Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Go work doing warranty computer repair for a while... You'll become a cynic too. I've seen more than my fair share of laptops that just "suddenly stopped working" due to apparent spontaneous creation of red wine or cola within the case. The customers will go out of their way to clean the outside of the case, hoping that we won't notice the sticky residue that's coating the guts of the computer. There are many cases of cracked screens (both laptops and phones) that the customer legitimately did not see happen - but those are far more likely to be cases where the screen got cracked due to poor handling than due to manufacturing defects.
And Apple does occasionally own up to their (and their suppliers') mistakes, when there's a significant statistical outlier in terms of failures. Batteries, graphics chips, power supplies, power adapters... I even remember my parents' 15" Apple CRT being covered by an extended warranty in about 1995 because it had a tendency to start flickering yellow. But they don't do that every time somebody on the Internet makes a fuss - whether legitimate or not. Apple customers are ridiculously picky. Like those who complained about the mold lines on the G4 Cube's plastic. Or about misalignment of a laptop case by less than a millimeter. Or a hard drive that clicks slightly differently from what customers are used to hearing (which, admittedly can sometimes be a sign of failure, but can also just be the way it was designed).