Apple iBook G4 Design Flaw Proven

empaler writes "Apple has long denied service on iBook G4s whose screens went black after just over one year of use, denying that there was any error. But now, the Danish National Consumer Agency has released a report proving that the error is due to a design flaw. So far, the only news site picking this up is The Register (unless you understand Danish). The Danish Consumer Complaints Board says that Apple needs to get a grip and acknowledge this error in the rest of the world. The NCA also has some photos from the report (explanations in Danish, but easily comprehensible from context)."

Comments

That's not a design fault...

[msauve]

although it may be a manufacturing fault. It's a solder joint which has broken. Were these computers built with RoHS mandated lead-free solder? There is a lot of concern across the entire electronics industry that the changes required by RoHS will lead to reduced reliability.

This is ONE computer. Is this failure present on others with similar symptoms, or are their other faults modes which can cause the same problem?

Macs Have Problems, Too

[CannonballHead]

I don't know why this seems so hard to accept. On one hand, there are some die-hard Mac people that seem to refuse to accept that Macs have problems, and refuse to accept that PC's are sometimes actually worth money.

And on the other hand, there are anti-mac people that are excited about this sort of news. That's stupid, too.

But really, the anti-MS and anti-PC and anti-Mac stuff gets really old after a while. Macs have problems, PCs have problems, MS software has problems; I have to say that with this particular instance, Apple supporters seem much more worried about admitting that there is a problem than PC supporters or MS users.

Modding something flamebait for pointing out an inconsistency in how problems with company X are accepted is... hmmm. Silly.

A dry joint on thousands of units is a design flaw

[Morgaine]

Perhaps people here are not acquainted with the product engineering process.

Engineers take *every* component of a product into account during design, including the types of solder to be used and the methods of soldering to be employed.

Indeed, they may select higher quality solder in order to reduce the requirements and hence the cost of other parts, or they may specify lower quality solder in the knowledge that the rest of the components on their bill of materials can still be assembled to spec and will still work together reliably for the normal lifetime of the product.

In this particular case, either Apple engineers did not consider the effect of their design on the solder joint in question (it should probably have been a far more substantial joint), or they did not specify the right type of solder given the requirements of their design, or else the subcontractors who made the unit used a type of solder different to that specified by Apple. (In the latter case this would be an Apple testing/QA problem, since you *ALWAYS* check what your subcontractors are doing, no exception. If you value your brand name, that is.)

So whichever way you look at it, this is entirely Apple's fault. Design and/or testing engineers get paid for doing a good design and/or testing job, and in this case they haven't. Get the message to them, and they'll fix it --- engineers are always happy to fix problems, on principle.

As for Steve Jobs and Apple Customer Services .. the less said the better.

There's a problem. Get it fixed.