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Washington Post Covers iPod Battery Ruckus
An anonymous reader sent in a link to 'Battery and Assault: When His iPod Died, This Music Lover Tackled Apple. Stay Tuned.' in the Washington Post. The article (good reading even if you're familiar with the situation) has Apple reps being rather callous about the issue - I think it's a fairly reasonable assumption that if you spend several hundred dollars on a gizmo, it shouldn't be "disposable". A replacement battery for my cell phone cost $10; one for my cordless phone cost $10; Apple is presumably making a good deal of money on their $99 replacements.
It is a rather lousy design. I have a new 30GB iPod and the battery status and recharge times are just goofy and all over the place. Yes. I have upgraded software.
Just poor design. Nice and shiny on the outside, but terrible engineering elsewhere. And yes. This battery problem is simply terrible, embarassing engineering.
Mr. Jobs' ego is too big to admit to this problem. Anyone who defends Apple in any other regard just has to look at how they handle goofs like this. It says an awful lot about the company.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Prices for Sony's lapttop batteries are even more obscene. $300 for a new batter??
I read the Post article this AM, before it hit Slashdot.
Apple's support has a long standing reputation for being friendly and helpful. Everyone knows the products and peripherals are priced higher than PC products - but you shouldn't mind paying for superior design and quality in hardware. Don't compare apples + oranges (compare Mac hardware to standard hardware.)
The Post didn't have to write (or edit) the article to slant against Apple, but they did, based on one or two support conversations.
Ok, a $99 replacement. But the battery is the first failure. Even were the battery problem solved the HDD (it is an off-the-shelf IDE after all) would fail a little while after the battery (many IDEs fail after 18 months regular use, and an iPOD is regular random access so this is very likely).
So what about a HDD replacement?
karma karma karma karma karma chameleon, you come and go, you come and go.
...on how laptop batteries should be standardized. It never received any feedback, though, so I didn't start the petition.
But I still wonder why companies still don't come up with a standard form factor. Come on, it's a GOOD thing to have a standard battery form factor. Where is the business sense in keeping a large stock of special-sized batteries for your product that may become useless before you can sell it to your customers?
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You may like my a cappella music
although the battery is covered the length of the warranty. In all fairness I think this is overblown. I have the older 20 gig model and found it rather simple to replace the battery. The hardest part is getting the back case off, but it'd be nearly impossible to break the thing swapping the battery when the case is already off. (as these guys said they did)
I think the big issue here is that apple has met demand and lowered prices on alot of it's hardware. In change, they've started charging for software that they hadn't in the past. I think it's upsetting the core audience into believing they are getting bled. To a certain extent, I feel that way. It ends up being that you don't really *need* to buy any of this stuff.
Man, I wish I made batteries. I would make one for the iPod and charge half as much. I think that I could make a fortune.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
I have a 1st gen 10GB that is 2 years old, I beat it, drop it, drain the battery, do 5% charges, 95% charges, it's plugged in 50% of the time, and in use the other 50% of the time. My iPod NEVER sees a day of rest, never leaves my side, and pretty much never is inactive.
It runs my work stereo, my house stereo, and my car stereo. Literally, it's ALWAYS ON.
Last week I turned it on at 9am, and ran it with Sound Check and EQ's turned ON, and it ran until 5:30 where it politely told me it was about to die, then died about 2 minutes later. I'd say 8 1/2 hours is fine out of a 2 year old machine that gets abused as hard as I treat it.
Or should I be a bitch like everyone else and complain because I'm not getting the advertised 10 hours?
That's maybe true for a desktop PC, especially if they are on most of the time (ie few starts and stops).
I've had several laptop drives die on me. I could imagine an iPod drive will have to suffer even more punishment than an average laptop drive.
Seriously upsetting is the fact that the people on the sales floor at your local electronics superstore can only give 'Apple's Engineering' as the reason for the rediculous mark-ups on accessories.
