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Apple Sics Lawyers on SomethingAwful
bheer writes "Apple has sent a threatening letter to SomethingAwful about a post in its forums that describes how to fix the overheating in some MacBook Pros by applying thermal paste properly, according to a post on Gizmodo. The post includes a brief excerpt from Apple's Service Source Manual which Apple wants removed. Gizmodo continues: 'the real problem [is] that the image shows the extremely sloppy manufacturing process that is causing the MacBook Pro to run at temperatures as high as a 95 degrees Celcius under full load.'"
As I understand it, Apple is only requesting that the page from Apple's copyrighted manual be removed, not the article itself.
I don't know whether fair use applies, but this hardly seems worthy of a Slashdot article. Heck, C-SPAN requesting removal of the recent Colbert video from YouTube (after 500,000+ downloads) on copyright grounds is more deserving of an article.
Oh, wait, it's Apple being accused of something nasty.... that explained it.
The post includes a brief excerpt from Apple's Service Source Manual which Apple wants removed. Gizmodo continues: 'the real problem [is] that the image shows the extremely sloppy manufacturing process that is causing the MacBook Pro to run at temperatures as high as a 95 degrees Celcius under full load.
No, that's not the "real problem". Apple goes after anyone, anywhere, that ever posts or reproduces anything from their service manuals, which it considers proprietary, in whole or in part. It doesn't matter what circumstances in which this was posted: Apple would have gone after them, regardless.
Also, the service manual doesn't represent the "manufacturing process". It represents service instructions for service technicians.
However, all of that aside, Apple applies a stunningly ridiculous and inappropriate amount of thermal paste to the CPU and GPU in the MacBook Pro. It apparently does this both in the manufacturing process and the service process - the description and pictures of about ten times the amount of thermal paste than should actually be applied in the service manual only underscores the magnitude of the mistake. For those who might not be aware, thermal paste is not a case of "the more, the better": after a point, it fails to transfer heat, and the heat gets dissipated in an uncontrolled and unintended - and potentially damaging - way. And that's what's happening in the MacBook Pro. When a proper amount of thermal paste is applied, the MacBook Pro runs MUCH cooler, with heat actually transferring to the heatpipe, and the fans turning on when necessary, resulting in a massive drop in operating temperature (not to mention feeling like you're using a small campfire on your lap).
Inevitable Apple bashing aside, I'm actually quite surprised that, given its attention to detail, no one at Apple in any of its product design, engineering, manufacturing, or service operations, nor anyone at Asustek (the contractor that manufactures the MacBook Pro), realized that this is an utterly stupid amount of paste to be applying. I'm just dumbfounded that this made it through whatever QA is in place (and, again, Apple bashing and first revision products aside, keep in mind that Apple has the BEST QA and least need for service across the entire industry, consistently, and has for years, according to consumer reporting and tracking organizations like Consumer Reports).
In any case, Apple also hasn't commented or acknowledged this because it NEVER does so until there is a fix in place (or when it knows a specific fix is already in the pipeline). And yes, it is a "simple" fix, but as anyone who understands a complicated manufacturing process knows, it can take a while to implement any change.
In any event, because (regardless of what anyone may or may not say) Apple is the best in terms of responding to and remedying these kinds of problems when compared to other vendors[1], I have no doubt this will be resolved. I do hope Apple provides a free process for current owners to have this problem resolved at any Apple service facility.
[1] In other words, if anyone is going to say "Apple sucks" on this front, 1.) anyone can come up with service or product nightmare anecdotes from any vendor, and 2.) all other vendors are worse in all categories, if you accept Consumer Reports' rating processes.
Problem solved. Why is this such a big deal?
Color me stupid, but isn't a reduction of the case temperature a bad sign? Wouldn't you want the heat to be transferred away from the chip? The computer uses a certain amount of power, regardless of the way it's cooled. That energy is transformed into heat which must be removed. If the heat is transferred away from the CPU efficiently, you'd expect it to be where it can be removed from the system, i.e. the case or the air. A hot cooler is a sign of a good energy transport from the CPU to the cooling system. Making the cooler less hot without increasing the energy transport from the cooling system to the environment is bad.
Except they're not going after the hosting site or the user responsible for the post. They're going after the forum in which that user posted a link.
Why is it news everytime Somthing trivial regarding Apple happens. Not once have they come up with anything truely innovative that hasn't already been done (allbeit in a more shiny box I'm sure). They rape and pillage FOS software with little attribution.
What I'm trying to say is I'm sick of trivial apple stories all the time.
No, that's not the "real problem". Apple goes after anyone, anywhere, that ever posts or reproduces anything from their service manuals, which it considers proprietary, in whole or in part. It doesn't matter what circumstances in which this was posted: Apple would have gone after them, regardless.
It doesn't matter what Apple considers them, they should be published copyrighted material and governed by the rules that apply to such materials. As such, posting a one page excerpt out of a manual that must be several hundred pages ought to be considered "fair use", in particular given the purpose that it's being posted for.
