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Apple Working On Tech To Detect Purchasers' "Abuse"
Toe, The writes "Apple has submitted a patent application for technologies which would detect device-abuse by consumers. The intent presumably being to aid in determining the validity of warranty claims. 'Consumer abuse events' would be recorded by liquid and thermal sensors detecting extreme environmental exposures, a shock sensor detecting drops or other impacts, and a continuity sensor to detect jailbreaking or other tampering. The article also notes that liquid submersion detectors are already deployed in MacBook Pros, iPhones and iPods. It does seem reasonable that a corporation would wish to protect itself from fraudulent warranty claims; however the idea of sensors inside your portable devices detecting what you do with them might raise eyebrows even beyond the tinfoil-hat community."
Well I guess this could make sense, I know people that really abuse the vendors by returning products that have been used in non-warranty covered conditions and I have always known that I am indirectly paying for them when I buy a new product.
> however the idea of sensors inside your portable devices detecting
> what you do with them might raise eyebrows even beyond
> the tinfoil-hat community.
The line is thin, but I guess if different agencies or companies want to spy on people, they won't tell us in advance anyway.
Problems could arise in case the "abuse detection" device malfunctions and falsely report abuse by the consumer.
As stated in TFA this is already done anyway, I don't see public pressure stopping this.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
... as the abused get smarter, the abusers also get smarter at an equal or quicker pace.
What about companies that abuse their customers with unrealistic and draconian EULAs?
Please patent it, Apple. Then I can buy my cell phone from someone else and know that this technology isn't included.
Simple devices offer ways to tell if a package has been dropped or turned upside down, but how do they prove that the event didn't happen before the device was in the hands of the customer. If they tell people to check them when the receive the device, then people are more likely to try to defeat them.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
They can include whatever sensors they want. And I can buy whatever I want. There's no way I'll buy a smartphone that doesn't allow me to install software of my choice. This walled-garden crap is making me look to the HTC Hero, or whatever new Android phone is on the horizon.
Those "submersion detectors" it work really well, right up until the local weather calls for 100% relative humidity. I've seen RIM deny multiple replacement requests due to triggered sensors.
Apple would probably make money in the end through decreased support costs, but all the same I'd be a lot less inclined to get AppleCare if I felt that there was a significant risk of wear-and-tear getting interpreted by this sensor as "abuse."
"That's not what Apple thought, they are just allowing you to use it, as long as you give them money and don't use it in any way that they disapprove of." ... if you want to make a warranty claim.
It must be worth it, but it seems that it's a rare bit of abuse that hurts the internals but leaves the exterior shell and windows etc on the product free of teltale signs. That would rule out:
High-G impacts - which require a hard surface to stop the motion of the unit very quickly. This would leave a tell-tale blemish on the case.
Imersion in liquids - This would leave dried residue unless it's immersed in de-ionized water or other pure substance that wouldn't leave any residue. With no residue, the unit may not be damaged when it dries out.
Jailbreaking sensor - BINGO! This is the real money maker.
The only reason to include these things is to improve product reliability (nope), customer satisfaction (nope), profit (yup). And I don't see a whole lot of profit increase in anything but preventing jailbreaking.
Sheldon
Normally, shock sensors like this are placed on the outside of shipping crates or pallets. If I am going to shell out money for equipment that can tattle on me with hidden sensors, I will have to have them open the device and prove that none of the tattle-markers are already spoiled.
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Apple gets forgiven for everything, but if Microsoft even hinted of this they'd get flamed.
Had Apple won the PC wars of the 80's they'd be a far greater satan than Microsoft ever tried to be.
Corporatism != Free Market
I can see the economic rationale for going this route but the "hip & cool" aspect of Apple stuff is going to be diminished by it. I want innovation and technical progress that lowers the price, increases the functionality, is ergonomic and looks cool as hell. It is for that reason I buy Apple products. This crap on the other hand doesn't help me that much if at all. It might lower the price a few pennies but it'll make it that much harder to make a warranty claim too and so there goes a big chunk of good will down the tubes. I hope the few pennies they save with this equals what stand to lose. Sheesh.
"If you want to know what happens to you when you die, go look at some dead stuff."
