thing and blow it out of proportion to fill airtime, and the public
No one knows, because it was only on Slashdot? (Score:3, Interesting)
Getting a story on Slashdot cannot be considered blocking the news. And Apple has made the story far, far worse by attempting to block it.
Just Google it: iPod Fire [google.com], and Google news: iPod fire in the news [google.com].
But, in general, I agree with your underlying point.
Another subject: In spite of what appear to me to be lies about Steve Jobs, it seems the company is becoming a different place now that he is less influential.
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Funny)
Well, at least they have implemented the HCF-instruction [wikipedia.org] alright.
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Well, Apple did use Motorola chips for a while, some of which actually do have an HCF instruction.
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple question: How does this relate to the discussion at hand about iPods?
I suppose "Simple" is one way to describe your question.
The discussion at hand about iPods is not really about them catching fire. It's really about the fact that Apple has been trying to hide the fact from the public. Apple also tried to hide B&W G3 data corruption from the public by removing the TIL when they folded it into the KB. In general, Apple attempts to hide its failures from the public, to the detriment of the customer. Their cachet depends on people believing that they are somehow different from other manufacturers, but in reality they are depressingly similar.
It should not take a FOIA request to find out what the catch-fire-and-burn rate is on a piece of electronics you're considering purchasing. And it should not require that you surf the antique web to find out why your computer is corrupting files. Increasing used value increases new value, so preventing people from finding out about problems with your hardware potentially increases profits. It's certainly one thing working for Apple...
Comments like yours make me feel like I'm in school. Nobody should have had to write a fucking essay to explain this to you.
Mod parent up. (Score:2)
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It should not take a FOIA request to find out
Was there really a FOIA request? I thought that only covered documents that the US government has classified as secret.
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Civil what?
Maybe you were aiming for a Funny mod.
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I was aiming for a +5 Sarcasm tag, but it appears to be absent from the moderation system.
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15. RTFA.
It's 1/11,000,000.
Yes, you probably wouldn't. Like most people you are irrational (and innumerate) when it comes to quantifying risk.
When things with a big enough power source have a short circuit, they get warm and catch on fire or explode
Critical Reading Skills... (Score:3, Informative)
From the description of the cases involving simple overheating causing surface burns, a common thread seems t
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The thing is, it's hard to get worked up over something that is most likely user error. I mean even 100 out of 175 million is so miniscule...
And man, I've seen some dirt dumb users try to do the most ridiculous things with high tech equipment...
Sorry, I'd have to guess that even if it burst into flame at a later point, it had something to do with the user trying to bend it, or poke it with a screwdriver, or whatnot. If it was a true issue with the battery, which wouldn't surprise me as battery manufacture
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It may be a small percentage, but would you really want your child to be the lucky winner?
I hope you never leave your driveway. :(
Get some perspective! (Score:2)
but would you really want your child to be the lucky winner?
How may kids are 'lucky winners' in cars, on bicycles, or simply falling down stairs? It's a heck of alot more than 15 in 11,000,000.
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I'm curious, why do you hate Apple? I don't own one, but I'd probably buy a Mac if they were cheaper and I'll probably buy an iPod sooner or later (my daughter has one).
Do you work for Microsoft or Dell or something? Or did your iPod explode?
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