Times Online – Business

APPLE COMPUTER has moved to correct a flaw with its popular iPod that has rendered some of the the digital music players useless after just 18 months.

In other news, Energizer apologized that its customers have had to buy more than one battery in their lifetime. Because, obviously, when consumables are consumed then that’s a flaw in the product, yes?bq. Apple says the battery is supposed to last the life of the product, but some customers have complained that theirs has gone flat in the two years since it was launched.

Not to be pessimistic, but that could hint at the expected life of the product…

The problem led to one irate customer, a 22-year-old New Yorker called Casey Neistat, creating a website called ipodsdirtysecret.com that features a video of him spray painting the phrase “iPod’s unreplaceable battery lasts only 18 months” all over lower Manhattan.

Translation: “The lack of comprehension over the availability of the replacement program led one out-of-work and attention-starved pair of fools from the looniest city in America to publicly destroy third-party advertisements in mockery of American property laws. The pair then spent two weeks riding on the fame before even admitting Apple’s battery replacement program existed, and then put it in a side note, on a linked page, in small print.”

Yep, that’s someone I want to quote in my article.

Previously, the only option once the one-year warranty had expired was to buy an unapproved third-party replacement battery, and risk damaging the iPod, or to pay at least £199 for an entirely new player.

Wrong. If you listen to the call, and this is a journalist so I do not expect research, then you would notice that the phone agent offered a repair that would fix the problem. The price of the repair is the price of any repair, a number usually just short of the price of the iPod (almost like your current one is a trade-in discount). So, no, you didn’t have to shell out the full price of an iPod.

Apple was accused of cynically using the limited battery life to ratchet up sales of iPods. A spokesman for Apple denied this, and said: “If the battery fails there is now a replacement option whether the warranty has expired or not.”

Translation: “Apple is being evil. ‘No we’re not,’ says Apple spokesman.”

Why did you include that paragraph? Are you a lawyer? Is he a witness? Is this journalism?

The batteries used in iPods are similar to those found in laptops and mobile phone handsets, and are made to last for as many as 500 charge/discharge cycles. Constant use can bring the life of the battery down sharply.

Oh now you mention that ugly fact! Bravo! Knowing that people that read articles typically only read the first five paragraphs you hide that down here where no one will see it! Vonderful.

The Apple spokesman said: “It’s difficult to say how long the battery will last, but we have not been inundated with customers whose batteries died after 18 months.”

And then the most important quote from Apple goes under that. Boy howdy, you’re just racking up respectability here.

More than two million iPods have been sold around the world since they were introduced in November 2001, making it one of the most popular consumer electronics devices in the past decade.

“One of?” What’s the other one?

Apple will release a smaller and slightly cheaper iPod mini across Europe in spring, around the same time as it hopes to launch its iTunes music download service there.

Irrelevant, but thanks anyway. (Much like the rest of the article.)