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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.'"
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.
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.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
And I would like to blame the Inquirer for blaming Apple for blaming the customers.
Still plenty of blame to go around...
Of course you shouldn't expect it not to break. But an explosion? That's unacceptable.
Turns out the battery is susceptible to exposition to Reality Distortion Fields in excess of 750 milliJobs
Agreed. My wife works at an Apple retail store. You wouldn't believe the number of people who get their phone wet, and then deny doing so. A guy brought his 12 year old daughters phone into the store (why a 12 year old needs an iPhone is a different story all together). This phone obviously had water-damage, but the father denied it till the end...even after my wife managed to get the daughter to fess up after asking her a few questions. Even though the daughter admitted to dropping her phone in a vat of gatorade, the father still believed that this was not their problem and insisted that this was a hardware fault. In another case, a woman was talking on her phone in front of the store....in the rain. After taking it in, my wife looked at it and informed her of the obvious water damage. This lady completely denied ever having this phone come into contact with water, even after my wife stated that she just saw her using it in the rain. This lady stormed out of the store, and immediately called someone on the phone....while standing in the rain again. A guy I work with dropped his phone in the ocean and it immediately quit working. He made an appointment, went to the store, and was completely honest about what happened with the sales rep (not my wife). They comped his replacement phone for him. Moral of the story is, if you're honest and polite, you may get more help than if you go into the store and whine, complain, lie, and curse at the top of your lungs, which is probably happening in most of these exploding battery scenarios.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
For apple products, when the mantra is "It just works" ... and the software is built on a very small number of in-house designed products, it shouldn't be the customer's fault.
Take windows (or linux) - if you can't get something to work correctly, or the wrong drivers/settings fry your hard drive from parking the head incorrectly (or whatever), then you can blame the customer. But when apple designs the product, from start to finish, it should very rarely be the customer's fault, especially when in normal usage.
Normal usage, you ask? In my world, normal usage means occasionally (very infrequently) leaving a laptop on inside a case, and expecting it *not* to fry because of poor thermal design. It also involves getting the occasional splash of liquid on my gadgets. And, you know, keeping my phone in my pants, where it will heat up if it isn't designed properly.
Normal usage is *not* exploding batteries, exceptionally short lived LCDs or GPUs that don't live long unless the fan is on full speed, all the time. And when these thing occur, I expect (and have always received) good support from my hardware vendor.
And no, I do not buy apple. Sure, they have great warranty service... if you buy the applecare. But I can get that sort of extended warranty from almost any vendor - The difference? Those vendors don't have retail locations like apple.
Quartz Extreme and Core Image. Are there any other real reasons to spend all that money on generic hardware?
This lady completely denied ever having this phone come into contact with water, even after my wife stated that she just saw her using it in the rain.
That sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Maybe Apple world is full of shiny, happy people and it never rains there; in my book, if you can't use a phone just because it happens to be raining, it's defective.
...for being a complete dick. Not everyone who owns an Apple product is a black-shirted zealot, and it's obnoxious to paint all of a company's customers with such a broad brush. Nick is just feeding the trolls by echoing the same stupid tropes that unoriginal people endlessly repeat in forums and comment sections all over the web.
A decent writer - editorial or otherwise - should discuss the merits and facts of the situation without bringing in useless and alienating invective. He may get a few yuks from the dumb crowd and incite a colorful flame war in the comment section, but he certainly won't gain any deep or lasting respect as a journalist. But I suppose this is just a temporary thing until he gets a job he actually cares about or finishes that sci-fi novel he's been working on.
Oh, now look, I'm doing it too. Dammit!
-- thinkyhead software and media
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.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
I actually see the Sony-battery recall as being a reason to believe Apple on this one. With the Sony recall, they realized that there was a problem with their batteries; they were worried that it was going to bite them in the ass; and they issued a recall. That's responsible to the public and to the stock-holders. In this case, they looked into it and decided that there was no recall necessary. The fact that they issued a massively expensive recall before and aren't doing the same thing now tells me that they believe what they're saying.
Note: I'm not an Apple fanboi. To my knowledge, I do not nor have I ever owned an Apple product.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
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.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Precisely.
I wonder what explanation Apple's engineers have for the laptops that spontaneously smoked & sizzled? I think it's clear the flaw lies in the Lithium battery not the user, and Apple should simply SAY that rather than deny it. Like so: "Dell recently started it's corporate blog called dellone2one.com. One of posts is dedicated to Dell's infamous "flaming notebook" from Osaka. Dell thinks that it was a fault in a lithium ion battery cell, which caused laptop to burn.
"Dell's engineering teams are working with the Consumer Product Safety Commission and a third-party failure analysis lab to determine the root cause of this failure and to ensure we take all appropriate measures to help prevent a recurrence", says post. LINK: http://laptoping.com/wp-content/flaming_laptop.jpg LINK: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/laptops/sony-beancounters-tremble-as-own-vaio-batteries-come-home-to-roost-208031.php LINK: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/laptops/gizmodo-reader-witnesses-ibm-laptop-catch-fire-at-lax-201115.php
I'm glad all my laptops use NiMH, since it's been around quite a big longer (almost 20 years) and the bugs have been removed. I'm sure Lithium batteries will be a great product to own... circa 2020.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall