Slashdot Mirror
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's an Apple battery. That's $99 of quality Apple engineering you're paying for.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
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??
Or you could just head over to ipodbattery and get a replacement battery for half of what apple charges.
Sure you have to install it yourself, but it's not hard at all.
http://www.xpurple.com
It's not an Apple battery.
It's a battery from a third party manufacturer.
Apple doesn't make batteries.
(PS. Apple has switched to a new battery manufacturer)
(PPS. My old first edition iPod still works perfectly. Most of them do.)
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
APPLE: Hello sir, what seems to be the problem?
USER: Ummm.... I can't turn my iPod on anymore.
APPLE: Have you tried using the power button?
USER: Ummm.....
APPLE: Try pushing the little button to turn it on.
USER: Umm.... It doesn't work.
APPLE: Have you tried recharging your iPod?
USER: I want to listen to my music.
APPLE: Well sir, it seems like your battery might be dead. You'll need to buy a replacement for $99.
USER: I got new shoes today.
APPLE: That's nice.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Apple is presumably making a good deal of money on their $99 replacements
at least $50, including the service fees. that's how much the battery (sans installation) costs here.
pirates
Is it?
I mean, no Apple product could have a defect. Certainly not a predictable one. Certainly not one designed to improve profit margins at initial sale and revenue growth after the warranty period. Not Apple. Not Steve Jobs. Not the Dread Pirate Roberts of Silicon Valley...
If i'm not mistaken, the iPod batteries are the same as my iBook's. Litium Ion, which needs to be regulated harshly to prevent it from burning up or frying your computer/iPod.
The iBook batteries are expensive too, same concept, they both have built in circuit boards to make sure the batteries or device is not damaged, unlike this guy's cell phone which is much cheaper akaline (?) or something of the same caliber.
Error 407 - No creative sig found
...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?
------------------
You may like my a cappella music
A replacement battery for my cell phone cost $10; one for my cordless phone cost $10;
Both your cell phone battery and your cordless phone battery are, presumably, removable. 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.
In addition to this, I'd like to know where michael gets his cell-phone batteries; my last replacement would have run me $40 if I hadn't purchased "insurance" when I got the phone that covered dead batteries as well.
Perhaps there were more than one or two conversations they learned about through research but didn't report about.
This is slanted *against* Apple as much as most Apple zealots are slanted *for* Apple, and it will all balance out in the end. Too many Applefans are prepared to push their favorite company to everyone, facts/figures be damned, and when something like this comes out, somehow the world is 'against' Apple. It's ridiculous.
And yes, I own a Mac.
creation science book
I can't quite agree with Apple's support being particularly helpful.
Apple's been making a huge push to get businesses (outside of visual design and their other niche markets) to use their products, and I bought into it and recently purchased a 17" PowerBook G4 laptop to use for my consulting work. Since I purchased it (about four months ago,) it has failed twice, necessitating a mainboard replacement each time. However, Apple has no provision for on-site or even at-the-store replacement of notebook parts, so the machine has to be shipped back to a depot for repairs. This process takes at least five days if everything goes perfectly. Five days without my primary business machine is a lot of money gone, plus delays foisted off onto unhappy clients. When I called Apple, they were unable to amelioriate the situation in any fashion (for instance, by providing me with a notebook to use in the meantime,) nor would they consider replacing the unit, despite two complete failures in two months, and they were quite snippy about it to boot.
If I had purchased from Dell or Sony, I could have had a repaired or new computer in one or two days. At this point, I'm considering the notebook expendable, and if it breaks again, I'm going to purchase one from a company that can provide business-class support.
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?
We had the lead Apple battery engineer speak at Carnegie Mellon a month or two back and he stated that the charge cycle for their portables totalled out at about 500 charges.
If those guys used their iPod for 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, that comes out to about 546 charge cycles in an 18 month period. That also doesn't account for poor battery usage by the user (half charges, etc.)
The guys who use their iPod all day long everyday should expect the batteries to die after a shorter period. If I ran my car 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, and then complained when the engine blew up I'd be laughed at by the dealer.
