Submitted by It seems Apple is on a roller coaster ride this week, going from bad news to good news, back to bad news again. A local television station from Seattle, US, forced the Consumer Product Safety Commission via the Freedom Of Information Act to hand over an 800-page report about fire hazards posed by Apple’s iPod music players. Experts on consumer safety agree that it’s time Apple makes public statements about the fire hazards posed by iPods.
KIRO 7 Consumer Investigator Amy Clancy worked for 7 months to try and get her hands on the 800-page report by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. She used the Freedom Of Information Act, but Apple’s lawyers kept on filing exemption after exemption, apparently trying to prevent the report from going public. The report shows in great detail several incident where iPods burst into flames and smoke, at times burning owners.
The cases themselves aren’t the ones where owners put iPods in ovens or left them in cars. They range from people going on a run with an iPod shuffle around their necks getting burnt, to people whose iPod triggered the smoke alarms in their house. Some of the iPods were charging, some of them weren’t; some of the iPods were older models, some new. The problems aren’t limited to the United States – in Japan, the government issued a warning about overheating and sparking iPod Nanos.
One of the young victims’ mother, Tami Mooney, contacted Apple about the burn marks her daughter had gotten after picking up her iPod, but Apple told her it was an isolated incident. She also asked for information on possible other cases, but Apple told her that she “wouldn’t be able to have access to it.”
“I was so frustrated because frankly, they didn’t care. They didn’t care that my child was burned. They didn’t care about the possibilities that other children were burned,” Mooney told Clancy, “I asked them, has this been happening? Is this new? And they said, we haven’t heard of this one yet.” The federal records now show that Apple was already fully aware of the problems by then.
KIRO 7 talked to Gordon Damant, a fire scientist and 30-year California state regulator, and he believes the source of the problems is probably the lithium-ion batteries in iPods. This is a totally reasonable assumption, as computer manufacturers from all walks of life have experienced massive recalls of lithium-ion batteries due to overheating and fire issues.
Despite all this, the Consumer Product Safety Commission is not issuing a recall of iPods in the same way laptop batteries were massively recalled not too long ago. The Commission claims that since 175 million iPods have been sold, “the number of incidents is extremely small in relation to the number of products produced, making the risk of injury very low”. While this is a sound statistical reasoning, I’m sure you’d feel differently if you were a victim yourself.
Damant disagrees with CPSC’s assessment. “When is enough, enough?” he said, “Looking at [the report], it would clearly seem to me that the potential is there for them to do something because, in the past, they’ve negotiated recalls with very much less information than [this report].” Several other consumer safety experts agree that the public should at least be made aware of the problems.
The CPSC is still on this case, and has ordered Apple to provide any possible future information about these problems, so that the Commission can “assess any new information concerning this product to determine if action should be taken to protect the public”.
Additionally, the CPSC states that one of the reasons they’re not undertaking action right now is because the current generation of iPod uses a bettery which “has not been shown to have similar problems” – Apple, however, refused to comment on when these “current generation” batteries started being used. The KRIO 7 article then details a case of a lawsuit in Cincinnati where an iPod Touch exploded and caught fire in someone’s pocket. It is claimed the victim suffered 2nd degree burns, and that the iPod was turned off. This iPod Touch was “current generation” at the time of the CPSC report.
With the iPod now being such a successful device, cases like this will end up under a microscope, just like the cases of batteries catching fire in Nokia telephones – and those turned out to be after-market, non-Nokia approved batteries. I don’t think Apple (or any manufacturer for that matter) can really prevent cases like this, but Apple’s attempts to prevent the report from going public are of course despicable and an indication that something is indeed going on.
At the time of my posting, the article indicated there was one comment on the article; however, when I went to the comment page, it said “There are no comments attached to this story.” There appears to be some internal inconsistency with the software and/or underlying database.
I noticed the same thing on an older article, but I couldn’t report it immediately.
When I returned later, everything was fine, because people posted some comments.
