Apple Blames 'External Forces' For Exploding iPhones

Shome writes "Apple has stated that there is no evidence that recent iPhone explosions reported by users are connected to overheating of batteries. It may be stated that French consumer affairs authorities have started their own investigation on the reported explosions, some of which have caused minor injuries to the users, and are studying the phone's safety features. The Inquirer runs a piece that blames Apple for blaming its customers. 'This mysterious force is not God, or a rival religion, nor does it require any metaphysics to understand. An "external force" is just Apple's term for the black shirted people who believe that everything that Apple makes is wonderful. It is what other companies call their "customers," writes Nick Farrell.'"

Comments

normal for Apple

[alen]

check out the Macrumors forums. people bought iMacs a few years ago and LCD's started to go after the warranty expired. The Genius's called the customers crazy. Only reason Apple payed out money with the nvidia chipsets is because they got the money from nvidia.

there was a hard drive clicking issue with current MBP's and 7200rpm drives, including freeze ups. people took them to Apple stores and were told it was a feature.

Re:normal for Apple

[not already in use]

I bought a first gen MacBook Pro. During manufacturing there was so much thermal paste put on the processor, graphics chip and northbridge that it caked out onto the motherboard and was actually insulating from the copper heatsink. It was a well known manufacturing issue that Apple never acknowledged even though every 1st gen up to a certain point was affected by it. I have pictures of mine, personally, that I took apart, voiding the warranty, to fix.

Re:normal for Apple

[Sandbags]

lol, it WAS a feature. It's a feature of the drop detection system. Unfortunately, the system in the Seagate HDD was much more sensitive, or conflicted with Apple's own protection system built into the macbook, and it took SEAGATE a couple of weeks to develop a patch that Apple tested and then distributed. It only effected a few thousand machines where the disk was upgraded to a non-default selection, and this disk from Seagate should NOT have had this system enabled in the first place. (and the drives apple initially tested did not have this feature enabled, but seagate changed the firmware without changing the model number in later shipping drives, causing the issue, this is a common logistics issue in manufacturing, and segate should have clarified the change with a revision number or notified apple to retest the drives)

Thanks for spreading more FUD and making a 3rd party vendor's firmware issues look like Apple's fault...

Re:normal for Apple

[Sandbags]

No problem. i agree. My post was simply top state you 1) can't hold Apple personally responsible (yes, Apple has to fix, it, but you can't BLAME them for the issue); 2) The media exclaimed the whole product line was at fault, and it was a mainbord issue, and started demanding recalls of all notebooks (effected or not), before Apple even had a week to diagnose the issue (which did not come to light until several weeks after it shipped), and then further it actuallyl took some time for SEAGATE to fix it after Apple very quickly announced what the issue was after their diagniostics of an effected machine.

Apple acted as best as they could, do determine the cause, produce a short term workaround, and then distribute a BIOS Fix. Simply replacing the effected HDD was not an option as Apple did not have an alternate 5400RPM drive in the supply pipeline (not even a bigger one), and the fix was due in a mere few weeks. Backlogging genius techs with thousands of maches to replace non-faulty drives and inconvenience customers with data copies is not a good business practice is a short term workaround (disabling the drop detection in the BIOS) followed by a forthcoming firmware patch would have solved the issue. Can you imagine waiting a few hours for a repair at a store 2 hours from your home to find out the patch came out the next day?

Yea, Apple had to fix it. AND THEY DID. ...and it wasxn't their fault, and short of an annoyance, it didn't stop machines from working. Had it been more serious, or potentially caused data loss if there was a real threat of injury (like their laptop battery recall, which brought back 1.6 million batteries after ony 2 (yes 2) failed...

Track record

[Rockoon]

..because Apple doesnt have a track record for selling devices that explode. They certainly didn't recall 1.8 million iBook and POwerBook batteries in 2006. Definately not.

Re:Not quite

[dzfoo]

That's actually what their press release says. From a quote of the statement in the BBC:

"The iPhones with broken glass that we have analysed to date show that in all cases the glass cracked due to an external force that was applied to the iPhone."

Of course, it is more fun to blame the Eveel Apple and accuse them of being disingenuous, than to actually read what they said.

        -dZ.

Re:External Forces = Pressure

[gnick]

I know little about these specific explosions, but modern high-density batteries pack a heckuva lotta energy into a tiny package. If mechanical damage causes an electrical cell-short, you can expect that energy release to be pretty dramatic. If not an explosion, certainly a rapid heat discharge. That's tough to design around unless you just make the thing bigger and heavier to withstand the pressures exerted by the worst-case ass-press.

Re:external forces + high numbers = problem

[Registered Coward v2]

Sure, it may be "external forces" like accidently dropped phones, high- or low humidities or temperatures, or what-not, but if the iPhone explosion rate is higher than competitive phones, you have to ask yourself why iPhones are so fragile.

Come on Apple, find the cause and unless it's customers deliberately abusing their phones, fix it.

Let's see - single digit reports, all in one country; hardly enough data to determine anything, other than a few screens broke in France. No evidences of "explosions" Apple should certainly look into it, but at this point it's hard to tell what is wrong or who's fault it is. Until Apple gets the phones, pulls them apart and see's what happened everyone, including Apple, is guessing.

If it is an iPhone problem, I wonder why the issue is so localized; I'd expect a design flaw to show up more often and more evenly spread over a production run.

Personally, my experience with Apple addressing issues that point to design flaws is good - I've had 2 MB's keyboards replaced, free of charge with 1 day turnaround, due to cracking issues. One was way out of warranty, yet they fixed it for free.

Re:External Forces = Pressure

[Sandbags]

Have you see the pics? These phones have severely cracked screens, but 90% of the glass is still there... This is not exactly an "explosion" though the imact in a few cases caused the LiIon battery pack to outgas or "pop"

In every case reviewed thus far however, "external pressure" clearly indicated the force was a twisting or bending, or an impact on the glass itself pushing in. The glass is not boken outwards, so any glass discharged from the device, per the evidence presented, was likely shot up from the impact with ground, or a couple of kids were wrestling over the device and bent it in such a was to send glass shards outward.

NO evidence of the battery, or the glass itself, being a fault has been shown in any of these cases. Though little is public information, Apple has libberously documented each suspected case for a device returned to them for examination, and it;s consistant evidence.