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."

Comments

I guess this could make sense

[ls671]

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.

Re:I guess this could make sense

[Chyeld]

My iPod explodes/catches fire. Apple's sensors indicate a severe temperature spike and a sharp jolt.

So here's the question, what exactly does this indicate? Cars have even more sophisticated black boxes and even then they rarely are able to piece together what actually happened using just that data. Does anyone actually think that these sensors are going to be used in any other way than blanket warranty denials?

Re:I guess this could make sense

[dyingtolive]

and I have always known that I am indirectly paying for them when I buy a new product.

Do you honestly think that the company (any company, not just Apple) would charge you less if people did not do this? The difference is going to boost their profit margin, and since people already have no problems overpaying for a product, they will see no need to lower the price at all.

Re:I guess this could make sense

[FireFury03]

Even cheap cell phones have submersion detectors these days to prevent people from turning in phones that got dropped into water.

If enough people drop their phones in water to warrant sticking sensors in to void the warranty claims, I would have thought that demonstrates a consumer demand for waterproof devices rather than a demand for warranty voiding sensors...

In any case, I think all the phones I've ever had have got wet one way or another (2 of them soaked in sea water more than once). They all survived surprisingly well, coming back to life after being dismantled, soaked in deionised water and a couple of days drying out. The only device I've drowned which hasn't done so well is my "waterproof, nitrogen filled" Garmin eTrex Venture GPS, which turned out to not be so waterproof - it has mostly recovered, but the screen goes crazy every so often (percussive maintenance fixes it) so I think I need to dismantle it and soak it again. Oh, and a cheap waterproof Casio watch which survived many windsurfing sessions only to fill with water when I washed the car.

I believe that ...

[neonprimetime]

... as the abused get smarter, the abusers also get smarter at an equal or quicker pace.

Re:I believe that ...

[93 Escort Wagon]

except the abusers are generally morons who dropped their cell phone in a toilet then dried it with a hairdryer and returned it saying 'it just stopped working'.

One of my former co-workers was tasked with setting up a wireless network for our academic department, but our boss didn't want to spend money on an enterprise-grade deployment. So my co-worker went out and bought consumer-grade APs, then hacked them to run at higher power using instructions he found on the net. Of course this meant components were being used out-of-spec, and a significant number of the units failed within the first year - at which point my co-worker - with our boss' full knowledge - returned them for warranty replacement.

So while I'm sure there are plenty of "morons who dropped their cell phone in a toilet", I suspect a fair number of the people that abuse equipment (and costs us consumers money in terms of higher prices) are right here on Slashdot - they're just better at not getting caught.

Please patent it

[kabloom]

Please patent it, Apple. Then I can buy my cell phone from someone else and know that this technology isn't included.

Time of event

[Maximum Prophet]

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.

Problem solved by Free Market Supply/Demand

[newgalactic]

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.

It works really well

[Alzheimers]

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.

Re:It works really well

[cecille]

Indeed. I went in to the phone shop for a completely unrelated problem (my voice mail kept telling people it was full despite the fact that I had no saved messages on it). The sales rep asked for my phone, which I handed over despite the fact that the problem obviously had nothing to do with the phone itself. She opened the phone and pointed at a half-red (as in, half was red, half was white, not that it was pink) sticker and told me the voice mail was not working because my phone had liquid damage. Notwithstanding the fact that the reason she gave is obviously not right, the supposed water damage never actually happened. That was the only phone I've managed to keep until the end of its contract without dropping it in a lake or a sink or a toilet. So I asked her how exactly one would drop the phone into liquid such that half the sticker would get wet (it's not large) and she said she didn't know but humidity might cause it and the stickers on that phone model were a bit sensitive because the cover was thin.

So as much as these measures protect the company from fraud, they open the consumer up to fraud because the company now has more reasons to deny warranty repairs even if the supposed incident never happened.

might decrease the value of the warranty, though

[oenone.ablaze]

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."

Re:These aren't your devices

[Duradin]

"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.

Is it worth it?

[stokessd]

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

prove it to me

[Speare]

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.

Yes, but it's Apple

[WCMI92]

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.

Its harder and harder to be an Apple fanboy...

[Dr_Ken]

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.

Good and bad points

[jimicus]

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?

Re:A patent for combining Retail products

[Theaetetus]

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.

Pre-broken sensors void your warranty, then what?

[cjeze]

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?

Re:might decrease the value of the warranty, thoug

[Aphoxema]

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?

If you think that is bad...

[lawnboy5-O]

... wait until the Face Crime app is part of the standard install. That will bake your noodle.

As long as devices don't "phone home"

[SineNomen]

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.

Re:might decrease the value of the warranty

[Steve Franklin]

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.

Re:might decrease the value of the warranty, thoug

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Keep in mind that in the long term, for an ideal free market, sale price approaches marginal production cost.

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.