The cache isn’t always live with regards to moderation. But it’s never far behind.
Edited 2009-07-23 19:53 UTC
Maybe it’s just me, but I see Apple in the news for dangerous products far more often than other computer companies. I’ve never heard of Dell, HP, or Gateway laptops burning people or catching fire, nor have I seen mention of Zune injuries, but every new generation of Apple portable devices comes with a new generation of Apple-batteries-explode stories.
Is this really an almost Apple-only problem?
How many people own Zunes compared to iPods?
There was once a case of some sony batteries that were catching fire. I remember mostly only hearing about dell but I think it may have been other vendors laptops as well that were using these sony batteries.
https://www.dellbatteryprogram.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuNSzs679Sw
All the same, it does seem like we hear about Apple’s defects more. I own a powerbook and it has broken more than my PC laptops (toshiba satellite and vaio). The vaio has never had a problem, the satellite has one defect where when you pick it up from the front with the display open the case will flex a little and the video card will pop loose just enough to where the laptop will not function unless you remove the keyboard and push the card all the way back in. My power book has had multiple drive failures, the track pad has been buggy (loss of sensitivity and cursor jumping around screen) for a long time and lately barely works. I’ve had multiple power adapters for it. The last one I replaced because it would get so hot after being plugged in for about an hour that you could smell burning and the power brick would be burning hot.
— EDIT —
I have 2 ipods, nano (1st gen) and an ipod touch (2nd gen) that haven’t been a problem. My wife’s 2nd gen nano though started having issues with the menu wheel not to long after we bought it. It still works but you have to forcefully push on it to make it select menu items.
Edited 2009-07-22 19:47 UTC
Apple gets special treatment from the FCC / ATT and everyone else. They don’t have to abide by the same rules.
Oh how poilitely you try to defend Apple. If it was Microsoft XBOX Ring of Death, I am sure most MS haters would be shouting their lungs off against MS.
This is really more of a Lithium Ion problem than an iPod problem. It’s only happening in iPods so much because there are so many iPods. The big question for me is whether Lithium Ion batteries are inherently prone to overheating and catching fire or is this a case of poorly-manufactured batteries?
Now, if the iPods in question tended to have batteries similar in manufacture, and other devices that don’t catch fire use other batteries, then there’s certainly a case to be made for an investigation into what makes these particular batteries bad. But if it’s just random chance, spanning the product line, with batteries from various sources, then there’s not much we can do except drop Lithium Ion.
Only problem is, Lithium Ion batteries are really the only game in town. Say goodbye to pretty much every modern gadget in the world if you go back to older battery tech. Looking at the likelihood of a Lithium Ion battery actually burning me, and the benefits of the gadgets I use, I’ll take my chances.
I would like to know what the warning signs are, though. As an informed consumer, I should know that if my phone feels extra hot for a couple of hours, I might not want to put it into my pants pocket. Or if it starts to smoke, I should stop charging it.
Ever hear of something called common sense? What you describe is the warning on packages of peanuts that say “May contain peanuts”….I for one certainly hope the package does.
The problem is poorly designed circuitry, not LiIon technology.
This comment on Ars basically sums up how I feel about this:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/07/flaming-ipod-complaints-r…
Agreed.
It is interesting and significant that the Apple lawyers filed multiple extensions to prevent the documentation from getting into the hands of news reporters.
What other electronics company goes to such questionable lengths to cover-up a dangerous problem with their products?
Edited 2009-07-22 21:10 UTC
Did anyone else find it humorous to see that Google Ads “appropriately” places various iPod commercials at the bottom of the OSAlert “read more” page for this article? It’s almost like: “iPods may severely burn you… BUY ONE NOW! Now with fire-enhancing design packaging.”
I’m downright shocked by learning about this type of misconduct by Apple Computer, Inc. It’s sickening.
I usually am more ‘pro-Apple’ but I would never claim to expect such a thing from Microsoft (I’m actually truly impressed by their hardware department). The truth of the matter now is that as far as I know, Microsoft has never been guilty of any such coverup behavior and Apple, obvously, is. Sad!
