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FOIA Documents Detail iPods Overheating, Catching Fire
suraj.sun passes along a report from a Seattle TV station that has been investigating reports of Apple iPods overheating and bursting into flames. "An exclusive KIRO 7 Investigation reveals an alarming number of Apple brand iPod MP3 players have suddenly burst into flames and smoke, injuring people and damaging property. It's an investigation that Apple has apparently been trying to keep out of the public eye. It took more than 7 months for KIRO 7 Consumer Investigator Amy Clancy to get her hands on documents concerning Apple's iPods from the Consumer Product Safety Commission because Apple's lawyers filed exemption after exemption. In the end, the CPSC released more than 800 pages which reveal, for the very first time, a comprehensive look that shows, on a number of occasions, iPods have suddenly burst into flames, started to smoke, and even burned their owners. ... Apple refused to comment, and refused to answer all of the other questions [the reporter] has been asking of the company since November."
Microsoft scramble to add explosion functionality to the Zune.
Summary:
> Investigation reveals an alarming number of Apple brand iPod MP3 players have suddenly burst into flames and smoke
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Article:
>When the documents finally arrived more than seven months later, they included more than 800 pages of information, including 15 burn and fire-related incidents blamed by iPod owners on their iPods.
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> After conducting its own preliminary investigation, the federal agency determined that, with more than 175 million iPods sold, âoethe number of incidents is extremely small in relation to the number of products produced, making the risk of injury very low.â
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I'm ALARMED!
High enough energy density and you go from energy store to high explosive.
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...and the burning ipod did speak unto Jobs and appointed him to lead the users out of Vista and unto the promised land of OSX.
A while back I had a problem with the power brick for my Macbook Pro. It was running awful hot, and some of the plastic on the cable near the magnetic adapter was starting to melt. Applecare kept trying to tell me that the problem was my fault for unplugging the adapter by pulling on the cable instead of actually grabbing the magsafe plug, and that despite me having paid for applecare, they would not fix it.
A couple days later while playing a game in bootcamp, I went to unplug it, and was so hot that the power cord's coating actually melted to my hand. I called up AppleCare went through the situation again. I even explained that it had melted, I seemed to get nowhere. Where I had touched the cord it had now darkened considerably, probably from me being able to see the bare cable beneath it. I was trying to describe this to the tech and said something along the lines of, "Well there's melting damage, and the area is blackened a bit as if there was a small fire there"
Suddenly the whole tone of the conversation changed, and I was immediately transfered to a supervisor. I went through about 10 minutes answering a series of questions off a script. "Did the Fire cause any property damage?" "Was there any bodily injury caused by the fire?" "Have you suffered any loss of income due to this problem?" etc etc etc.
I answered no to everything, but simply mentioning "Fire" got me a new power brick, when no other method did. It is something Apple is clearly concerned about.
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...I still get sick and tired of all of these absurd "special reports" on the news about the "unseen dangers" in the world that are orders of magnitude less likely to cause you serious harm than being struck by lightning. Certainly, Apple should be held responsible, particularly for their gross mishandling of the situation (trying to sweep it under the rug), but can we grow up a little? It does not seem that there has been any serious damage or injury as a result of this. This culture of fear that the news has been cultivating is beyond nauseating and is destroying our society piece by piece. Because of all the news coverage into child abductions, for instance, we teach our children that strangers are dangerous and keep them close to our chests at all times, despite the fact that the odds of a child being abducted by a stranger are literally 1 in a million! The same thing has happened with the War on Terror (TM), one terrorist attack and all of a sudden its necessary to start stripping away human rights and make air travel more or less unusable. We feel that airport security is necessary, despite the fact that it logically makes no sense. We see all the exposes on the dangers of drug use, yet fail to recognize that in reality aspirin is more dangerous. We humans are terrible at assessing risk, which leads to crap like this happening. I could fill an encyclopedia with examples of this, but I think the point I am trying to make is fairly clear, that this is juvenile behavior.
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Read the article. The long report they talk about says that 15 were reported. That's 15 out of 175,000,000 (175 million).
Cars, computers, flippin' aircraft... I'd imagine a lot of products have catastrophic failures (such as sparks or fires) 1 in 11.6 million times. How often does it make the news (particularly nationally) when some guy's TV shorts out and ignites, or a car battery explodes.
And to clarifiy my position, I didn't jump down Sony's or Dell's or Apple's throat when their laptop batteries were causing major problems either. Though it's obviously good to know, as so many were affected, the most that can be said is that it was the battery manufacturers.
Apple has quashed reporting of 100% of them.
I used to work for Fisher-Price. I got a call from a woman whose child choked on something, she was an EMT so the child was fine, but it was clearly hazardous.
Given that ONE report, Fisher-Price notified the CPSC, proposed a solution and a way of publicizing it, and within ONE WEEK there were news releases, posters being sent to pediatrician's offices, ads in parenting magazines, etc. This was not something mandated by the CPSC, but rather something F-P proposed to the CPSC and the CPSC said "Ok, sounds like a plan - go for it."
In contrast, a less reputable children's products manufacturer had to be SUED by the CPSC and forced into a recall after their product had KILLED children. But even in that case, there was no cover-up and attempt to squelch those facts.
Now granted - children's products are different and safety is more of a concern - but even given the less stringent attitude towards adults products, I'd say BUSTING into fucking FLAMES is enough to move past that realm of nonchalance into starting to give a shit.
(Also, F-P's practices changed after the Mattel take-over, and I came close to being a whistle-blower about another safety issue, but that's another story.)
Bottom line is, an ethical company would have dealt with this publicly and openly, issued a recall for the effected production runs, and taken the 10-20 million dollar hit, knowing it was worth it in the long run for good will and also knowing that it was a relative pittance compared to their massive profit margins and the BILLIONS of dollars Apple has socked away.
A less ethical company would have been forced to act.
An UNETHICAL company would cover it up.
Apple is an unethical company.
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Suddenly the whole tone of the conversation changed, and I was immediately transfered to a supervisor. I went through about 10 minutes answering a series of questions off a script. "Did the Fire cause any property damage?" "Was there any bodily injury caused by the fire?" "Have you suffered any loss of income due to this problem?" etc etc etc.
I answered no to everything, but simply mentioning "Fire" got me a new power brick, when no other method did. It is something Apple is clearly concerned about.
"Hi, Applecare. I bought a mac mini and a month later you released a better one with more specs. I'd like to return and upgrade."
"No."
"Did I mention it, ah, burst into flames?"
"Fire?"
"Fire fire fire!"
"Holy fuck, we'll get a new one out immediately, just promise not to talk to the press!"
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