Dealer: "You put how many miles on it in 18 months?"
Me: "220,000. Why did it die so soon?"
Dealer: "Because you're an idiot."
as well.. For instance you don't need to edit some strange text file with Vi, you can just plug it in and it all works.
It also tells you in your choosen language if you have managed to insert it incorrectly.
Praise Apple!
"And soon enough, Casey Neistat went back to the Apple boutique and bought a new iPod for $400, which, he says, 'is totally unfair.' He took it back to the office and showed it to his brother, and they vowed to find a way, Casey says, 'to get back at them.'"
If you want to get back at a company that screwed you over, don't turn around and give them $400.
It's an operating system, not a religion.
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?
First, lithium-ion batteries are not as simple as other rechargeable batteries. If the battery and control circuitry aren't set up right, the battery will explode or catch fire.
Second, whose cell phone batteries are only $10? A new lithium-ion battery for my phone costs about $50, and that's just something you can snap on and off yourself. To have someone open up your iPod and replace the battery, then mail it back...doesn't sound that unreasonable.
It's just what you get for buying a device that doesn't have an easily replaceable battery.
That said, there are ways to increase the lifetime of a lithium-ion battery. Back when I started college, we were all required to buy laptops. I was one of the few who actually read the manual, and it said the battery was good for a couple hundred full recharges, and about 800 partial recharges. Some people don't understand that lithium-ion batteries don't have the same memory effect that nickel-cadmium ones do. So for the duration of college, I kept the laptop plugged in whenever possible, and only ran the battery all the way down when I needed to use it for that long. Other people had to buy new $250 batteries, but my old laptop still gets about 2 hours life out of its five-year-old battery. I do the same for my cell phone; keep it on a charger whenever possible, and it still had good battery life when I need it.
If you use your iPod away from any source of recharging power so much, then I guess you just have to live with it. It's a fact of lithium-ion batteries, Apple's doing the best with what technology is available. And $99 isn't too expensive a replacement cost, if you had 18 months of wireless music. If you're willing to plug in whenever you sit down near a wall outlet, and don't wait until the battery is dead before recharging it, then your iPod will last much longer.
...
Common guys. This is one of the strongest cases of placing undue blame that I have seen. Manufacturing isn't perfect, and it seems that the number of people having their batteries fail at 18months is the minority. Why not just blame Sony while we're at it for inconsistant manufacturing or testing of their batteries, after all that's who makes the Li-Ion battery found in the iPod line.
Blaming Apple's engineers or design staff is at most a reach, because they didn't manufacture every piece of the iPod, they spec'd out the available technologies and then put them together with some creative hardware and software to (undeniably) create the best mp3 player currently available.
Do we see people blaming Maxtor for every hard drive (and it's quite a few) that fails after 18 months, espeically since their warrenty now only covers the first 12? How about the fact that 1 out of about 10 Maxtor drives is either DOA or dies within the first month? (Yes, I'm using a small sample size of my and friends purchases of aroud 14 Maxtor hdds in the last 2 years)
If you're buying a product with a 1 year warrenty, realize that you might just have to replace it after that time, or repair it. Hell $99 for a new iPod battery? Sounds like a good deal to me. I'd gladly pay Apple $49 to make sure I don't fuck up my iPod installing a $50 battery. This is a case of Apple finding a need of their customers that managed to get some of the shorter life batteries (and eventually the other customers) and responding.
The iPod video idiots and Washington Post are the ones who have been irresponsible in this case. Taking company policy from peons in the service department (of course they're going to say you have to buy a new iPod back _before_ Apple Corporate got the battery replacement in the pipeline) is not responsible reporting, nor is reporting on company policies that have been outdated by 6 months to a year.
**AA: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes
The iPod's battery is one of the main reasons I've held off on buying one. I refuse to buy a portable music device that doesn't take AA or AAA batteries, since I need to be able to swap in a fresh battery while on the go. (Of course, my Minidisc player gets 40 hours of play time from a single AA battery, and it's not often that I go that long between recharging...)