The biggest problem I see with this is that these sensors won't be 100% accurate. Very few things in this world are.
But manufacturers will almost certainly treat them as if they are.
So let's say you have a faulty moisture sensor in your laptop and the laptop fails through no fault of your own - it goes back and you get a rude email a week later saying "You let it get wet. Go away."
Obviously you can take the "sue the bastards" approach, but let's be real here, they're going to stand up in court and say "There is a moisture sensor in this unit which was triggered, therefore it got wet". How do you prove that in your case the moisture sensor was faulty without spending a small fortune?
recorded by liquid and thermal sensors I can get those already. Common in the shipping industry. detecting extreme environmental exposures How is this different than a thermal sensor? Common in the shipping industry, but not everywhere depending on the environmental element they are testing for. a shock sensor detecting drops or other impacts I can slap one of those inside any old box now. Apple puts it inside a laptop and it's a patent? and a continuity sensor to detect jailbreaking or other tampering Now, this *really* has been done. Permanent adhesives on a holographic label? Anyone? anyone?
You're right. Obviously, the Slashdot Article Summary is not worthy of being patented.
However, that has very little to do with the limitations of this application, which include:
1. A system for detecting consumer abuse in an electronic device, the system comprising:one or more sensors configured to detect an occurrence of an abuse event;abuse detection circuitry configured to receive indication of the occurrence of the abuse event from the one or more sensors and to generate a record corresponding to the occurrence of the abuse event upon receiving the indication;a memory device configured to store the record; andan interface configured to facilitate communication between the electronic device and an external device.
That rules out the holographic stickers, at least.
When my headphone jack started failing I investigated the issue on-line. I found several similar cases on line and thought this would be a breeze to get fixed on my warranty. It was a well known issue with the sensor inside the iPhone detecting whether the headphone was plugged in. So I sent in the phone for repairs but apparently the water sensor on the docking connector was slightly "not white" (translated: they believe that the water sensor is triggered) thus rendering the warranty void. The repair service log showed me that the repairman used less than 2 seconds deciding that my warranty was void, even though the phone was working perfectly - except for this error with the headphone jack. This "2 second job" gave 3 alternatives for me online: 1) scrap the phone, price: free 2) return the phone unrepaired, £70 service fee 3) repair phone (new phone £550) I chose alternative 2, it was the only real option for me. Adding more sensors/detectors is probably great for Apple. But they need to inform and disclose this in their user manuals, clearly visibly in your warranty. I didn't find out about the water sensors until after it was repaired. The problem with these sensors is if they are triggered without you doing anything wrong to the phone, and this mean that if a sensor is triggered and you get a hardware error not at all related to the sensor being triggered you will not be able to have your device fixed because the warranty is void. Another important aspect is that any sensor could also be triggered BEFORE you even open the box. WTH are you supposed to do if the phone is pre-broken. How can you check your sensors is not triggered?
I'm skeptical their products would get any cheaper no matter how much money they save. People have shown how much they're willing to pay, why charge less?
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
I hope these dont work like the submersion detection on my ipod touch does..
live in mississippi, walked outside with it in my front pen pocket and broke a sweat, it went red. Of course the ipod still works, but the warranty is now void because it was somewhere with the temperature above 80 degrees.
I don't work for Apple, but the company I do work for also has manufactured laptops in the past. Not so long ago I took a call from an individual that wanted to complain that his unit was now under warranty, and a third repair would not be covered. He'd already had the motherboard and hard drive repaired under warranty. The kicker is that *all* of the problems started only after he dropped the unit off a table, which "would never cause this kind of problem!". So at the time I took the call, he had already received free repairs twice by lying about damage he caused, and then had the audacity to complain about not receiving further repairs for failures resulting from the same drop incident, and threatening never to buy products from the company again because of it. There's nothing you can do about bad word-of-mouth negative advertising from an idiot like that, but Apple's plan may at least prevent wasting money on unwarranted repairs that a parasitic individual lied about.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
... wait until the Face Crime app is part of the standard install. That will bake your noodle.
however the idea of sensors inside your portable devices detecting what you do with them might raise eyebrows even beyond the tinfoil-hat community.