There is a white colored rca (2 plug for use in all home audio) to iPod (aka 3.5 mm stereo plug) for sale... only $69.99 (Canadian, but still)... while one isle over, there is the same damned thing for $5.99 (still a huge rip off, but at least reasonable). Hell, even the monster cable version of that cable is only $19.95. WTF makes it worth that much money? White plastic that hard to make???
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
I was given an iPod as a gift and I adore it. There's one thing to keep in mind that isn't covered in the Post article, nor in the iPod's Dirty Secret film. As the Post mentioned, the iPod is good for something like 500 charges. Now the thing to keep in mind, is that if you don't listen to tons of music, 500 charges amounts to many, many years of use. A charge lasts me a good six or seven hours, and I doubt if I listen to more than an hour of music a day. So figure one charge a week, or fifty charges a year. So, for somebody like me, 500 charges lasts nearly a decade (assuming the battery doesn't crap out before that due to old age.)
There are two things that separate people like me from the Neistat Bros. First is that they listen to a whole lot more music than I do. Second, it seems like they listen to all of their music on their iPod. By comparison, I listen to most of my music on my stereo, and only put on my iPod for trance and classical stuff, where I prefer headphones. For people like me, who listen to their iPods for less than an hour a day, battery life is a non-issue. In five or ten years, I would hope that it would not be worth my time to replace the battery. At that time, I'd be more than happy to plunk down, say, $200 for a low-end iPod capable of storing 100,000 songs and twelve feature-length movies ;)
One last thing to keep in mind. Good old Steve has had a thing for hermetically sealed boxes since the days of the original Mac, when opening up one to insert a hard drive would void your warranty. And for most people, hermetically sealed is the way to go. If you're a power computer user, you want an expandable computer; and if you're a serious music lover, a sealed solution like an iPod is a poor solution. But there's a certain beauty in keeping things elegant and for making something meant for everyday users.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
my iPod, ordered the day it was announced, still works perfectly. Knock on scratched Lucite.
sulli
RTFJ.
I've looked at cell phone batteries before. I've never seen one cheaper than $40 for any phone I've owned. Where the HECK did the original poster get a $10 battery? I bought a battery for my first notebook. It cost me $120 and drained in under an hour of use. It drained when it just sat there powered off. I looked at the cost of getting a second battery for my current notebook. $200+. And people are complaining about the iPod batteries... -V
... "I read part of it all the way through." -- Movie Mogul Sam Goldwyn (and some slashdot readers)
Li-Ion battery life depends on so many factors. Charging/discharging cycles, user patters, environmental exposure, etc. Just like all rechargable batteries they *will* die eventually.
The unit comes with a 1 year warranty with option to buy extended warranties. This is what warranties are for. Most batteries will not die after 18 months, most batteries will die in approx 3-5 years.
Many things have internal non-replacable rechargable batteries. Most PDA's for instance.
Pick any two:
1. Thin
2. Replaceable Battery
3. Lots of storage
" you use your iPod away from any source of recharging power so much, then I guess you just have to live with it"
It is a PORTABLE MUSIC PLAYER. It is sold as a portable device for people to use on the go, away from outlets.
Why don't we just call it what it is, a hardware license. If it works just until the warranty expires, then great, you got your money's worth. But if it lasts longer, say two whole years, then you make out like a bandit.
From the washington post article
They Googled around and ordered the battery from a different vendor that came with complicated instructions and "these two plastic gigantic toothpicks," Casey says. It took a while to pry the back cover off the iPod's impenetrable design. Beneath that was "a gummy adhesive" which covered the mini hard drive, "and there were these two very tiny connectors with three prongs," in a work space "about the diameter of a needle."
He felt as if he was performing amateur neurosurgery.
The patient died on the table.
I call bullshit. It doesn't sound like the inside of ANY iPod I've opened. Open the iPod. remove the battery. plug the new one in.
