Apple blueprints warranty Big Brother
Apple has filed a patent application for a technology that could detect, time-stamp, and remember "whether consumer abuse has occurred in an electronic device." Apple's many patent filings usually focus on technologies that could benefit consumers. This one is aimed directly at benefitting Apple itself. The filing, "Consumer …
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How's this any different?
Plenty of electrical devices have stickers that say "warranty void if seal is broken". Why is it worse if Apple do this with some sensors rather than stickers?
Prior art?
My Dell workstation does this (or something similar). I know because the switch failed and the bloody thing beeped and turned the fans on to "emergency take off power" each time the box was switched on. In the end a helpful man in a call centre advised me to take the cover off and fiddle with the connector.
To be fair
If you're that much of an alpha geek you shouldn't be crying back to the manufacturer asking them to fix it under warranty, you should be soldering or reflashing stuff...
as allways, good and bad :)
Tampering with a radio transmitter, and a mobile phone is one, has it's problems. Your reception may increase but your neighbours might be rioting with pitchforks and torches at your door when your pimped up phone or WiFi interferes with their TV reception.
There is a reason why one needs a Ham Radio License to build antennas and radios.
At least the producer of the modified device can clearly deny any liability if it can be proofed that the customer did the modifications.
With current liability laws, disabling a modified radio transmitter may be needed to protect the producer from his customers DIY skills.
OTOH, if I own it, I want to do with it what I want.
Then there is warranty, can I proof that it is the manufacturers fault or can the manufacturer proof that it was mine?
Was the keyboard faulty when delivered or was it the tiny drop of liquid which might have hit the keyboard when I spilled that supersize Coke over the laptop while surfing the web at that burger bar?
Hmm
Disabling something I bought and paid for because I opened it up for a quick butcher's inside sounds a lot like criminal damage to me.
hold your horses
Firstly, the real alpha geeks don't use Apple products.
Secondly, the tinkering and tampering is likely to void the warranty, not disable the product. It's really no different to the tinkerer than breaking the paper sticker over a vital screw that voids the warranty when you open up your toaster (or whatever). If you fancy fcuking about with the insides then you have to accept that it will void the warranty; not disable the device (you're free to do that yourself).
So, er, where's the story?
@Antidisestablishmentarianist
"It's called choice. So anyone who buys their stuff and complains can shut it."
So you're banning us from suggesting ways in which Apple products could be improved (like having removable batteries)? You're kidding, right? Or have I just fallen for an outrageous troll...
Oh Come On
You can see why they wouldn't want to support/fix under warranty a device that had been dissembled by a pleb, sorry, alpha-geek. And you say it "COULD be employed in such a way as to disable a device".
Does "tampering" include ...
... loading and running of unauthorised apps?
Re: Not very new
Indeed, and apparently all these PC cases et al. with intrusion detection have been a figment of my imagination, too.
Alpha geeks think little of warranties, anyway.
yawn
so apple makes devices for sheep, big deal. why don't you people wake up and realize that some people go orgasmic at being shafted? live and let live.
on a serious note
Temp guage ??
what about all those new iphones which are cooking themselves !
Not really a bother. Only one question though...
What the heck happens if one of those prized sensors fails along with something else? This is my one and only concern. Pending that scenario occurs, then said consumer is screwed and has to "buy" a new piece of hardware because a faulty sensor "lied". I'm all for keeping people from fiddling with things they shouldn't, but can we go with something a little more simple and fail proof please?
Heat conductive / Electrically inert Lucite
Will keep kit from overheating, keep things from shorting out even if dunked in water, and ensures best survivability when / if dropped. Has added "benefit" that you _can't_ take it apart. This is already very common in low manufacturing cost items (did not say "low _retail_ cost"). And if it "saves" money on warranties, should be a done deal.
Sorted! Icon, because it should be able take one of those, now. :)
But it's a computer
Computers were made to be upgraded so the warranty isn't void if you do so. That is the difference between computers and consumer electronics.
Computers are also typically bought by tech-savy people as nobody not able to program would ever get the idea of buying a computer, so this is typically OK.
Suprised no one else has said...
This is one patent Apple is welcome to
Apple Warranty.
From 1992 onwards I bougth sth. like half a dozen Apple Computers. Only one ever gave me hardware trouble. Apple replaced the motherboard free of charge three times, of which two times well outside the warranty. The 4th motherboard still does it's job eight years later, thank you very much. The thing was used in production until last fall.
Hardware reliability and customer friendly behaviour beyond what would be expected is my reason to buy apple computers - that and the experience (in the late eighties and early nineties, admitted) of having two PC-clones fail shortly after the warranty ended and getting not even sth. like "tough luck" from the vendor - one of them broke down literally on the day after the warranty expired.
So, if you don't like apple, don't by apple - but ask the man who owns one.
Oh, and a word to apple: don't seal your gear: back in the day a friend switched to apple after opening my performa 630 and seeing the diecast frame ...
Prior art
A few years ago I had a Compaq computer that had a microwsitch that wold record in the system BIOS if, and when the case lid was removed. But then again, as long as Apple doesn't include notes of any company doing this before, the Patent will no doubt be granted.
Maybe it's the NY salsa ...
Just stick it in the microwave #
By Robert Forsyth Posted Friday 7th August 2009 08:52 GMT
That does not seem to be covered by the patent.
-------------------------
It still tasted funny. Am I doing something wrong ?
Intel started it
Back in the good ol' days, computers were REAL computers. If you wanted to examine the registers in your CPU, you could find the board with them on and probe around with a 'scope to your hearts content.
Then corporate megalomaniac killjoys Intel decided to target us alpha-geeks by making everything so tiny you couldn't even *see* the vacuum tubes any more, and sealing the whole processor inside an "integrated circuit". Paranoid Secrecy Capsule more like - what are they afraid we'll find out?
Then they did it with storage: they did away with magnetic core memory to stop you checking that no-one had been stealing your bits. And the other day, I took all the platters out of my hard disk just, you know, to give them a polish, and the bastards made sure it "failed" when I put it back together. I *know* they made it break on purpose, just to scam an eye-watering £30 out of me for a replacement.
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