Glad you finally got rescued from that desert island you’d been stranded on since 1996.
Of course it is.
Edited 2009-07-22 22:39 UTC
The answer there is every company that wants to make a profit.
Other than Apple, name one.
Dell, Toshiba, HP, Sony etc..they all hid the exploding battery issue until the Media got a hold of it. The list would be much shorter for companies that actually acted responsibly, though I can’t think of any for that list sadly.
Actively hiding an issue and not mentioning it have very different ethical implications. Actively hiding an issue in a sinister manner is even more damning.
So, are you claiming that Dell, Toshiba, HP and Sony filed “exemption after exemption” with the Consumer Product Safety Commission to prevent the public from learning of the problem, as did Apple?
Are you also claiming that Dell, Toshiba, HP and Sony discredited online those who attempt to warn others of the problem, as did Apple?
I have no idea if any of them filed exemptions or not. The fact is they all hid it like Apple did with this. I am not defending Apple at all, I am just saying that businesses do this type of crap all the time. I don;t agree with it, but sadly, it happens and they all do it. It is just a matter of who gets caught.
No. Others don’t hide dangerous problems anywhere near to the extent that Apple did. Apple actively petitioned the CPSC to prevent information from getting to the public. Apple also actively discredited online those who tried to warn others of the dangerous problem.
These acts are particularly sinister. I know of no other company that has gone to such devious lengths.
In the case of Apple filing multiple exemptions with the CPSC, it is not a matter of who gets caught, as those exemption filings are public record.
So, I ask again:
1. Are you claiming that Dell, Toshiba, HP and Sony is as despicable as Apple, by filing “exemption after exemption” with the Consumer Product Safety Commission to prevent the public from learning of a dangerous problem, as did Apple?
2. Are you also claiming that Dell, Toshiba, HP and Sony is as despicable as Apple, by discredited online those who attempt to warn others of a dangerous problem, as did Apple?
different industries,
As P&G provide different product related to health,
it is very risky to let a toxic product in the wild, and
short term toxicity is easier to test and proof
(long term effects on the other hand are impossible to do),
and accident are bound to happen but recall of the batch is the norm
in pharmaceutics.
Apple on the other hand try to use edgy hardware technology
( which is bound to be risky ), add to that that it depend on the
batch of production, combination of material and condition of use,
then you have an impossible test case, plus initiating a recall is costy
(even for Apple ), so considering the occurences and the impact
of the incident the only thing we will have is another restriction on
portable music player on the airplane.
LiIon/LiPoly is a safe technology as long as you don’t buy the cheapest crap (which apple loves to do) and stick to the manufacturers datasheet (which i highly doubt apple is doing)
ignoring this 2 rules can give you some nice fireworks
I agree they failed miserably in this case, but if they were successful in that regard ( which I believe they are ) they would be called cutting edge. Instead they should track which batch of ipod nano got defect initiate a recall on faulty batch and investigate the subcontrator.
It’s not a defect, it’s a feature*
Use it to help reduce heating costs in the winter, light your charcoal grill, or to deter theft.
*One time use only. May make iPod inoperable.
…does some sort of cartoon with one of the guys running around crazy with his pants on fire.
…for faulty products? Absolutely. Should Apple compensate anyone injured by a faulty product? Absolutely. Should Apple recall all iPods because some have overheating battery issues? Apple should recall any product deemed by the INDEPENDENT overseer to have a big enough problem to warranty a recall – JUST LIKE ANY OTHER COMPANY HAS TO. Should Apple have to make a public statement about overheating battery issues? Again, if the INDEPENDENT overseer believes the issue is large enough to warrant such an announcement then yes – JUST LIKE WITH ANY OTHER COMPANY.
There are plenty of cases of products with issues, and of coverups, and not just in the IT industry. The following are some examples of issues I’ve personally seen, and for which I know of no product recalls or announcements by the manufacturers.
