Apple Faces Class Action Suits on IPod Battery Apple Computer Inc. faces class action suits claiming it misrepresented the battery life of its iPod digital music player, the company said on Tuesday in a regulatory filing. The Cupertino, California maker of the Macintosh computer has been buoyed in recent quarters by robust sales of the iPod. But users have complained the iPod battery wears out too quickly.

The lawsuit's complaints include unfair competition and claims of false advertising, fraudulent concealment and breach of warranty, Apple said. "The company is beginning its investigation of these claims," Apple said in the filing.

Apple also said in the filing that, if it had expensed the costs of stock options for employees based on the Black-Scholes method of determining value, its fiscal first-quarter earnings would have been 9 cents per share instead of the 17 cents per share it reported.

In the year-earlier quarter, it would have reported a loss of 17 cents per share instead of a loss of 2 cents a share.

If you or someone you know would like to be a plantiff in a class action regarding the Apple IPOD battery - contact the Law Office of Lawrence E. Feldman & Associates at 1-888-766-2690.

Excuse my ignorance about IPods, but...

Why didn't they make these damned things re-chargeable?

...so they could rip you off... same reason Lexmark cartridges are not re-fillable, same reason DRM exists, same reason DMCA was passed, same reason proprietary formats exist, etc. etc.

Shmoo

same reason computer modules are in modern automobiles

anyone else got one?

The same reason you get eight hot dogs in a pack but ten buns.

Ipods ARE rechargeable. However, the battery on the ipods is supposedly crappy enough that it doesnt last through too many charge/discharge cycles.

If the battery lasts for 10 hrs, after many many charging sessions, itll start lasting 9,8,7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2,1 and then zero hours after you charge it.

It seems as tho apple purposely made the life of this charged battery die out precisely after the warranty expires.

One thing to know, is there are no rechargeable batteries that will last forever. Even the one on your car wont. However, instead of so much cost-cutting, apple could have bought batteries that have an even longer life-span....without charging any extra on the already overpriced ipod.

scayf

It is assumed that you will not throw away as many rechargeable batteries (less garbage).

If you remember the governments issue with the Radio Shack battery card in the 90’s you will understand.

Being an engineer I know large businesses are sometimes rewarded and punished by using disposable batteries, that’s one of the reasons that most newer items today are rechargeable (save the planet crap).

Another one it convenience for various reasons; what if the battery in your car wasn’t rechargeable?

They should have made the battery user serviceable (easy to get out), even a cheap mass produced cell phone has a user serviceable way to replace it.

The company should be punished for not making the battery available for five to ten bucks, and for not making it user serviceable; they just wanted to exploit the customer by making expensive disposable items.

I know everyone thinks poor Apple, and evil Microsoft, but if you look in the beginning Apple was really the first Microsoft in business terms anyway; if you remember there outrageous prices and insane royalty charges for software developers.

I don’t understand how large companies think the majority has and endless supply of money for things like forty-dollar unrefillable ink cartridges, and “pay per download” garbage.

I guess it’s just a matter of who is the shiniest turd in the end; although most know you can’t polish them at all.

Sorry scayf, I thought you wrote

Why did they make these damned things re-chargeable?

instead of,

"Why didn't they make these damned things re-chargeable?"

I’m a working example of why they capitalize NOT in instructions. : )

Isn't part of the issue that when the battery dies, you can't replace it? In fact, didn't Apply say that when your battery was dead, you had to buy a new iPod? That's why I'll NEVER touch one of those things.

I have an iPod and I have never had any problems. Several friends also have first gen iPods that still work.

I think what was happening is that people were listening to it for hours at a time (8-10 hours a day) and then recharging every night. That's murder to any battery. More conservative use can mean battery life well into the 3 to for 4 year range.

I am in no way trying to say that there is not a problem with the batteries, I'm just trying to say that the problem is also that when people got there new iPod home, they were not using it like Apple had expected and tested for.

Actually, through most testing programs, you usually test your product to its fullest extent.

So, Apple knows what happens when a music lover listens to his or her music 24/7. Thus they: Test + Planning + Timing = Warranty running out as soon as your battery dies of too much love.

I know they test it to the fullest, but it's like cars.

If you have a minivan, your not going to be taking it off-road, and if you do, don't be surprised if something goes wrong.

So Apple tested the iPod to see how it would perform under usual use, probably no more than an hour a day and certainly not charging it every day.