Even my huge dumb hands can do it, and simply. If you can plug a floppy drive connector in, you can plug an iPod battery in
But a piece of electronics? The iPod doesn't even have moving parts to speak of, besides the buttons on the front panel. There's no reasonable expectation on the part of a user that it would "wear out." And one would have to be pretty familiar with battery chemistry to be able to know the type used in the iPod, and roughly how many charges it would last.
Whether this came from oversight or malice, we won't know, but to claim that the users are somehow at fault for *gasp* actually USING their $400 piece of electronics is simply rediculous.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Compare the price of external SCSI cables! I remember looking at CompUSA for one when I needed a replacement Right-NOW to fix an HP workstation. $69 for a 3' ( one meter) Belkin SCSI-1 cable. The only SCSI items in the store were in the Apple section. Belkin cables were available mail order for about $10 back then. All I can surmise is this: Apple users are used to paying more, so the retailers shaft them every chance they get, part of the mistique of owning an Apple. Time for the consumers to revolt...
Now, maybe Apple made a mistake in not making their battery removable (but it sure makes the unit smaller), but regardless, there is a lot more effort involved in replacing the battery for the iPods.
I don't think it would affect the size all that much. Cellphones are fairly tiny and their batteries are replacable. spring contacts aren't all that bulky.
I have to wonder, most diehard Mac fans I know are 'into the environment' as well. How environmentally sound is it to throw an iPod away just because the battery is dead?
Of course, in this case, going out to buy another is EXACTLY why everything is turning into disposable crap these day.
Personally, I'm sick of seeing things glued together and fastened with melted plastic posts where screws should be, and a zillion different parts all to do the same job in the same way, most practically unavailable to anyone but a major manufacturer. Meanwhile, I still have a turntable from '64 that plugs along nicely for the simple reason that it was made so that it can be repaired.
Unfortunatly, most consumers don't think about factoring MTBF and repair vs. replace costs when they buy something. As for me, since they're all practically irreperable now, I just buy the cheapest no-name on the shelf. If someone wants me to buy a brand, they'll have to become known for repairability and parts availability. Then I'll be willing to pay them more.
A Lithium-ion battery slowly looses its charge even when no power is being drawn from it. So when your iPod indicates that the battery is low, charge it. Don't let it sit around in a low-charge state, it will only discharge itself more. And remember that when an iPod is off, it is not really off, it goes into a sleep mode where it draws a minimal current from the battery.
This won't be a problem for me since I can't go more that a couple of days without using my iPod. But if you leave your iPod sitting around (not charging) for a while, eventually the iPod will drain the battery until the battery level gets so low that the iPod actully turns fully off and then the battery will continue to loose charge because of the nature of Li-ion batteries.
Call me a ludite, but I try and stay away from any electronics product that doesnt run on ordinary, buy 'em in the grocery store batteries (AAA, etc). I'm still using my 15 year old HP 41 calculator, since I can still get batteries for it and the thing just works. Not so for my old TI laptop and countless other calculators and gizmos that you have to recharge and the built-in battery eventually dies. My Palm III runs on AAA batteries, is 4 years old, and is going strong. Until they come out with a PDA that takes cheap and easily replacable batteries again, and is not "disposable", I'll hang onto it as long as possible.
-- listen to interesting music, support independent radio... WPRB
You can buy high MA AAA/AA's so something like an 2200Ma * 6 would be damn good for iPods, after all those CELLS combined make a 'battery' which is really whats in most 'batteries' any way, multiple cells, and probably of similar Ma ratings too.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
My Archos has everything an iPod has, costs a lot less, and runs off 4 AA NiMHs.
The brothers were right to be enraged, and were right that others would be enraged, and right that it's a rediculously complex procedure for battery replacement.
Apple's representatives were right that it wasn't intentional - I imagine that it's merely a great benefit.