I have and use daily a set of Oricom cordless phones in my house. On an extended phone call they heat up dramatically around the battery compartment – to the point where they are just too hot to hold. One of the battery covers is slightly buckled from the heat even. I can’t be bothered replacing them because those long calls only happen occasionally and we have learned to swap handsets when they start getting too hot to handle.
Recently while on holidays we visited some of my wife’s cousins who have an Xbox 360 that has warped its case and caused the laminate on the cabinet that houses it to bubble. I know nothing of the internals of the 360 so have no idea how this could happen, but I have seen the results. I don’t know if this is a known issue with them and frankly don’t care – and my wife’s cousin doesn’t seem to care either.
A few months ago a work colleague had to shut his (Dell) laptop down and wait nearly 10 minutes before he could unplug a USB memory stick that was way too hot to handle. After the incident his only comment was that he now knows not to leave it plugged in so long. I can’t even remember the brand of the memory stick because some people only major on the majors.
There are examples of these sorts of things everywhere – vehicles that have known issues that aren’t recalled because the percentage of them affected by the problem is too low – every day household appliances that have defects that aren’t considered life threatening and again, percentages very low, so nothing is done about them, and of course MP3 players and laptops that have overheating issues with batteries. In our household we have an original 5Gb iPod, two Gen III iPods, two iPhone 3G’s and one of the mini-clip type Shuffle’s, none of which have ever exhibited any battery overheating problems. My PowerBook’s battery gets hot if I use it in a manner that restricts airflow to it, but none of the iBooks we’ve owned have had any issues.
I think we hear more about the Apple issues because Apple hating with cheerleaders like Thom seems to have become a sport following the resurgence of the company after Jobs’ return – something we just don’t see for other vendors.
Should Apple’s lawyers file “exemption after exemption” with the Consumer Product Safety Commission to prevent the public from learning of the problem?
Should Apple discredit online those who attempt to warn others of the problem?
Then I guess the following people are Apple hating cheerleaders too:
– Jacqui Cheng at Ars
– Aidan Malley at AppleInsider
– Eric Slivka at MacRumors
…and so on. Yup, makes total sense. mrhasbean, if you have problems with negative Apple news, then please stick to MacDailyNews for your daily dose.
I’ve seen a lot here, but calling you an Apple Hater, is a new top (or low – whatever).
Since Thom regularly talks about how he uses Macs for daily work, I sincerely doubt he is an Apple hater. Get a grip, relax, take a vacation..you are getting bent out of shape and making things up. Just remember the mantra “No smoking crack before posting on OSAlert”
Whahahaha… the idea of Thom as “Apple hater”… thanks for the great joke for me to wake up to! It’s funny how in just one article, you manage to defend an “INDEPENDENT overseer”, while also attacking a reporter whom I find to often remain quite neutral (“independent”) even on topics he is openly in favor of. There aren’t many “bad Apple” articles on OS News, but those that are, I think are justified.
Risk psychology among others asserts that we see something as “less of a risk” if accidents occur over time killing or injuring small amounts of people (e.g. car crashes, iBurns) than when they kill or injure many at once (e.g. plane crashes). If an iPod somehow caused the amount of people currently having burns but in a single event (such as a large explosion, which I think is not physically possible), responses to this article would be very different. Another factor is ignorance: when you don’t know of a risk, it’s not as risky (<– duh). Because events happened over time and are quite isolated, the cover-up through frustrating the Freedom of Information Act procedure has its merit for Apple. In summary, it’s all in the way we are apt to respond to risk and health hazards.
About a year ago, I purchased an electric scooter powered with really fancy Li-ion “nano-phosphate” LiFePo4 type:”rediculous” batteries. These are cells from A123 Systems, and they’re scarry powerful (each is 3.3V @ 2300 mAH with 70A continuous drain or 120A in 10sec pulses). Now, I’ve been riding the scooter for a while – and these cells have really taken a beating in their lives. But I have yet to find any article about these types of cells exploding (probably helps that their laser-welded). They’re also designed for industrial apps and hybrid vehicles, so I’m sure the chemistry had to be made a bit safer.