They do stress tests to see what it CAN handle, but if the results don't look as good as the average tests then what do you think they will report?

Oh, BS. Apple knew exactly what would happen.

Shmoo

Yes, they knew exactly what would happen.

Don't get me wrong. I love the iPod. Great little machine. But, if you're not going to say how long the battery will REALLY last, then don't put the product out at all. Don't lie and say some garbage like "Oh, it'll always last a million hours, even after recharging!"

When it comes to something that's over $100+, then you damn well better tell me what to expect of my product, and how I can better care for it, without shelling out even MORE money to fix a simple battery replacement.

That minivan example doesn't even compare, btw. If you buy an iPOD, it's because you download a crap load of music, and you love listening to music, thus, you will listen to music virtually anytime you can.

It all boils down to serviceablity. There was no reason why they couldn't have made an ipod that you could change the battery in and make the battery affordable. Apple is a rip off!!!!!!!

Just look at their internet music store 99 cents for a bunch of 1's and 0's

Yes, there was a reason they chose to have it non-user replaceable. Simplicity and form. These are two things that are VERY important to apple. Now they may not be high on your list (and that is not a bad thing at all) but that does not mean that they intentionally deceived you.

If you don’t want form more than function then don't buy from apple. They regularly make design choices that increase form at the cost of function. That's just how they are.

They knew that the battery would fail if you used it too much, but they did not anticipate anyone using it 24/7 and recharging it every day, so they did not report on it, a perfectly reasonable mistake IMO

It would have been nice if they came out and said, "Don't Recharge this too much. Keep weekly charges down to 1 or 2."

Hey, maybe they should have put that on the sticker that came on the iPod instead of the one that said, "Don't Steal Music." - Lot of good that did.

I have seen some user serviceable batteries in some cell phones that were thinner than the iPod.

No reason at all they could not make the battery easy to remove, I design electronics at the component level and am familiar with this type of crap.

My advice to you is don’t put up with it; fight!

Don’t give in to these people, they didn’t license the iPod to you, they sold it, but they legally got it that way by making the battery difficult for the average person to replace.

It's very simple, make disposable garbage that wears out fast and can’t be easily fixed; “we’ll make billions”.

I can't even remember all the countless times they striped components off circuits to save 1 / 4 of a cent, coupling and dampening compactors, resistors, IF and AF filters; and then complaining that it no longer functioned, or sending out a poorly functioning unit.

Corporate execs that have little or no knowledge of electronics at all, worried about people getting electrocuted on six volts, and 15 ma; dictating how to build something.

Here’s how it works;

They tell you to do something one way:
you tell them it will not work
They make you do it anyway, and it doesn’t work.

They tell you to do something another way
you tell them it will not work
They make you do it anyway, and it doesn’t work.

Then they tell you just to make it work how ever you can.
You do it, and it works.

There is no use for these people, and they need to be laid off, yet when something is a success they get promoted for it, and YOU get Six Sigma zero error tolerance because they tell you took too much time, all because you wasted it doing the way this guy made you do it.

Now I know why Major Armstrong – (invented the super heterodyne and FM receiver) committed suicide after RCA stole his idea, and his wife left him.

The people need to understand corporate entities don’t create new products, it’s ordinary people like me, they are the ones that mess them up to make them cheap.

More excellent reporting! Well done. Once again this site is to "news" what the RIAA is to music.

I don't even know why people buy these things anyway, there are others that hold 40 gigs for 300 bucks LESS that are just as good if not better, Apple products are nothing but gimmicks with pastel colors on them, every god damn thing coming out of Apple these days has to look like a damn Easter egg. Maybe the paint job is why their prices are so freaking obnoxious.

Wow, I wonder if you bought one of those i-pod VWs weather you would also have to throw away the car too? You know VW has a longer warranty than 18 months, I wonder if you took the car back to the dealership with a bad i-pod you could get another one? Or would you get a rebuilt i-pod.
You know that many states have a lemon law that states that the dealer gets 3 tries and they have to buy back the car. I wonder if this extends to the i-pod in the i-pod VW?

yep, we need lemon laws for music player dealers.

My bad...I reckon I meant REPLACEABLE, not rechargeable.

BTW...my car's battery is over three years old, and still going strong.

I'm getting mixed messages. Some say that people are overworking the batteries, others are saying that corporate execs are evil, and yet another camp is saying they put bad batteries to begin with.