Also, as noted, when AA rechargeables begin to crap out, they are cheaply and easily replaced.
Of course, it may be the case that the iPod draws too much power to subsist on AA's. To this I say: if Sony can design their Minidisc players to use AA's, and Apple cannot do the same for iPods, then Apple ought to hire some better engineers.
The fact that Apple doesn't have a good hardware support program comparable to Dell's does not mean that their Support folks aren't helpful.
Of course they're going to be snippy if you demand hardware replacement when they have no such program.
If I had purchased from Dell or Sony..
Dell would have had a person replace your system board the next day if you had bought the extended support program. This is not built into the machine base price with Dell, it's extra (and worth it).
An Apple computer (or product) may be damned expensive, but it is relatively unique, and would take quite a bit of effort to build an equal product cheaper. But I'm talking about an adapter cable. There is nothing unique about this cable, except its price. The apple cable and another brand perform exactly the same... for 1/10th the price...
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
The real alternative from the corporate dominated, expensive label, universe is any free Unix (*BSD, Linux, whatever) on cheep hardware. I'm too poor to pay an extra 10-15% for "Apple Engineering", or (more realistically) the Apple Image(TM).
Again, I'm not trying to flame or troll here, I do know that Apple generally produces very high quality products, and I'm not trying to say that people shouldn't use Apple, I just can't see how they got a "rebel" image...
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
The fracture was a big problem where a large number of G4 cubes would split where the moulding for the case came together.
Oh yeah we all know that apple uses the highest quality capacitors on thier motherboards. Thats what makes them so superior to PCs. I mean, its a good thing too, cos if the capacitors did go bad, Apple would tell me to Fuck off and buy another mac. To hell with ATX standards allowing me to swap out components and replace them individually. But back to the capacitors, we all know that the capacitors are what give the new G5 the extra bang.
And you know, you make a good point. Once an Apple gets old, you just throw it away! Don't even think about re-using it or recycling or anything like that. No need to worry, just toss it and drop another $5,000 on the next years model. Yeah those "Pee Cees" must have terrible components for them to last 8 years and still be able to pull them out of the trash and use them.
You fuckin asshat.
I have to agree with your complaints, but I don't think they're that important to Apple. After all, how many other people have come close to making a similar device?
All the other devices have lame interfaces, poor displays, and require lots of button pushing. No-one has approached Apple's interface for the iPod. I don't like the iPod, personally, but can recognize it's the best. I don't like the chrome back (why can't it all be in the one material?) which, on my friends iPod, looks all smudgey and dirty from finger prints, and I think this whole 'snow white' phase is going to fall on its ass within the next couple of years anyway. Colored/textured iPods (a la the old iMac) might be a hit.
If there was something designed a little like the iPod (i.e. easy to use, nothing fancy, clean and simple, not 100s of buttons) for around the $200-$300 mark with, say, recording, and a 20-40GB hard drive, they'd sell like hot cakes.
As it is, the iPod sells like hot cakes because it's the only viable choice without getting something that's ugly and angular as fuck, and with the world's shittiest interface. Apple knows this, and their computers operate on the same principle. They might not be perfect, but they're better. (Come on, OS X is not the best we could be doing right now, but it's better than the alternatives)
Owning an iPod is going to be like a chick owning a Chanel purse. Cool, and expensive, and they can keep stuff in it.. but they need to keep changing it every couple of years to stay 'in fashion' and to stop it wearing out.
mogorific carpentry experiments
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...
That's a stupid argument. Your cordless phone battery is probably NiCd or NiMH. Ditto for your cell phone battery. Those are old technologies and our dirt cheap at this point. The iPod battery is a Lithium-Polymer, which is much more expensive, even with wholesale prices. Is Apple making a profit? Probably. But the price of your cordless phone battery has nothing to do with it.
Also, keep in mind that Apple is charging for installation. The battery is only $50 (as evidenced by the price you pay from suppliers), so $49 is for shipping and installation. Now, a hard drive is easy to install, right? So ask CompUSA how much they'll charge for installing one? Much more than it's worth, I'm sure.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
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.
