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Apple Tries To Gag Owner of Exploding iPod
David Gerard writes "The Times in London reports that Apple attempted to silence a father and daughter with a gagging order after the child's iPod music player exploded and the family sought a refund from the company. Well, at least they're not Microsoft. Or something."
Well, at least they're not Microsoft. Or something.
It's as if a billion Fanboys all cried out at once.
The 11 year old wearing such heavy makeup (lipstick, mascara and other stuff I'm too manly to admit to knowing the names of) is far more worrying than the burnt out ipod she's holding
Apple is going for the middle eastern fundamentalist market then?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
It's not a bug, it's a feature!
There's an app for that
Why not publicly give the girl a refund and then reiterate the fact that this can happen with ANY Lithium Ion battery, and that the odds of it happening to you are about 1 in 11 million, and even less if you use a modicum of care. Instead they get to meet the Streisand effect, drawing huge amounts of attention to a COMPLETE non-issue, making themselves look like (Godwin alert) Nazis and making the minor tech failure seem like a huge catastrophic problem, surely hurting sales. It really blows my mind that a tech savvy company like Apple can still honestly think that it is possible to hide knowledge in this information age. iDiots...
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
What customer centric aura? Apple have been pulling stunts like this for a long time now...
The only reason I have an iPod touch is, at the time I got it, nothing else really fitted the bill for what I wanted.
So you only purchased it...because you liked the product.?
Sounds like apple made a product that you wanted. Sounds like they design with the consumer in mind.
He didn't say they were customer centric, but that they had a "customer centric Aura". The first requires a corporate culture that cares about the customer, the second requires a marketing department that works very hard to make the customer think you care about them. Amazingly a lot of companies work very hard at the second even though the first is much easier to accomplish (and harder to lose).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Really. Li-poly batteries in these applications have no housing except the housing of the device; they're a metallized plastic bag full of gelled chemistry goodness, basically. Crunch it the wrong way and you get an internal short and a runaway reaction, which produces a lot of gas - and the whole battery acts like one of those "popping bags" you can get at 7-11 and toystores.
After eight hour on the phone (at 10p/minute) and six weeks, they finally sent me a replacement (good thing I backed up the disk before sending it in...). The replacement was DoA - it didn't even boot, it just got hotter and hotter until you pulled the battery out.
Two weeks later, they sent me another replacement. This one actually worked, but had the wrong amount of RAM. A few days later they sent me some replacement DIMMs to install. I did, and a couple of months later, one of the RAM slots failed (this having been one of the faults that I had originally posted the machine in to get fixed).
The next repair, they replaced the motherboard with one with a slower CPU. Then they over-tightened the hinges so first time I opened it after getting it back one of them snapped. They then failed to honour this as a warranty replacement (luckily for me, the local computer shop that was handling the repairs decided to absorb this cost to generate some goodwill).
But over the same period I had several Mac-using friends who had repairs happen without any trouble. The most irritating thing was that all of my complaints were met by being told that Apple is consistently ranked top for customer support in independent surveys. This may be true, but it doesn't alter the fact that they consistently and repeatedly screwed up in my particular case.
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I've had the opposite experience, personally...
I bought a 24" white iMac (2006). It worked perfect up until it was 2.5 years old, when I started having video issues with it. It was under Applecare, so I brought it into the local Apple store, and they fixed it on-site (took a couple days, unfortunately).
Similar issues re-occured a few days after getting it back, then after a second repair it happened a third time. The computer DID work each time when I got it back, and the symptoms were different each time... so I can't really blame them. They replace all the major componants in the process too.
However, after 2 repairs and 3 similar faults, they replaced the machine with a brand-new 2009 aluminum iMac - with bigger/better/faster everything. Even the lowest-end machine would have beaten my old one, but they gave me the mid-line one anyways. They even offered this without me pushing. On top, they even gave me a free mini-DVI converter for my second monitor because my old cable was a different plug on the old iMac.
So - although I agree this incdent looks horrid, I would argue that they're certainly not as bad as the majority of corporations these days. I'm certainly a lot more brand-loyal than I was 6 months ago.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
You need to jailbreak the phone to install it though. Apple rejected it from the iTunes store because it duplicated their native functionality.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
iPlode is what you were looking for.
Can I bum a sig?
72 free downloads at Virgin records
It Just Explodes.
Apple may not have been the first to do this, but they were the ones who popularised it. They also make it easy: no need for complex buttons to press, Apple have pioneered the "open-hand" gesture, which causes the device to drop, and initiate destruction after a short time period.
Other products may win out on paper in terms of pure feature lists, but it's the attention to little details, such as the seamless integration of a music player and a product that blows up in your face.
Sounds like they design with the consumer in mind.
Delivering products that have the consumer in mind, and having corporate policies that also have the consumer in mind are two entirely different things! I'm sorry, Apple fans, but Apple is just as hognoxious as Microsoft in many respects. Better quality products? Sure, I suppose. Less bloodthirsty management? Nope.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I've had the opposite experience, personally...
You bought something from Apple and it didn't burst into flame and/or explode?
Support microSD: in a post 9/11 world, it is unwise to carry your data on media that you cannot comfortably swallow.
72, but they're all Slashdotters.
Can I trade-in my 72 downloads for a female virgin? Actually I'll just settle for any female around age 20 and less than 140 pounds
140lbs sounds great until you realize she's 4'9". Never mind the fact that if you are chosing a partner based on age and weight you are bound to be very disappointed.
Aside-
I don't understand the male obsession with virgins. They're messy.
They are also typically disease free, not played out, and won't know enough to realize you suck at intercourse.
Aside -
I don't understand the male obsession with 20 year olds. They don't know shit!