Apple accused of lowering cone of silence over iPod flame out Apple has been accused of attempting to gag a traumatised iPod user, whose player burst into flames and tried to go into orbit. According to The Times, Ken Stanborough, 47, from Liverpool, complained to the firm after his daughter's iPod self-combusted shortly after being dropped. “It made a hissing noise,” Stanborough said …
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The item has to be fit for purpose. This includes it remaining safe if damaged. If you dropped it then put it straight into your pocket, the resulting nasty injury would have the apple lawyers falling over themselved to offer more than just a refund.
Seems in their haste to get the gag order in, they failed to realised that a good story would get far more press and money for the owner.
Idiots.
How are people able to form an extreme opinion after a few paragraphs of hear-say. Firstly, he chucked the iPod on the floor. Never a good idea. Frankly, I find the suggestion that his iPod could fly ten ' in the air rather laughable, but until I get proof I'll take it for what it is: hearsay.
I never fail to be surpised by the malleability of the great reading public. A story surfaces about some bloke who has one out of millions upon millions of devices go up in smoke, and already people are ready to chuck out their devices. Go and live in a cave, because every device may develop defects.
If you try to wangle a NDA out of a customer who's item could have burned/maimed/disfigured/killed them, you will invairiably make sure it hits the headlines.
Never make an enemy of a severely pissed off customer, it never gets your Company anywhere. Samsung/Digicare, I'm looking at you.....
A stitch in time as they say.........
Conversely, when a Company does have a fantastic returns policy (hello LG) the most they can hope for is a bit of personal recommendation.....
Check the safety record for Li-Ion on the model airplane sites, and then consider the hundreds of pounds of them in a vehicle crash. Tehre are special training courses for emergency responders to a hybrid vehicle call, especially in the wet. Everone knows tha power of leaking gasoline, but few consider the results of other substances with power densities approaching that of petroleum products.
Isn't this the standard Apple modus operandi, operandum, whatever? Didn't Wil Wheaton report signing an NDA when he had an Apple laptop replaced some years ago?
I guess the thinking is that people will agree so they don't lose their investment, but criminy, it does explain the old "you never hear about (insert problem widely aflicting Dell/HP/Gateway) with an Apple" thing.
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As stated above check model aircraft forums (I have two electric helis, a small micro and 450 size) for what happens to damaged batteries. The safety-sheet you get with your battery states all kinds of interesting things among them:
1. If involved in a crash, even if not visibly damaged, dispose of safely (separate set of instructions)
2. Always charge in non-flammable (preferably fireproof) container.
Then there's of course the "do not short-circuit", especially since these batteries do not have current limiters, they just state that safe current is for example 25C (25xcapasity, for 1200mAh cell that would be 30A !!) continuous and 30C burst and user is responsible for making sure these limits are not exceeded (which would cause damage to the battery possibly leading to fire).
These batteries burn very violently and the ipod case is sealed pretty tight, so it's not inconceivable that there would be "explosion" as the case ruptures from the burning gases.
These batteries have fearsome energy densities and people keep wanting even more dense batteries, I wonder if they ever top to think about these things...
I know the risks and accept them, I also have continued to use a battery pack after crash since it was not (visibly) physically damaged (I do keep a *close* eye on it everytime I charge it though...) and know that this is an increased risk.
From article: "According to _The Times_, Ken Stanborough, 47, *.from Liverpool*" [emphasis mine].
They'd have to have known this level of publicity would happen (if not in this particular case, then in another), which kind of makes me suspect that such a contract is enforceable over there, due to the large quantity of lawyers (sorry, sorry, would it be solicitors or barristers?) who are no doubt descending on Mr. Stanborough's residence as we type if it is not. Anyway, at least under US jurisdiction, the family'd be much better off taking this route - publicize, then if you don't get offers of huge (enough) compensation, ask a court for massive punitive damages.
As far as actual liability is concerned, I'd need to see a lot more data than this article contains. I, too, think a drop from a reasonable height (1-2m, between waist and eye level) should be considered part of design spec. If I were a product safety bureaucrat, (CPSC here in the States), I'd be looking long and hard given these reports. OTOH, there seem to be (maybe) a few dozen out of however many millions of iPods sold. So, looks like more data are needed.
(Must be an American word that.)
We don't know what model ipod was involved- nor does it matter. The story mentions 2 other pyropods - wow - it doesn't say what models they were either.
3 ipods out of 160,000,000.
Wouldn't it be great if cars had a failure rate that high? or aircraft? or gas boilers? or people?
This kind of crap used to be pretty much standard pre-internet. Any lawsuit settled out of court invariably had a "STFU" agreement in it. I sued an HMO once for almost killing my spouse through sheer neglect and incompetence, we "won", they paid us (not very much, either) and as part of the settlement we had to agree never to tell anyone what a bunch of murderous, incompetent morons they were (and still are).
Emergency Locator Beacons in aircraft used to use Lithium cells - more than a few of them spontaneously combusted and burned some very nice aircraft right to the ground. Nowadays there are no Li cells in ELT beacons - but one or two incidents of transport aircraft CARRYING parcels of these batteries have occurred - and now there are regulations for airfreight regarding numbers and packing - we are talking big airplanes here, 7X7 stuff having onboard in flight fires from these things.
Bear in mind that americans aren't very bright. They don't differentiate between efficiency and mania. This insane attitude towards victims of faulty products smacks of the way scientologists behave. The scientology cult has been involved in business training scams before and have even sold MS software.
Scientology probably does explain the sad cult like drones obeying their cancerous master, either that or they're badly written henchmen characters in a bond flick.
The thing is this isn't the "failure rate" of the iPod... these are the *dangerous* failures. The actual failure rates for the iPod range are much much higher, probably not excessive for a modern consumer device but that's another debate entirely.
The real issue here IMO isn't the failures themselves but Apple's (alleged) responses to them - consumer electronics have been recalled in the past because they *might* catch fire - we have several documented cases of this happening to iPods now and Apple's response is still to adopt the ostrich position and point the lawyers at anyone who wants to do otherwise. As to those who blame the customer, yes they dropped it but I would expect a high quality device to survive such a drop - at worst I would expect it to merely stop working. Do you seriously expect that it should be the norm to expect a dropped MP3 player to catch fire?
But two, his daughter dropped in initially then on his own admission he 'hurled' it out the back door which constitutes the second abuse. Everyone is assuming that the first drop caused the 'explosion' which was subsequent to the 'hurl'. I think we need very much more info before rushing to judgement here.
Mines the one with the lethal bottle of coke and Mentos in it. In separate pockets, I'm no dolt.
Many years ago I witnessed an exploding electrolytic capacitor go straight through the ceiling of the workshop, it would have gone a lot farther than 10 feet if the ceiling had not been in the way. The "explosion" was caused by the capacitor "gassing" internally until the pressure blew the aluminium can off.
With the ipod all the battery had to do was produce gas pressurising the ipod casing until it ruptured turning the ipod into an irocket.
I would like to sincerely apologize to the United Kingdom, British Citizens, and Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith herewith:
As common citizen of the former Colonies of the Americas, I extend my humble apologies for the export to your lands of the common malady of our lands, THE JOY OF VICTIMHOOD. Our people find, nay, SEEK OUT opportunities to become victims so that we may blame our misfortunes and frailties on others, that we may feel better about ourselves. It is with great sorrow to find that this PLAGUE has made it to your shores. Alas, that the Island's populace is not immune to such tomfoolery! We humbly pray your forgiveness.
Note: Though I am an American Citizen, I have dear respect for the Queen of England. This was meant in no way to impair or diminish Her image.
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