No, TFA is right: Apple wants this information removed for the sole reason that it embarrasses them. Verbal acrobatics like "considers them proprietary" are just an attempt to hide that fact. In the end, Apple had two choices: tolerate it or send in their legal team, and they have chose the latter.
Apple is the best in terms of responding to and remedying these kinds of problems when compared to other vendors
Actually, when you look at surveys and analyses of service quality, Apple is in the top, but they are not always the best. My own experience with their service on a top-of-the-line Powerbook has been that they are trying, but that it may take them several tries to fix it.
Now, about the first rev thing: why is it only Apple with these problems? you never hear anyone say "dont buy that Dell/HP/Lenovo, its a rev A, wait for the QC issues to be fixed in the rev b"
I thought that these problems werer because they were the only mass-PPC hardware vendor, but that is now de-bunked -- and on that note, no one at Intel evaluated a finidhed laptop?? God knows, as much as Apple throws the I-word around, you would think it is a partnership!
I saw the picture of their service manual on the SA forums. It's shows the guy putting an entire tube of thermal grease on an area that is around 1/2 square inch. So, after all is said and done in the manufacturing process, Macbook pro's probably have around four tubes of thermal grease in them. That really is insane. [b]One tube alone[/b] should be able to do three or four laptops.
g
I'm suprised the laptops didn't outright fail due to the heat.
If anyone is interested, here is what the parent poster is talking about:
http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/7541/lol1qe.jp
Nobody seems to be addressing the real issue here. As noted in Lowtax's post, what's ridiculous about this lawsuit is that Apple is taking legal action against SA for something that isn't even on their servers. All that is posted in the offending thread is a link to the service manual on someone else's webspace. Apple threatening SA and their ISP is absurd, they have done absolutely nothing wrong.
Learn to read you fool. The photo is from Apple's service manual, and is clearly in error. The post on SA advocates using LESS thermal paste.
As a shareholder, I expect them to stop this bull shit. Paying lawyers to go after the wrong people linking to a page from a service manual was a waste of money. Second, copyright law applies. A picture from the manual cannot constitute infringment because the picture alone is not causing damages to Apple in any way. It also should be considered fair use since the picture is just a small part of the original copyrighted work.
The entire service manual is available online in various places (e.g. http://www.repairyourmac.com/macbook-pro.pdf). Why is Apple freaking out about a small excerpt in a forum? The simplest explanation is that they are embarrassed and are trying to cover it up.
Once again, people are ascribing to malice something that's more easily explained by stupidity. And in situations like this, corporations are profoundly stupid. Apple clearly has a policy that to hassle people who "steal" their IP. The only way to implement such a policy is to assign some low-ranking dweeb to cruise the web and look for this "stolen" IP. When he sees it, he fires off a C&D letter. He does not have the discretion to say "Oh, I should give them a pass, that's probably fair use."
You've obviously never worked in any private organization bigger than a little league team. If you had, you'd know that Apple, and all enterprises like it, have thousands of discretion-free low-level dweebs like the one just described. Ascribing some deeper purpose to such people is silly.
Sorry, but it is my business when someone misrepresents the law.
The sec. 107 balancing test is so lopsided in these facts that it is a virtual certainty that this is not copyright infringement, but an example of non-commercial fair use.
I was simply curious whether you had any qualifications to state otherwise. Obviously, you do not.
Well Rich is sure to make the most of the free publicity; the stupidty demonstrated by Apple lawyers is the kind of material on which he thrives. Apple is dealing with someone who has built his career on the art of savage ridicule. If you want to be mercilessly mocked on the World Wide Web then have a laywer send a letter to Lowtax.
So Apple's clownboat lawyers have just spawned a wave of Anti-Apple publicity. What might have been confined to SomethingAwful has now propagated to Gizmodo and Slashdot and will spread from there. And the lawyers have not only spread bad publicity about Apple, they are generating more of it themselves: Not only has Apple screwed up with heat sink grease, Apple has screwed up AND their lawyers are trying to cover it up. Apple would benefit from keeping a tighter reign on its lawyers; because they see only the legal aspects of any issue, they are prone to do great harm to Apple's public image in pursuit of insignificant legal points.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
They're not "suing anyone they don't like", they're defending copyrighted material or protecting trademarks- and they are famous for doing so, since long before Jobs was re-hired. Shockingly they HAVE to, or said copyright/trademarks are diluted. If I start using the logo of GrooWanderer, Inc and you know about it but do nothing- and then BigCompany Inc comes along and does it, your case against BigCompany Inc is severely diluted because -I- did it and you didn't seem to care.
Many look at lawsuits as something like the death penalty or a nuclear first-strike. They're not. It is a civil matter taken before authority for resolution. A cease-and-desist is a PRELIMINARY step (MANY steps before a lawsuit) saying "That ain't cool. Do something about it, or we'll have to take it to the courts." The language is written to be clear and unambiguous- and hence valid in court later when the judge says, "Okay, so...did you let them know they were violating your copyright?", you can say "Absolutely and in no uncertain terms." It's not written to impress 15 year old internet commentators.
