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Apple Faces Inquiries In the EU On iPhone Accidents
o'reor writes "As more cases of iPhone screen explosions emerge in the news on this side of the pond, Apple is now facing official inquiries and lawsuits in France. This situation has forced Apple finally to break silence and acknowledge the incidents: 'We are aware of these reports and we are waiting to receive the iPhones from the customers. Until we have the full details, we don't have anything further to add.' Following those reports, the European Commission had already decided last week to step in, while Apple tried to dismiss the problem as 'isolated incidents.' Meanwhile, iPhone explosion-related sites are now popping up on the Internet, releasing games such as iPop to chill out and relax on the subject, but also giving users advice on preventing iPhone accidents, or detecting imminent explosions."
iExplode
Was it really necessary to link to the iPop advertisements 3 times?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Are the cause I hear. Lots of devices use these kinds of batteries, simply because they are easily rechargable. It's said that if one gets too hot, and is under a certain amount of pressure on the inside, the battery can explode. I didn't RTFA I'm sure its mentioned somewhere in there. Things that use L I batteries have exploded before in the past, it's just become common that everyone owns either an iPod or an iPhone, so when 13 or more stories arise of exploding Apple devices people take notice.
But, like the summary says, Apple hasn't received the broken equipment yet, so the battery is not the CONFIRMED cause of the explosion.
Anyone want to take a bet?
This is all lies and slander. Don't you guys watch Mac adds? They don't HAVE any issues. They work all the time and never glitch up, much less explode! Psh to all this microsoft propaganda.
If your iPhone explodes and kills you, do you go to Apple Hell where everything runs on Windows?
I'm typing this on my iPhone right now, and everything is just fi
>>>I wonder if the price saved is worth the lawsuits?
Well Ford performed this analysis in the 70s when they had a rash of exploding Pintos, and their accountants determined "yes" it's cheaper to pay-off the families of dead drivers than to spend the million-or-so on reengineering and fixing the problem. Besides the Pinto would eventually be phased-out anyway and replaced with a new 80s model, so the problem would solve itself, therefore just keep paying-off the victims to be silent (sound familiar?).
I suspect today's accountants are saying the same thing - "The money saved by shipping cheap goods from China or India is cheaper than the money paid-out to people with burned hands." Of course this is why we have a government - to protect our individual rights from those persons who would do us harm.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The cell phone app?
You mean, when you use the FUCKING PHONE as a FUCKING PHONE?
On a side note, I think I need a new phone.
Mine is starting to get hot whenever I make calls. Never used to before.
The money saved by shipping cheap goods from China or India is cheaper than the money paid-out to people with burned hands.
I think you meant it's cheaper to pay out people with burned hands than to correct a design flaw. Presumably the product would still be assembled in China, regardless.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I don't know where they were manufacturing before, but I have noticed a huge drop in the quality of Apple's hardware. I've bee a Mac aficionado since the early 1990s but my latest computer from them, a Macbook, is the first Mac I have actually hated. First there are the sharp edges that hurt my wrists. Then there are the edges that soon broke off. Then there's the fact that it freezes and applications seem incapable of quitting without crashing. Then there's the power adapter that heats up so much I have to use an oven glove to unplug it. Then there's the battery that heats up so much I can't even set the damn thing in my lap. I never thought I'd say this, but I hate my Mac!
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Modern fashion with gadgets is ultra thin and light, which is dangerous when it comes to lithium batteries. They are *delicate* and dangerous. This marketing decision leads to being not as good from an engineering standpoint (on being safe I mean) in designing the batteries, they are too subject to being smashed/bent, or have design and manufacturing screwups, and that leads to simple failure or catastrophic failure.
This utter fixation on having the smallest most powerful batteries combined with their basic chemistry of heating and catching fire and having runaway reactions will inevitably lead to a lot of failures when you are making millions of units.
And look at all this constant kvetching about battery life on laptops and so on. Geez, what a freekin non problem theoretically. If people could be content to carry the same weight they did just a few years ago, as if their girly man muscles could even handle the strain, oh the horrors, they could have *bigger and longer lasting and safer batteries*, probably cheaper as well, but every generation of new gadgets they insist on shaving some ounces and inches off. Well, you can do that to excess it appears. Battery tech has not quite kept up with other electronics miniaturization tech here, so you get problems. They can make the batteries smaller plus more powerful at the same time, but obviously it raises the risk factor. They are pushing it too close to the exploding edge.
Small, powerful, safe, pick two
Form is not necessarily your friend always over function. Perhaps if they take a few tens of million$ in cost in recalls and lawsuits this lesson of marketing versus engineering quality standards will sink in better. And any company that did that could turn it around in the market, use their new designed safer and more powerful batteries, albeit larger and heavier, as a marketing edge over just smaller and lighter. There could be some rather humorous ads along these lines showing the victim of the teeniest gadget walking around on fire and all charred all the time, just so he can stupidly brag how cool his new .5 ounce and 1/64th inch thick iXploder is...
There's been several exploding iPhone incidents in France. While Apple claims they are isolated unintentional incidents the French Government issued a formal Surrender to Apple just in case.
I don't believe the parent is a troll. I have one of the Macbook Pros with the coreduo processor. These are the ones that Apple said "we never intended for them to be used on your lap." When people complained that the bottom became to hot to put it on your lap. I'm not talking about bare legs here, I'm talking about resting the laptop on your lap when wearing jeans.
One can install 3rd party plugins/apps like smcFanControl, but why won't apple fix this? Because they removed the term "laptop" from the manual :)
Now if Apple could just invent a docking station... so corporate users wouldn't have to plug in half a dozen cables every day. Of course you could go out an buy the Apple Monitor, which would eliminate 1 cable...