The fans of the iPod are correct in that it's a handy device. In fact I'd daresay that it and it's ilk will end up being the PCs of tomorrow, at least in terms of overall design (I'd imagine that the overall iPod innards, combined with sufficiently powerful connectivity, CPU and memory horsepower, could be an excellent portable substitute to a 20 pound tower or a three pound but still somewhat awkward laptop).
And finally, tragically, Apple is right in that it won't be that big of an issue. Because it SHOULD BE. Unfortunately our disposable economy is pushing irrevocably to a disposable/rental everything to wring every last cent out of you.
Sad. Everyone can be so right, and everyone loses... well, except Apple.
A new Portable Power Adapter - 65W (for iBook & PowerBook) are about $80 bucks.. The Apple ones are somewhat stylish with the green/orange light, but pretty poorly constructed and fall apart quickly. I know one guy who's gone through three of them in a year, and mine is starting to fray (dangerous!) and will need to be replaced very soon. Why? The cord is thin and flimsy.
Today I purchased an Airport card as a gift for a friend's iBook. I'm presuming it's the exact same wireless technology as a $40 PC wireless card. But my cost was $79. An "extreme" 802.11g card would cost another twenty bucks.
So yeah, after you lay down for a mac, the accessory price gouging does piss me off.
Speaking of which, can anyone recommend a cheap alternative to Apple's 65W power adapter for the iBooks and Powerbooks?
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I think he might have ment 'can be used _at the same time_ by multiple computers'. In either case, both ipod and karma require outside assistance to get them to work with Linux...not horrid, though not bundled in the packaged either.
I'm not sure I understand this. Are you saying that since the extra features exist in the Karma, and Apple does not metion the lack of those features other people who are choosing an audio device like an ipod can't consider the extra features if they compare the ipod to the karma?
Apple makes good products. Apple DOES NOT make good products ALL the time. They had a buring laptop problem a few years ago, if memory serves me.
No, though you are overly defensive. Why, I can't say.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
I own a creative Jukebox 1, you know the HUGE clunky 6 Gig model, (upped that to 30 gigs, running the latest firmware)it uses 4 'standard' rechargeable NiMH AA batteries. So when 4 of the origianl 8 (yes thats EIGHT!!!) that came with the unit finally gave up the fight, I wandered into radio shack with the OTHER 4 in the unit bobbing my head. Purchased new batteries for like 8 bucks and went about my merry way. Addtionally, I keep 3 sets of fresh batterries around. and even I use the unit itself to charge the old NiHM batteries to use in other things (like my remote control and wireless keyboard thingie) I'm not Apple bashing here, what I am saying is Creative chose to go with Standard Parts and I can replace them whenever I need them and with out cracking open cases and possibly injuring myself. ( cuz i do injure myself when working on electronics... a lot)
My iPod is hardly larger than 4 AA batteries! Picture an iPod with 4 AA batteries glued to it's back -- that's the kind of engineering you get from Gateway, not Apple. I dropped my cellphone the other day and pieces went everywhere - the battery went the farthest. I've dropped my iPod many times (*sob*) in the past few years and, besides a few scratches, it works great and nothing flew off.
BTW, I have one of the FIRST 5 Gig iPods - I use it constantly for listening to music, books on "tape", and transfering large datasets between computers. My battery life is not what it used to be, true, but I've used and abused it for years and I love it.
As for paying $99 for Apple to replace the battery (do they replace batteries in the 5-Gig?), all I can say is that paying $40-$50 for a custom form-factor internal battery and another $40-$50 to have a certified engineer who is garanteed not to toast my iPod (or add any new scratches to it :-) plus shipping and handling, is a price I, personally, am willing to pay. My friend, on the other hand is not. So he has a bulker, uglier MP3 player, with a horrible (IMHO) interface and must suffer through exended USB-wrangling sessions to get a fraction of the data on it. Then again, he also brags about his $500.00 PC wth WinXP on it.