This isn't about "embarassing photos", and comparing Apple to a genuine cult is a severe dilution of the term "cult"- dangerously so. It is about protecting copyrighted material that is provided exclusively to internal Apple staff and employees of Apple Certified Resellers. I agree that it'd be great if such material were available free, but Apple has made a business decision to leverage "Apple Certified Reseller" qualifications, so they don't want any old Joe Shmoe having access to those manuals. That's their perrogative and their right.
If you don't like it- that's just too bad; don't buy Apple products, speak your mind to your representatives, run for office, whatever you like to try and change the law, or move to a small island with Richard Stallman and enjoy sharing you "copylefted" works- but otherwise, you sound like a guy in court because he punched someone in the face, angry because he doesn't believe in a law against punching people in the face.
I use Apple products (typing this on a Macbook, my 4th powerbook, oops, I mean laptop, oops, I mean "portable.") I have a linux box sitting under an Xserve in the basement. My firewall runs a FreeBSD based distribution. I have a machine under my desk that runs win2k and Ubuntu occasionally, though less-so now that emulation and virtualization work decently on the macbook.
I recognized the strengths of various platforms a decade ago. When someone asks me "should I get a Mac", my answer is a question- "what do you do with your computer?" When they ask "should I install Linux", I judge their experience level and factor that heavily into my answer, because Linux still isn't remotely ready for prime-time desktop use by people who just want their computer to work. I hate Apple fanboys (to paraphrase the author of the "Apple Product Cycle"- I'd love to go to Macworld some time, but strongly suspect I'd end up starting a brawl).
However, my new hatred is for "Appleworms"; people who spout "I hate apple" followed by some moderately insane rambling. If you've got a legitimate beef, fine- and I have a bunch for Apple. Otherwise, for god sakes, please shut up. Anyone remotely intelligent sees you spouting your "opinion" for attention. I've seen people call Apple computer/iPod owners "sheep". Complain about or "cite" a never-ending stream of problems that don't exist (my favorite: "you can't resize the dock, it takes up a chunk of your screen!") Heard people laugh at Apple's single-digit market share and describe it as a "failure" (ignoring the billion dollars in cash reserves, sales on the uptake, stock that consistently meets or exceeds analyst expectations- or the fact that Apple's market valu
Please help metamoderate.
Sure they do. Ever heard of the BSA?
So Apple's clownboat lawyers have just spawned a wave of Anti-Apple publicity.
Only on Slashdot. Only amongst the /. crowd that has nothing better to do than follow every Apple story. Wake me up when this is being repeated every half-hour on CNN Headline News.
It's not being repeated every half-hour on CNN headline news? Guess what? Apple's lawyers won--in the real world, those fancy degrees were a lot better than your random geek postings after all.
Lies about crimes
Yes, having too much heat sink goop between in the thermal interface is bad. Yes, you need to have a very small amount in that area.
But there is nothing wrong with putting more on as long as you apply sufficient pressure to squeeze the extra out. And that is what Apple's picture shows. A thin film in the thermal interface area and big globs around the interface area.
The film on the interface area is slightly thick, but it's not so thick that it would cause significant problems. It's not any thicker than the film that I saw on my NVidia 6800 Ultra or 7800GT when I removed the heatsinks to replace them with other cooling solutions.
And as to the lawyers thing, Apple just said to remove the link. It is illegal in this country to link to copyrighted material, not just to host it. Otherwise, bittorrent trackers would be legal, right?
This story is way out of control lately. I'm glad people are getting the message that putting a lot of TIM (thermal interface material, also known as heat sink goop) on is unnecessary. Maybe next time around they could actually learn enough about cooling to know what to look for in a picture of others' work.
Additionally, note that electrical conductivity is not an important characteristic of TIM. In fact, it is typically electrically non-conductive so that if you have a little spread out onto nearby circuits (say, the multiplier resistors on top of an Athlon) it won't short stuff out. TIM only has to conduct heat. It does it better than air (which is what would otherwise fill a void space), and that's about it. That's why you use as little as possible.
Honestly this is all a mountain out of a molehill. All someone had to do was post a picture of their own laptop and not use Apple's copyright restricted info and this wouldn't have even happened.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Then why the fuck do you act like one, fuckhead? Jeezus, umpty billion people in this thread have pointed out the concept of Fair Use (It's the same as you photocopying one page of a book at a uni library to use in a school assignment), and yet the Apple Fanbois, yes, including you, moron, continue to fucking bleat about how fair and innocent and morally fucking righteous Apple is.
Talk about sheer mindless stupidity.
You know, it never ceases to amaze me that the sum total of human information is available at the click of a button, and yet retards can still post utter gobshite like that and expect to not get called on it.
Shock and awe me; look up the Constituion and its Amendments and quote me the passage that SPECIFICALLY protects satire.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Is that a violation of intelectual property law, is there not an exception for portecting public safty?