IMHO, as long as devices don't "phone home" and the data is kept in the device until the *owner* submits it for warranty repairs there is no foul. If we get lower prices (or a delay in a price increases) and/or longer warranties then the tradeoff seems reasonable. Of course I'm biased, I worked in tech support long ago and I am a bit familiar with the -- hmm how shall I put this -- the "opportunistic" nature of a non-trivial number of consumers. :-) To be fair I think that owners should be able to see the current sensor logs, Settings | General | About on an iPhone for example, if for no other reason than to verify the devices state at the time of purchase. While in a manufacturing facility I've seen s person spill a box of hard drives onto the floor and perform a couple of did-anyone-see-that head swivels as they picked up the drives.
If Apple or any other company uses this technology against their customers, I predict many phone batteries will "catch fire". It can't be too hard to make a Lithium-Ion battery go up in flames. Hell, it seems to be hard to PREVENT them from exploding.
So instead of hair-drying a wet phone, customers will cause the battery to go nuclear and then take the smoldering mess to the store demanding a replacement.
Short of building the sensors into an airplane black-box type device (which might hurt the phone's portability a bit) it is unlikely any of these sensors would survive a fire.
I had a Motorola Q that started smoking one day while it was charging. The battery was so hot, I couldn't hold it for more than a few seconds. The case started melting, and I'm sure if I hadn't been there, it would have caught fire.
The Verizon guy replaced the phone, no hassle, no questions.
-ted
Competition.
If your product costs (including warranty fulfillment) are lower than your competitor's, you can sell at a lower price while still maintaining profitability. This means that you can underprice your competitors, thus getting a larger market share == more sales == more profit.
Keep in mind that in the long term, for an ideal free market, sale price approaches marginal production cost.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
You're probably right, but the money saved won't go to waste. It will probably materialize as an extra $1/hour for some lucky engineers or managers, or extra health benefits. That's one of the advantages of competition over government - the constant pressure to reduce costs and thereby inprove efficiency which benefits not just that company, but also society as a whole.
My only concern is that these sensors might be abused.
For example I have some Lights of America CFLs that died after only one year of use. If these sensors were inside the base, I could easily imagine the LoA company refusing to replace the bulbs because "you had them in a hot area" even though I did not. Yes they died of excesive heat, but I used them in a prescribed manner - in my dining room. They died due to manaufacturer error not user error, but I can easily foresee the manufacturer blaming the user anyway.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
What you are missing is that Apple is not selling steak, it's selling sizzle. When you can walk into an Apple Store and all you see are monitors, with wires running into holes in the counter where the mysterious computers are hidden, you begin to understand that the standard Apple consumer has no idea what a computer is beyond some kind of fancy interactive TV set.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
I'm not missing that. All of Apple's marketing and branding has changed the shape of the demand curves for their products. That's a function of their marketing success, and the gullibility of potential buyers. That does not mean that economics does not apply.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
In a simplified world without brand names (luxery goods whose selling point is exclusivity), with infinte access to infinitly patient capital (otherwise many businesses cannot be started), without any fixed costs (otherwise selling units at marginal production cost is a money loser... and this implies no recouping/paying off of startup costs, hence no startup loans either, which means see point two), intellectual property protection (without which good luck getting R and D funding), perfectly rational actors, etc.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Most economic theory assumes people in the marketplace are rational.
With Apple customers, that assumption, and the economic theory that depends on it, goes out the window!
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
How?
When a mac fanboy's ipod dies and cant get it fixed under warranty they'll go out and buy another ipod. The fanboy wont even consider alternate devices like an iriver nor even think about considering that Apple products have a high rate of failure.
Apple does not do this. It's difficult for a mac fan to see but they are well and truly behind the bell curve with technology.
This is what Apple sells, the image. This is why fanboys will keep buying Apple no matter what abuses it requires the user to undergo.
No it wont. Apple products are made with the same off the shelf components as Dell, they are made in similar factories to Dell. Apple could already sell their products at a far lower cost, seeing as they don't suffer the windows tax they could undercut Dell. The simple fact is by buying Apple you've already proven that you're willing to overpay.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
... making the products more durable, rather than adding the "fuck you" sensors?
Apple Inc. is one evil bastardization of a once great company.
8==8 Bones 8==8