I recently bought 20 of the same ‘26650A’ LiFePo4 from an eBay’er in China, so I’ll be able to replace the existing unit with fresh cells. It also turned out to be 5 more cells than the original contains, so I’ll be able to add about 25% more charge to my scooter.
But these cells are honestly terrifying – not that I’ve blown anything up yet, but 70 amps of continuous current per cell (5 cells series x 4 stacks in parallel)… mmmmm.. that about 280 amps @ 18VDC of kill your darn self if you’re not careful. You can buy the cells from a ‘developers kit’ dealer that sells A123 cells with handy tabs, but they’re really expensive. My cost for 20 was 80$ + 40$ s/h, waaaay cheaper than the 6 for $120 brand new. The ebay seller said they came from DeWalt 36V battery packs, and they do seem to be very fresh (good V, killer A) and essentially unused.
Needless to say, I will be soldering them with a full array of rubber protective gear.
LiFe cells can’t explode like the old ones (the Fe is some kind of inhibitor for explosive reactions)
but as good as all modern cells have modified chemicals to reduce the risk of an explosion
I bought a Mac after a plethora of people singing the choir song of how easy to use it is. Well, it turns out that it doesn^A't recognize the native resolution of any of my three 22″ monitors and uses 1024×768 instead of the native resolution which is 1680×1050. Not only does not use the native resolution, it doesn^A't support the built-in webcam. All of the monitors functions work fine in Linux and Windows.
I have found no workarounds or fixes online.
If this were linux, people would complain non-stop. Yet people put up with it because it seems that Apple can do no wrong.
And if this were Linux, I could probably hack xorg.cong and get it to work.
Why do I mention this? Because the fire hazards caused by Apple are just another example of poor Quality Assurance, just like not being able to work properly with standard monitors, an AOC and a viewsnonic.
As long as people are willing to pay much more money for stylish hardware without holding Apple responsible, this will not change. If I can^A't fix my monitor display resolution, I will sell the Mac on ebay.
To connect the monitors to the Mac, are you using the same cables you use to connect them to the PC?
Mac OS x supports your monitors’ resolution, so I’m not sure what the exact problem is, but it’s likely a configuration or hardware (cable) problem, not an innate osx shortcoming.
Well, the only display resolution available in system preferences is 1024×768 and I have found no way to manually specify the supported resolution.
Don^A't get me wrong, I have found OS X very stable, but I am not yet convinced of its viability given the lack of support for a lot of standard hardware that works easily in Linux and Windows. I love the monitors I have and I am not about to throw them out and buy Apple branded ones.
We are Linux integrators and have been doing Linux and Windows support for years. Yes, I used OS X for about a year to do web development four years ago. So we are not experts on OS X, but we are techies and OS X is sold as being really easy to use an should^A't require an expert anyway.
I’m sorry you’re having this problem. I’ve also been frustrated when I’ve felt that Apple has obfuscated some kind of function presumably in the name of making it more friendly for the n00bs. Usually, I’m able to find that someone somewhere who’s smarter than me has already created a fix. Before you give up, you should search out some of the 3rd party screen resolution utilities like this one:
http://www.madrau.com/SRX3/html/SRX/whysr.html
Thanks for the suggestion. I will give it a shot later today.
My display issues have been the only real showstopper so far.
This quote:
^aEURoeThe feds, the government guys came in. They looked at this thing and they said, ‘not yet. Might be a problem down the line if we get more information, but not yet.’ We can^aEURTMt ask this company to recall the product.’^aEUR
And to think that the same governemt, through a different arm, wants to have life & death decsisions over healthcare?
Not trying to insert politics here, but I’ve always thought that the CPSC was pretty much a useless org that was never proactive, only reactive.
Even thought they’re, ‘supposed,’ to be the advocate for the consumers.