Complaints Pile Up Over Nano's Display
September 26, 2005
By Matt Hines

The iPod Nano: One thousand songs. Impossibly fragile?

That's the complaint of many new owners of Apple Computer Inc.'s new iPod Nano, if you believe the 450-plus posts to the company's Web site complaining about the ease with which the device's display can be scratched.

RELATED LINKS

* Apple iPod nano
* Apple's iTunes Phone, iPod Nano Look Big
*
*
* iPod Accessories Are the Rage at Apple Expo

As of Monday, a litany of negative feedback regarding the screen scratching issue had been aired on Apple.com, with no apparent reply from the hardware maker. Apple representatives didn't immediately return calls seeking comment on the issue.

Click here to read more about Apple's iPod Nano.

According to a majority of the posts to the site, the music player's 1.5-inch color screen is unacceptably prone toward marring, with many buyers saying that they had gone to lengths to protect the music players, only to find that their Nanos still got nicked.

Some individuals commenting on the issue said the problem appeared almost from the moment they first removed their iPods from the manufacturer's packaging and peeled off the film-like plastic that covers the screen during shipping.

"I've had my Nano for a little over two weeks and it scratched right when I took off the little plastic on the front," wrote a poster identified as Young Lim. "At first I thought this was just a smudge so I used my cotton t-shirt to try to rub it off, but that start(ed) to scratch it even more."

Lim went on to say that after carrying the Nano in the pocket of some cargo shorts, the device showed even more blemishes, leaving the buyer feeling "disappointed and betrayed" by Apple, especially since the poster had observed impressive durability from earlier, and cheaper, iPods. One Nano owner has already gone to the trouble of creating a Web site to detail his issues with the screen scratching issue.

The criticism of the Nano, which comes in two models that retail for $199 and $249 respectively, stands in sharp contrast to the rave reviews the device has garnered for its sleek, diminutive design and powerful audio capabilities. While the devices had not created the same tidal wave of interest as its predecessor, the iPod Mini, which was sold out for nearly six months after its launch, industry watchers had predicted that Apple's stores, and online dealers such as Amazon.com, were already moving large numbers of the music players.

Click here to read more about Apple's iTunes phone and iPod Nano.

Negative comments regarding the scratching issue have already surfaced on Amazon's review pages as well.

While Apple's bottom line has benefited from strong sales of the iPod and other new products, the company has faced some complaints over the years regarding the build quality of some of its machines. Perhaps the most notable set of issues reported about the firm's products revolved around the chassis of its high-end Power Mac G4 Cube computer, which some buyers found to have hairline cracks stretching across its clear, polycarbonate exterior.

The only major complaint that Apple has received about the iPod, pre-Nano, has been in regards to the battery life of some of its earliest examples of the devices. In June, the Cupertino, Calif.-based firm settled several class action suits related to that issue, offering an extended service warranty and $50 store credits to people who had experienced the problem, which effected iPods manufactured between 2001 and May, 2004. Specifically, some buyers had complained that the batteries, which promised to provide 10 hours of playing time at full charge, would only last roughly 4 hours.

Another issue that left some Nano owners disappointed was that the scratching problem was making it hard to see the images, such as music album art, that they had already loaded onto the machines. This was supposed to be another plus to the Nano as another form of personalization offered by the more powerful handheld.

"I'm going to have to add my name to the list of people who are (upset) that their $300 Nano is scratched within days of purchase," wrote a poster identified as Dave Whips. "(It) makes it tough (at least annoying) to look at artwork and photos that I've added."

Check out eWEEK.com's Macintosh Center for the latest news, reviews and analysis on Apple in the enterprise.
Copyright (c) 2005 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.

My regular iPod scratches pretty easily. I would hate to have it be even worse. This doesn't suprise me at all. The ipods are very fragile. Drop it once and its done for. Go running with a regular hard disk based ipod and it may stop working. They price them so high but they get damaged so easily. Its insane. At least it is fairly easy to get a replacement from apple care. That is until your warrenty is up.

Anything to get Consumers away from a PC... For a car stereo I'd like my laptop to have Winamp and ALL of my mp3s...

yeah, apple sucks, i have a g5, and when i save songs, and load them back up, the memory is gone from that song, so i quit usin that damn thing, cost 1400 bux too. and yeah the apple ipods are too fragile for the price they askin for. im glad i didnt get one, ima hold off til somethin beter comes 'round

I'm with Wayne.