Of course, i dont need portable music as I stay in the house all the time and I have a direct hookup from my computer into my Bose system! =

Excuse my ignorance about IPods, but...

Why didn't they make these damned things re-chargeable?


they did make it rechargeable.. thats the whole point.
they offer far cheaper rates than the so called "ipods dirty secret" call to applecare makes it out.
the company implemented new extended warrantees.
In fact i just got a new one and ups banged the hell out of it!
i could easily get the cost out of ups but apple will fix it for free if i bring it in today, tomorrow, or as long as a year from today.

Im getting really sick and tired of people giving apple 10 times the grief for 1/10th the level of offense. large corporations make far greater mistakes and dont bother to act half as promptly. Firestone for instance.

ok.. JayBDey
this will not stand. I am a computer science major. I do everything from playing the most experimental video codecs to hardcore programming on my mac. It has far more function than windows or linux could ever obtain in the next 100 years. I would research and actually USE a mac for a while first, under the guidance of a veteran.

"If you don’t want form more than function then don't buy from apple. They regularly make design choices that increase form at the cost of function. That's just how they are. "

"BTW...my car's battery is over three years old, and still going strong."

That’s because the voltage regulator in your car takes very good care of it, charging it up to the perfect point and stopping.

The car and the Led Acid battery are a match made in heaven.

The car battery is really only used and meant to start it anyway scayf , it has an easy life with its only enemy the sun, and time. Also it is a different type of battery (led acid), not Ni-Cad, or, Li-Polymer (iPod).

Led acid batteries - are damaged if they are run dead, but can stay on a charger for a long time (running engine).

Ni-Cad – can be run dead, but because of the multi-cellular structure, if they are not run completely dead before charging, they are damaged, and get the “memory” effect.

This is because one or two of the cells may be dead, but two others may have half a charge, and when you put it on the charger it overcharges the other (already charged) cells, shortening the life of the battery.

Li-Polymer(iPod) - I really don’t have a lot of experience with these. However they do last an unusually long time between charges.

Li-polymer care guide and battery type details - http://www.pluscellular.com/new_page_6.htm

There is another problem with the iPod look at the voltage (3.7 Volts 850 mAh), if anyone remembers the six volt cars that never started for example.

That voltage is really low; a DC to DC converter inside that iPod has to be bringing the voltage up to an appropriate level, I’ll bet it’s working very hard.

I know this because 3.7 volts will make even a cmos head phone amplifier perform poorly because there will not be enough voltage to drive them at the loud level people expect; let alone a hard-drive.

If they would have used a higher voltage on the battery it would have defiantly lasted longer; and even worked for more hours before needing a charge.

Don’t try to put a higher voltage battery in your iPod; you might smoke the converter, if it’s anything like Sony’s weak FET voltage regulators, you will kill it.

Hope that helps.

Who the fuck uses iPod? Overhyped and overprice. iRiver iHP is da best.

PS: TheRiaaIsObs... 3G iPod uses Li-ion, past 2 generation uses Li-poly. iRiver iHP uses Li-Poly which is better than Li-ion.

TheRiaaIsObs...,

The IPOD uses the PortalPlayer chip PP5001. Although the chip can operate at 1.5 volts, the hard drive most likely requires 3.3 volts.

You can find more details about the chip here ...

http://www.portalplayer.com

Fenpod? LOL

"the hard drive most likely requires 3.3 volts."

Wow, that has to be a really low power hard drive, its mechanical right?

I have seen a quite a few small stepper motors that would run well on that, but 3.3v, 3.7v, nasty range of power regulation. I guess it being digital it would not have to be power regulated.

I have always hated apple.

Rediculous prices and all upgrades are also rediculously priced.

(They're Microsoft in Hardware Terms)

Li-ion? Very inispid of them. Atleast with a cell phone you can replace the piece of shit batteries.

Lead Acid? I have one of those in my APC UPS Back-ups Pro 1100. The power around here is bloody murder on any device. I lucky if the APC has to stay on Battery Power for less than 40min per every 5 hours my computer is on. I bought the unit four years ago.

taken from - http://www.portalplayer.com/products/index.html

"This performance advantage enabled support for complex encoders and watermarking algorithms,"

Geeze, will it ever end.

A company that supports this sleaze doesn’t deserve business.