I buy quality. And yes, I think the iPod IS quality. I'm also willing to pay for owning and maintaining it. My mechanic gets WAY more per hour than an Apple technician does to work on my car. But then again, he's the only one I trust to touch my Mercedes.
My buddy's Kia holds just as many people, can play music on its stereo just as loud, has headlights that are just as bright, doesn't need to use premium fuel, and manages 65 mph just fine. He also paid a lot less for it and never seems to let me forget it. But even he admits that riding in my Mercedes is a completely different experience. And chances are, long after his Kia is rusting away in the junk yard, my 'benz will still be on the road, making each commute an experience. So, after he's gone through 2 or 3 Kias he'll have paid nealy as much as I did for my 'benz. The saddest part, though, is that the whole time, he still had to ride in, well... a Kia.
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
I have a 15GB second generation ipod. I bought it online in May of 2003. I got it engraved and it took about a month to arrive. I saved about 10% by going through the education store and then spent that on the engraving and shipping.
At first getting it to work was a bit difficult on Windows XP. But a few minutes of fiddling fixed that.
Then Music Match pissed me off in about 1 day. I switched to Ephpod. Ephpod works much better but still tends to be a bit flakey.
Basically PC+Ipod=Flaky. I love my ipod, but only when it does that thing I like (ie. when it works)
In august the very flimsy cable attached to the remote started flaking out and I had to get the remote replaced at the Apple store. They were nice enough to just replace it there because they had extras otherwise they would have expected me to wait for one to arrive in the mail. 2nd Gen Ipods and 3rd Gen Ipods are very difficult to use in the car without a remote.
Occasionally the battery seems to die for no reason, which is probably just cause it kept being turned back on by something touching it or the auto matic off did not do its thing.
Mostly my problems relate to syncing where it does not excel.
I can move about 3GB which is the extent of the playlists I have on it in about 10-15 minutes over firewire. However it does not always go. Long songs like dj sets and comedy routines cut off after a few minutes and some songs that play fine on the computer do not play correctly, all the way, or at all on the ipod.
I love my ipod but if and when it breaks I am probably going to be more price conscious when buying my next mp3 player since it will likely not be a birthday present. That means I probably won't buy another ipod unless they come down in price in a year or so.
I admit there are quite a few sycophants on this forum (Apple, Linux, AMD, nVidia...you name it, there's a fanboy...weird...I used to be an Atari fanboy when I was in Jr. high...but sheesh....), but in this case the article leaves out GOBS of details about the supposed attempt at self-replacement (and an issue about the timing of the domain registration and the iPod battery replacement offer by Apple stated earlier in the thread).
If you bother to go to the ipodbattery.com site, the replacement pictures are simple and detailed, not requiring specialized parts or a degree in brain surgery. I have not tried myself, but I can see it is simple enough for non-techies who have patience.
It is not just a "pretty" device. It's functional. I've used other HD mp3 players, (see elsewhere in the thread) and by far the iPod is seamless, has excellent battery life (for me and many others, despite the trolling by some), and is durable. Mine's almost two years old and works fine. I assume I'll replace the battery soon, and I won't bother listening to people who claim I bought a "disposable" player that looks "good."
Apple screws up, and often. This is not one of those times....
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
Okay... so lets sat the iPod DID have user replaceable off-the-shelf AA batteries. Ignoring the fact that the form factor would be completely blown and the iPod would be a bloated POS, lets look at that from a cost standpoint:
Alakaline AA batteries, approximately $0.70 each. The iPod would probably use two and last about 1 day on them.
Used 5 days a week, that's 10 batteries per week, $365 per year. $584 in the time that the brothers' iPod battery lasted.
Using rechargables would be cheaper, lets say $2.25 each for NiMh, four sets used every year. $18 for batteries plus $12 for a charger. $30 for the first year, $18 for the second year. $48 for the time that the brothers' iPod battery lasted.
