Apple iBook G4 Design Flaw Proven 252
empaler writes "Apple has long denied service on iBook G4s whose screens went black after just over one year of use, denying that there was any error. But now, the Danish National Consumer Agency has released a report proving that the error is due to a design flaw. So far, the only news site picking this up is The Register (unless you understand Danish). The Danish Consumer Complaints Board says that Apple needs to get a grip and acknowledge this error in the rest of the world. The NCA also has some photos from the report (explanations in Danish, but easily comprehensible from context)."
That's not a design fault... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is ONE computer. Is this failure present on others with similar symptoms, or are their other faults modes which can cause the same problem?
Re:That's not a design fault... (Score:4, Insightful)
How widespread is the problem? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is there a place where we can see some numbers on how widespread these failures are?
Re:It's a dry joint. (Score:2, Insightful)
Macs Have Problems, Too (Score:4, Insightful)
And on the other hand, there are anti-mac people that are excited about this sort of news. That's stupid, too.
But really, the anti-MS and anti-PC and anti-Mac stuff gets really old after a while. Macs have problems, PCs have problems, MS software has problems; I have to say that with this particular instance, Apple supporters seem much more worried about admitting that there is a problem than PC supporters or MS users.
Modding something flamebait for pointing out an inconsistency in how problems with company X are accepted is... hmmm. Silly.
A dry joint on thousands of units is a design flaw (Score:5, Insightful)
Engineers take *every* component of a product into account during design, including the types of solder to be used and the methods of soldering to be employed.
Indeed, they may select higher quality solder in order to reduce the requirements and hence the cost of other parts, or they may specify lower quality solder in the knowledge that the rest of the components on their bill of materials can still be assembled to spec and will still work together reliably for the normal lifetime of the product.
In this particular case, either Apple engineers did not consider the effect of their design on the solder joint in question (it should probably have been a far more substantial joint), or they did not specify the right type of solder given the requirements of their design, or else the subcontractors who made the unit used a type of solder different to that specified by Apple. (In the latter case this would be an Apple testing/QA problem, since you *ALWAYS* check what your subcontractors are doing, no exception. If you value your brand name, that is.)
So whichever way you look at it, this is entirely Apple's fault. Design and/or testing engineers get paid for doing a good design and/or testing job, and in this case they haven't. Get the message to them, and they'll fix it --- engineers are always happy to fix problems, on principle.
As for Steve Jobs and Apple Customer Services
There's a problem. Get it fixed.
Re:It's not a bug... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:It's a dry joint. (Score:4, Insightful)
And all Macs come with a one-year warranty against manufacturing defects. Any other measure of "too soon" is just personal opinion. I expect that Apple repaired all iBooks that failed within the warranty period. Apple makes no statements on the useful life of their products beyond their warranty statement, AFAIK.
All of which is fine, if you then respond by revising either the design or the manufacturing process and fixing people's broken computers, which is not what Apple has tried to do.
Got any proof of that wild accusation? Remember, Apple contracts board manufacturing to third parties. I doubt that Apple has sit idly by and done nothing, but that doesn't mean that Apple would have been successful in anything they tried either. Sometimes technique changes (like lead-free solder) give some manufacturers headaches.
Besides, have you heard about this issue on the new MacBook or MacBook Pro systems, which have been in the market over a year now? Seems like Apple had some improvements made, then, if bad solder joints were the root cause of the iBook issues.
Apple responded to Greenpeace (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps you should read this [slashdot.org].
Consumers should just know what to expect (Score:3, Insightful)
As an Apple and Windows hardware tech I learned... (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course this was Dell coprorate support, home user support is generallly junk.
iMac PPC G5 computers had a high rate of video failure from a certain group of capacitors failing. I have swapped out dozens of iMac G5 motherboards.
Companies also tend to drag their feet about admitting these problems. From a tech's perspective with thousands of Dells, Gateways and Apples on campus you can see some patterns pretty damn clearly, getting a company to admit it is something else.
It happens with every mass manufactured brand of computers. Denying that any certain company has these problems is silly.
I hope all computer companies get called out on this more often. Especialy on laptops, they are difficult to design and build well.
Apple Can Do No Wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
indeed (Score:3, Insightful)
If someone speaks highly of Apple's quality, but they do so whether or not the quality is good, then it doesn't really give me any information. Therefore, I tend to regard customer reviews with a fair amount of skepticism. If there's a pattern of downplaying problems, then even Consumer Reports and similar are suspect.
G3 iBooks are great... except the logic boards die on a regular basis.
G4 iBooks are great... except the solder joints keep breaking.
MacBooks are great... except that for that overheating under load thing.
I'd be fine with paying extra for quality. What I'm not fine with is paying extra for what Apple sells.
Re:A dry joint on thousands of units is a design f (Score:4, Insightful)
So... an engineer is told to design a ship. He's told that the material to be used is wood, but designs it as if it were to be made of steel (because that's the right material!). The ship fails. How is it not the engineer's fault for not designing the system to the intended specifications? If the specs said that a non-lead solder was to be used, then the board should have been designed so that it would not fail with a non-lead solder.
Maybe they swapped out the solder after the design was finalized and it's not the designing engineer's fault. But you can't blame the failure on the solder (unless it was not the correct composition). It's not as if this lead-free solder is some mysterious substance. Someone, somewhere along the line, failed in the design of this system.