I still don't see why they couldn't of made it use 2 2400MAH AA bats....................................................................................................or even the AAA's..............Rechargable and replaceable for very low cost. If you do like paying 300-400 dollars for one still....go right ahead I don't care.

uhh.. yeah their hardware is a little more. its also warranteed against everything and lasts forever, unlike microsoft software which is expensive, buggy, and virus prone all at once.

while no computer is yet stable enough for me, apple comes damn close, so i stick with it and give the company a kick in the pants when they do something stupid because that company reminds me of the overachieving son who screws up occasionally. it has promise, unlike many.

Why couldn't Apple use those good 'ol Ni-MH (nickel metal hydride) batteries. They are very reliable and durable, and they hold a decent size charge for quite a while. The Ni-MH AA-size batteries, depending on the brand, have the capacity of 2200mAH or more now. If apple could use a battery pack of three 1.2V Ni-MH cells (3.6V) at about 1800mAH, that would be an improvement. I am not sure how large the original battery pack is of the i-POD, so I am not sure of the maximum capacity of the battery if it contained the Ni-MH cells. I just guessed, assuming things by how my simple, kind-of-cheap Motorola cell phone battery was almost rated at that. Li-ion batteries are pretty good. I really don't know much about them. Arn't they simiar to Ni-MH batteries compared to their mAH values at similar battery sizes? I don't know much about Li-polymer batteries, and never really heard about how nice they were, or any of the rave about them. I am not very educated on all the varieties of batteries, but I have a nice deal of experience with the Ni-MH types. They seem to work quite well under the tough conditions that I put them under with the appliances and electronics that I have modified to acommodate them. Oh, well...

Once again, how many of you will be big enough to post in a thread when it turns out Apple defends itself, successfully, in this matter? How many of you will post in here, "I guess I was wrong."

None. The truth is, you know little or nothing of the facts. It's just another chance to mewl about a "big corporation" or the constant wintel box owner's refrain "all Apples are just highly decorated pieces of ____".

Seriously, grow up. Read the background on this.

I was in an Apple class action once. They settled it.

amen icewasel.

i personally have issue with the apple corporation not over the ipod's batteries, but over the packaging, which doesnt absorb shock during shipment.
I have to send back my brand new ipod for repair because it was damaged on the way here.
I say it was the change to more rigid packaging.l

Macs are better for when you want to use it to do one specific thing, like something productivity-wise such as video editing, photo editing, music production/editing.

Anything else such as gaming, or if you're going to use it just to do basic things like word processing, surfing the net, e-mail, listening to music, burning CD's, etc., it's better to have a Windows based PC.

Can you upgrade a Mac just by replacing the CPU and the motherboard?

No.

Can you put a Mac together from spare parts?

No.

With a Mac, you only have the choice of one operating system.

With a PC, you can choose from the 95/98/ME line, the NT/2000/XP line, or Unix/Linux.

Let's also not forget that 99% of games never make it to the Mac.

ive upgraded my mac.

Mythbusting 101:
Current uses i put my mac to.
-custom school email cient
-web
-bit torrent downloads
-file sharing
-irc fileserving
-programming
-web development
-photo editing
-playing experimental video codecs such as ogm/mkv/xvid
-editing and capturing music
-sound caputre through linein
-gaming
-cd burning
.........

any questions?
^__^

addendum.. gaming inclues titles such as UT2k3 and HALO among others such as starcraft, et al.

stepmania is really fun by the way ^___^

"With a Mac, you only have the choice of one operating system"
mythbusting 201:
this statement is false.
yellowdog is one distro of linux for mac, but mac runs linux apps and macos is basically a very user friendly version of BSD unix.

personally i chose mac FOR its os, which is clearly superior to zee impurity of zeez othza computors

"Mythbusting 101:
Current uses i put my mac to.
-custom school email cient
-web
-bit torrent downloads
-file sharing
-irc fileserving
-programming
-web development
-photo editing
-playing experimental video codecs such as ogm/mkv/xvid
-editing and capturing music
-sound caputre through linein
-gaming
-cd burning"

Sounds a lot like productivity to me.

As I said, Macs are definitely better for that.

However, for just general usage, it's better to have a PC, for the pricing, if anything.

Macs are far more expensive.

If you just want to surf the web, check email, do word processing, listen to music, and burn CD's/DVD's, you can get a PC to do that and only pay $400-$700 for it.

You get a Mac like that, and you'll be shelling out a good grand for it.

As for games, I didn't say that no games ever made it the Mac, I said most games.

Game companies don't release most titles to the Macs, because Mac users only comprise about 2% of computer owners.