Now compare that to the third party battery prices for iPods: $50, every 1.5 years (probably at worst) to 2 years (probably much more realistic). If you want Apple to replace the thing for you it will cost another $49 for labor.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Close, but it's neither a matter of "overcharging" nor "memory effect."
The real problem is that of REVERSE CHARGING of individual cells when the first cell in the pack drops to zero and you continue to drain from the pack, the remaining cells will charge the dead cell in reverse.
It is this phenomenon which causes the "whiskers" in NiCd and other batteries, and it is these "whiskers" which result in premature loss of capacity and failure.
Although NiCd batteries can develop a memory effect, by comparison the memory effect is quite minor, is experienced by very few users, and is easily corrected by discharging a few times to a DIFFERENT level. The memory effect was an issue with satellites and with the older pocket pagers which were used for exactly 8 hours every single day, and a memory would build up over time. But it is actually very uncommon today for battery users to discharge identically in succession, and the true "memory effect" is virtually unknown today.
Properly cared for, a NiCd pack should last for 2000 or more charge-discharge cycles. But what happens is people try to run them all the way down, and the whiskers formed during the reverse-charging of the weakest cell effectively ruins the pack.
The more expensive NiMH battteries should last for 1000 charge-discharge cycles when properly cared for. Yes, that's a smaller number! So, why do people have better results with NiMH than NiCd? Because they don't properly care for their battery packs, and NiMH cells are more tolerant of the inevitable reverse charging. (Although it does harm them.)
Li-ION batteries are not any big exception here either.
Bottom line? You should never completely discharge a rechargeable battery pack! NEVER!
When it begins to get low (but before it is extremely low) you must recharge, even though your powered device will still be operational.
Yes, this is a surprising and difficult lesson to learn, but nonetheless it is the truth, and represents the correct way to care for batteries.
Apple's engineering Wizards could have designed an easy-to-service battery if they had wanted to. Rather, it seems the decision was made to turn an EASY replacement into a revenue stream. Why are so many posters (not the parent in particular) trying to rationalize corporate greed? Just be honest, and call an elephant an elephant when you see one.
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Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
They didn't plan for an 18 month replacement cycle - you're taking an extreme and calling it the norm. Sure, some people's iPods have died in 18 months, some in 18 days. Some are still going after 3 years or more.
The same is true of any manufactured product.
The design of the iPod from the outset was a sealed unit with no doors or latches, even for the battery. You think it's a bad design, Apple thinks it's good. I'm personally on the fence about it (and proprietary batteries in general).
I would imagine that far more iPods would be broken if it had a door/latch/hinge on the back so you could remove the battery and it wouldn't look as good, and it would have to be slightly bigger and less sleek. Image does matter to a lot of people.
I think the point is that sometimes you do get a bad Apple in the batch (heh, no pun intended) but that's no reason to call the whole design flawed. I think Apple were tardy in the release of a battery replacement service for a device that has a non-servicable one, but that has been corrected now.
Apple isn't perfect, but it tries hard to create good products that people will enjoy using.
The biggest gripe I have with them is the design of their laptop power brick - specifically where the thin DC lead comes out of the brick; it's a weak point in the design and breaks easily. I used my friend's power brick to charge my iBook yesterday and I see they've added a cable boot there for extra strength - probably in response to customer feedback and complaints (new power bricks are 70). Their 'saucer' power supplies for the clamshell iBook's had a similar problem, so it took them a few revisions to get it right.
NOTE: iPod equipment that is sent in for battery service or service requiring other repairs will be replaced with functionally equivalent new, used, or refurbished iPod equipment. You will not receive the same iPod that was sent in for service.
How does that work for engraved backs?
I bought my ipod at Best Buy. Spent 30 bucks extra for their 3 year replacement plan. My first ipod died, I took it in and not only did they replace it no questions asked, but gave me the next model up (15gig at the time). I'm only 6 months into my new replacement plan, so I'm not worried. IMO, more people should take advantage of retail giants like Best Buy selling Apple stuff.