My Archos Recorder works great with NiMH. 4 AA's and I am good. And when they go bad after about 500 charges...I can pony up another 6 bucks and be good to go.
Bottom line: ANYTHING with un-attachable/proprietory batteries is a BAD thing and should be boycotted. Look at the difference between most Ipaq's and the Dell Axims. You can pay 700 clams for an Ipaq with a battery that is not really that easily replacable...Or you can buy an Axim that has an easily detachible battery. Buy a couple extra and don't worry about running out of juice.
This stuff is not desposible razor priced...we are talking electronics between $300 - $900 dollars...the consumer deserves better.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
As far as I know, nothing from Apple is made in the USA. I know the clamshell iBooks were made in Taiwan. I know my iPod wasn't made in the US (though where escapes me) I don't think ANYTHING Apple makes is made in the US. /. post)
I'll probably get modded flamebait for this, but the main reason Apple products cost so much is because Apple fans will pay that much. The best description I ever saw of Apple is that "Apple isn't a hardware or software company-it's a cult" (shameless ripped from an old
The consumers DID revolt. Thats why most people are today running PCs. Furthermore people will eventually revolt against high priced HP, Dell, etc. products in favor of just as good off-brands. Go into Radio Shack and look at the selection of telephones and imagine that being the PC industry of the future.
One thing Apple has to offer (for now anyway) is the fact that they make (or at least have made to their specifications) the entire package, from hardware to OS to many of the basic applications, including (as with iPod, and iTunes) significant peripherals and online content. Nobody else can make that claim for now, be it Microsoft, Dell, HP, nobody. As a result, Apple can get away with charging a premium price for every item in their product line.
As a fan of Apple, I HOPE they have an exit strategy however, because I don't think the party will last much longer. With everyone copying Apples' successful marketing efforts and then chopping large percentages off the cost Apple is in the position of having to hit a home run every time they step up to the plate (or almost) and I am concerned that as the cost of computer components approach zero, and with many software costs already at zero they will not be able to compete.
If no US companies get a clue soon I would not be surprised if we end up buying computers of the future from companies like Sony, Panasonic or Gold Star at $75 a pop and throwing them away whenever they don't match our color scheme. In that world, companies like Apple and Microsoft have no place, companies like Intel become more like Texas Instruments, only something you know about if you break the seals on your computer and look at the components with a magnifying glass.
After having paid top dollar for three incrementally newer Palm Pilots in a row I finally figured out that the "trouble with this picture" was me. When I saw the iPod I knew that one of these days I'd have one, but not for more than about $100. I'm still waiting. I think a lot of other people will too. At some point I think it would be worth Apples consideration to just flood the market with iPods at their cost plus a small percentage. If you could buy the whole thing for $75 then nobody would complain about it not having replaceable batteries.
From: das@doit.wisc.edu
e du/
Subject: iPod story
Date: December 20, 2003 6:18:37 PM CST
To: stueverh@washpost.com
I'm very disappointed with your iPod story, for several important reasons. If you only read one of the responses you get about this story, read this one:
1. Apple began offering the battery replacement program as early as November 14, before the ipodsdirtysecret.com domain name was even registered (November 20). While coincidentally close, Apple released both the AppleCare Protection Plan for iPod and the battery replacement program BEFORE anyone had ever seen the videos, and indeed before anyone at Apple or otherwise knew anything about the Neistat brothers' video. A small - very small - amount of research would have revealed this. (Also, the battery program was in the works since at least June.) The reason this is important is that you make it seem that it's only because of the brothers' tactics that Apple responded, the implication being they otherwise wouldn't have. That is false.
2. Since the battery replacement program - that the Neistat brothers themselves say is "fair" in their statement - was already in effect when they rolled out the video, they KNOWINGLY let almost a half million people see the incorrect and inaccurate video without telling them the truth: that Apple DID offer a battery replacement program. I'm sure they felt like their little video would be essentially negated since Apple already released a replacement program, so they went ahead with it anyway.
3. ALL lithium ion batteries fail after a period of time. ALL. The fact that the iPod's battery is not user replaceable, i.e., is a custom form factor carefully engineered into the product, is one of the things that makes it so small, and thus, so desirable...tradeoffs.
4. The Dell DJ's lithium ion battery is also not user-replaceable, and Dell officially has no repair or replacement plan (outside of warranty) for the battery.
5. They are currently hosting their anti-Apple video on Mac.com - Apple's own servers! (albeit paid by another Mac.com user - yes, I realize that a Mac.com user can do whatever they want with their webspace; it's just ironic).
6. I offered to host their video for them when they were begging for mirrors in the first few days...with ONE condition: that they post/link to/etc information about Apple's battery replacement program that had ALREADY BEEN ROLLED OUT that they were essentially denying existed. They NEVER posted the information after several promises to do so (while I was hosting the video) and taking complete advantage of my offer. See http://das.doit.wisc.edu/neistatoriginal.txt for proof of this.
7. My girlfriend and I both - and thousands of others - have first gen iPods over two years old that have no problems with the battery. The blanket statement that the batteries only last "18 months" is also false. Do the have a finite lifetime? Yes. Is it always, or even mostly, 18 months? Nope.
Disappointed,
Dave Schroeder
University of Wisconsin - Madison
das@doit.wisc.edu
http://das.doit.wisc.
608-265-4737
This is because you were a nerd. No matter what close you wore, you weren't getting laid. But that oscilloscope could make you rich some day...and then the pussy comes ROLLING in.
See? Nerds are at heart a pragmatic people.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
It's a Li+ battery, good for around 500 charges. That's about 1.5yrs battery lifetime on your iPod if you use it every day, like I do.
Recently, I did a battery replacement on my iPod. I wrote about it here in my journal.
For people who claim to be all for working on your own hardware, you're all getting pretty bitchy about performing a five-minute, three step process.
Oh, and my battery cost me half of what Apple is charging. So nyah.
____ _______
Duty now for the future!
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.
Commentary on iPod pricing
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
Mac zealots go on and on about how superior apples engineering is, but this really illustrates that it's not. If it was well designed, it would be user serviceable, certainly for something as simple as replacing the battery. Simply planning to have people trash their $300+ investment every 18 months is certainly not an example of good planning or good engineering.
Sure, you can buy batteries from unofficial online retailers, but supposedly its extremely difficult. If the product had been well designed you'd simply be able to pop in a new cellphone style battery when the old one stopped working.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Actually the $99 you pay gets you a refurbished iPod, not the iPod you sent in in the first place. Read the Apple site:
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.
iPod Battery Replacement
Getting a new or refurbished unit isn't all that bad of a deal. I'm pretty sure they won't send you a dinged-up scratched to hell unit
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
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.
========
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
The iPod does have a micro-contolled charging system - all devices that use Lithium Ion batteries do. The iPod will stop charging the battery when it is full ans switch to maintenence charge.
The damage comes from frequent short cycles since the battery itself is limited to a limited number of charge cycles (not imposed on you by some counter that ticks down, due to the way the battery works). The battery can also be conditioned into a lower capacity state with frequent short cycles, so the pmu thinks the battery is full when it isn't.
The days of non-intelligent chargers are long gone.
I've never understood the "blind loyalty" issue with people and inanimate objects or companies.
If you're an Apple fan, that's fine, but making excuses for any shortcoming of their products doesn't help your cause. It's the people that complain about deficiencies that are most-likely to get the company to resolve these issues. If the sycophants get uppity at the slightest mention of a flaw, they do themselves and the object of their affection a great disservice.
This reminds me of another piece of audio equipment I purchased recently, and thought was very good. I found an online forum where enthusiasts discussed the product. When I discovered a bug in the product's firmware, a number of "locals" on the board engaged me in hostile argument that it wasn't a "bug." Eventually a rep from the company actually made a post and acknowledged the bug and promised to fix it in a future release. The sycophants harbored animosity towards me for not blindly, unconditionally accepting the product as it was. Think about this the next time something doesn't work right, and rally against the boneheads that harbor unconditional loyalty towards any corporate interest. It helps no one.