Apple Hit With Class Action Suit Over Lack of Dust Filters In Macbook, iMac (9to5mac.com)

AmiMoJo shares a report from 9to5Mac: Apple is facing a new class action lawsuit claiming that it sells select iMac and MacBook models without needed dust filters. In turn, this causes issues such as display imprecations, slowing performance, and more, the lawsuit alleges. The iMac and MacBook lawsuit is being brought forward by law firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, which is a class action litigation firm that has gone after Apple before. Most notably, the firm won the infamous $450 million ebooks pricing case against Apple. Since then, Hagens Berman has levied other suits at Apple, including one regarding the performance throttling of iPhones. Hagens Berman's latest lawsuit reads in part: "iMac and MacBook owners have reported dark smudges and spots on the interior of the screens of their desktop computers as well as excessive slowness and break downs of their computers related to the lack of filter on Apple computers. The computer intakes air to cool its components, but with no filter, dust gets trapped inside. This affects the screen and logic board of the computer, leading to dust stuck behind the screen and gummed up motherboards, causing the computer to run slow and/or overheat."

Hagens Berman says "Apple refuses to remedy the defect," instead forcing affected customers to pay "more than $500 to fix this screen defect, and even more if they wish to replace parts integral to the computer's sped and performance." "We believe Apple owes it to the purchasers of these premium, high-end computers to pay for the widespread defect, and we seek to represent iMac owners to recover their losses in costs to repair this defect, or for their loss of use of their computer."

Comments

Ummm

[nehumanuscrede]

I don't believe any of the laptops, tablets or even desktops I've ever owned have come with filter systems on the intakes.

Re:Ummm

[Anonymous Coward]

Highly marketable, average to underwhelming tech. The only reason they can charge the prices they do is because of the brand name and fashion image they present. For the amount they charge for the damn things there should be a hepa filter on it. I'm sure apple's marketing department could even find some way to spin it as the laptop that cleans the air around you as you work, and charge another couple hundred dollars more for a filter that costs a couple bucks plus the replacements every few months.

Apple has also made the other compromise of making their laptops so thin with such inadequate passive cooling that the fans probably have to run at near full throttle the entire time they are turned on to even pass enough air though the piss-ant heat sink to keep the things from going thermonuclear. Compare that to the chunky by apple standards thinkpad that I am typing this on right now which barely ever turns its fan on for typical desktop productivity work. It's not until you load up some bloated shitty as web page like facebook or actually do something compute intensive that the fan begins to spin up.

No experience.

[Jfetjunky]

Obviously a complaint from someone with no experience on the matter. I work for a large electronics company. We used to sell equipment with filters for tha fans. Guess what? They plug up faster and cause the equipment to fail sooner than if it was there or not.
Doesn't matter that they were serviceable/replaceable. Doesn't matter we talked about it in the manual. That's just the way it is.

Re: There is a real engineering problem here

[evanh]

It's not either of those. Consumers never wanted it, reviewers never wanted it. It will impact not just the price tag but ergonomics, style, and weight. Not to mention flattening the battery faster too.

It has always been the domain of larger/heavier products. Suing over this is just another round of asshole mentality again. There's no shortage of that these days.

Re:It's a hidden feature

[MightyYar]

Animal people are usually in denial about how nasty their house is. Sure, they need special vacuum cleaners and their laptops overheat from getting clogged up with the same stuff they breath. Sure, you can smell animals when you walk in. But it's the crappy laptop, or the crappy vacuum cleaner's fault.

Re:It's a hidden feature

[fluffernutter]

So people with Apple products aren't allowed to have animals? Just because those environments don't suit you snowflake, it doesn't mean that they aren't within the range of cleanliness of the average home that a laptop may need to work in.