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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'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
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
And it makes you wonder if there won't be a typical Apple result. The company is innovative, no doubt, but always struggles with details. A lower cost alternative with better tech is going to take over this market--and to some extent, already has, no matter how necessary the IPod is to our "yoga tech" culture. Who writes this stuff, anyway?!?
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.
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...
PPPS. Anecdotal evidence doesn't help the people whose batteries HAVE failed.
...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 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 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
Doesn't mean it's not their responsibility.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
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
You're right. It's completely their responsibility...for the one year period of their warranty. Then you have to fix it your damn self, pay them to do it, or shell out the $150 for ipod 3 year warranty.
This is not that strange. People shouldn't get free repairs forever on any device, and 1 year is much longer than the other hard drive based players offer.
On the other hand, Lithium Ion batteries last a long time in a small footprint, but they do die. And to replace them for ANYTHING is expensive, for whatever reason, it's why i made sure my latest digital camera ran off AAs. The $99 (you know, i heard $79 when I looked into it...it s inevitable with these things) upgrade includes some guy taking apart your ipod and replacing the battery, hopefully not messing up the delicate electronics while he's in there. $99 is not bad for invasive service on ANY device...I got charged $119 for Canon to CLEAN my printer a while back. Clean it!
I'd love to see Apple lower the price on these things, but it probably isn't going to happen. Best we can hope for is a third party to offer battery service for less money. There are battery sales for the 1 and 2G ipods...all it will take is one entrepeneur to offer these, with install, for a fair price. Maybe even auction off "battery repair" on ebay. Heckuva way to work yourself through an electronics trade school...
Hey freaks: now you're ju
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!
Too bad this can't be modded up any more. I really don't want to hear another "I've had my ipod for [insert time] and it still works fine". Some iPod batteries are failing and it's bloody costly to replace them. The fact that someone elses iPod hasn't failed has no connection. What to they want, some kind of award for a having working iPod? I have a $3,000 powerbook. Its battery (which was always properly treated) died about a month after the warranty expired. The fact that Bob next door has a working battery has no effect on the $120 that Apple insists I pay for the new one.
By the way, my iPod battery has been working over 2 years now.
This is not that strange. People shouldn't get free repairs forever on any device
Since when is changing a battery repairing something?
Have you tried Linux yet?
You're right. It's completely their responsibility...for the one year period of their warranty. Then you have to fix it your damn self, pay them to do it, or shell out the $150 for ipod 3 year warranty.
Yeah, but for a well designed product, a dead battery does not require "fixing" or "service", it requires a trip to Target, pushing in a button, and popping in new batteries.
On the other hand, Lithium Ion batteries last a long time in a small footprint, but they do die. And to replace them for ANYTHING is expensive, for whatever reason, it's why i made sure my latest digital camera ran off AAs. The $99 (you know, i heard $79 when I looked into it...it s inevitable with these things) upgrade includes some guy taking apart your ipod and replacing the battery,
This is just ridiculous. Lithium Ion batteries will fail and fail within a year or two of constant use. It's just the way they are. Batteries aren't like solid state electronics, which pretty much work forever, or even hard drives (which have a constant failure probability, meaning that it's as likely to break down 20 years after you buy it as the day you bought it).
An irreplaceable battery is simply a horrible design decision, and very poor engineering. Any other company, and people would be screaming to the sky at how shitty a job they've done. But since it's apple, they get a pass from all the people who worship the company.
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
An irreplaceable battery is simply a horrible design decision, and very poor engineering.
Except it's not irreplaceable. It requires a screwdriver to replace. Pop the casing off, unplug old battery, plug in replacement, put case back on. Wipe hands on pants.
Not much difficulty, and you only need to do it once every 1.5 to 2 years. And if you don't like doing it, you can pay someone to do it. Even the manufacturer, if you really want to.
The iPod is well designed. Look how small it is! Isn't that cool? Why would Apple ruin a device by making it butt-ugly 24/7 just to make a once-every-two-years task a little simpler?
Even if you do think it's crap, don't bitch about it. Go and buy an iPod competitor, which will either be bigger, have no hard drive, take longer to upload to, have a non solid-state controls, have jaggy edges, have a crap user interface, or some combination thereof.
I hid with this uncomfortable ipod battery up my ass for two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give this ipod battery to you.
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.
http://www.ipodbattery.com/
GBA: 13.5 x 8.0 x 2.5 cm = 270cm cubed volume
It's easy to add everything. Problem is, you end up with a "fat" product. Just ask MS. Apple know what to cut - and that's why people are comfortable carrying around an iPod in their pocket.
Oh, and the reason that those batteries are so cheap (relatively) is because they're AAs. Failed to mention that bit. Interestingly enough, it's Nintendo that are making the $$$ on the batteries - that's way too much for a set of rechargables.
I call bullshit. The battery service has only been offered in the last couple of months. How long has the iPod been around for? If it was designed to be a revenue stream, the battery service would have been around for almost as long as the iPod itself. It hasn't been.
-- james