Slashdot Log In
Japan Demands Probe of iPod Nano Flameouts
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Aug 19, 2008 10:41 PM
from the hot-pockets dept.
from the hot-pockets dept.
iminplaya sends in an item from TechNewsWorld that begins, "Several incidents of iPod Nanos bursting into flames have created consumer jitters in gadget-happy Japan. Apple is downplaying the problem, pointing out that no major injuries or damage have been reported. The problem is due to defective batteries, the company said, and only a tiny percentage of the devices have caught on fire." Japan has seen 14 such incidents so far, two in recent days. iminplaya adds, "I like that. Only a 'tiny percentage'... Is anybody beginning to understand why I would prefer that these devices not be allowed on airplanes?"
Related Stories
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Yes, only a tiny percentage (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm sorry your honor, I only punched fourteen people in the face after taking their money. That's such a tiny percentage of the people I took money from.
There, fixed it for you.
Re:Yes, only a tiny percentage (Score:5, Funny)
There, fixed that for ya.
Parent
Re:Yes, only a tiny percentage (Score:5, Funny)
I'm hoping the /. groupthink is too distracted to notice.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, that percentage is even smaller considering the fact that most people don't even glue their nanos to their face. Now if they could just get their R&D Department to find a way to make their nano ear buds spontaneously burst into flames, now that would certainly be something.
Flying by statistic (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Flying by statistic (Score:4, Funny)
And only a tiny percentage of planes have snakes on them.
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Yes, only a tiny percentage (Score:4, Insightful)
A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
Parent
Re:Yes, only a tiny percentage (Score:4, Insightful)
I find your thoughts fascinating, Mr. Durden and would like to know more. Can I subscribe to your newsletter?
Technically that wasn't Tyler Durden, it was our unnamed narrator. Some people (me) speculate that Edward Norton's character's name was Jack, hence I am Jack's raging bile duct, and all of the diaries of Jack's organs, but you never actually find out his real name. Tyler was just a more realized manifestation of his persona, much more so than Rupert or Cornelius. Then again Jack could just be a general moniker similar to John Q. Public or Tom, Dick and Harry.
On that note - Wanna buy some soap?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Like when Ford and Firestone sat on the problem of tires blowing out on Explorers while people were being paralyzed or dying, and even after the lawsuits started coming in?
spontaneous combustion (Score:5, Funny)
Only a tiny percentage of people have ever burst into flames. We shouldn't let them on airplanes either.
Re:spontaneous combustion (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Why banned on airplanes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why banned on airplanes? (Score:5, Insightful)
At 0.001% of Nanos affected, it's probably more likely that your plane's engine bursts into flame than a Nano brought onto the flight.
Parent
Re:Why banned on airplanes? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Why banned on airplanes? (Score:4, Insightful)
"handled 16,464 flights in March; 0.001% would be an engine fire every six months, just for Narita"
No, it should be 0.001% of their planes not flights, unless you also multiply the ipods by the amount of times (or amount of time) they're used in the same way that you're multplying the number of planes by the amount of times (or amount of time) they take off and land. Remember, you have to do the same on both sides of the equasion.
"consumer electronics are not supposed to be able to catch fire by their own failure"
The electronics bits yeah, but we're talking a high energy chemical storage device, which makes things slightly different... okay, only slightly, it's still not meant to burst into flames, but it has been happening a lot over past few years in laptop, mobile phones, basically anythings that use lithium-ion batteries can be at risk if there are battery defects.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway... Narita handled 16,464 flights in March; 0.001% would be an engine fire every six months, just for Narita.
No. You're assuming that every single ipod that catches fire does so on an airplane. How much time does the average ipod actually spend in the air, hm?
What you've actually calculated is that every six months, Narita will host a passenger who owns an ipod which will at some point in time catch fire. These are very different thing.
Gah! Innumeracy everywhere!
Re:Why banned on airplanes? (Score:4, Funny)
I think you'll find that all of the affected iPods were right at the end of their lifetimes
Well thank you, Captian Obvious. Of course they were at the end of their lifetimes, they are dead now!!
Perhaps you are infering that the self-destruct mechanism was meant to initialize at the end of the product's projected life-cycle.
"Poof! Time to buy a new one!(and of course because of the DRM, you will need to keep it in the Apple family)"
Parent
Re:Why banned on airplanes? (Score:5, Insightful)
If something's not essential, even if the chances are low of things going wrong, the risk (potential mass loss of life) usually dictates that the chance is just not worth taking.
Depends how low.
I would actually file this under the pseudo-Ben-Franklin-quote: "Those who would trade essential liberty for temporary security deserve neither."
Ok, it's overkill -- iPods on planes is not essential liberty. But my point is, absolutely everything is a risk, and trying to cover every risk misses the point. For example:
Now what airplanes could do with is lil USB ports to plug memory sticks in with lil headphone jacks so you can copy a bunch of mp3s to listen to during the flight if there really is demand for it.
So now we'll find that there's both faulty and terrorist-created memory stick which burst into flames -- or which launch a virus which somehow makes its way into the navigation system, flying you into a building.
If you're paranoid enough, everything's a risk. Since everything's a risk, the only way you know which risks you should care about is by calculating them -- what's an acceptable loss, which is the greater of two risks (and thus deserves more attention), and so on.
By the way: You can't say "acceptable loss is 0", because then the math won't work. What you can do is start at, say, 99% probability of safety, and keep adding nines until you're happy -- realizing that each nine is going to cost you a fuckton of money and convenience, while providing no visible benefit -- after all, people don't notice when things work, they notice when they break.
Again: If it's more likely that your plane's engine bursts into flame, knowing how much rigor they put into making sure that doesn't ever happen, I think you're pretty safe from your nano. If those odds scare you, you probably shouldn't be flying in the first place -- or going outside.
Also, considering that there have been no major injuries or damage... How much of a risk is this, even if it did go off? How big of an "explosion"?
Parent
Re:Why banned on airplanes? (Score:4, Interesting)
If I was doing a Reliability Centered Maintenance program for the airlines, and this failure mode came up, it would rank very very low on my scale in terms of human risk, and we probably wouldn't take any actions to mitigate or prevent it. Someone's battery bursting into flames probably won't cause more than slight injury. It won't cause major damage to the aircraft. It won't cause any environmental impact to speak of.
I'd even go so far as to say the risk to my airline's reputation by continuing to stupidly and arbitrarily ban objects would outweigh the risk to my airline's reputation by one of these things catching fire. It's not like the plane will ever be in any danger.
On the other hand, I stopped being risk-averse when I realised I live in a town where I could be beaten, stabbed, or shot by members of the street gang Indian Posse. Do I hide and give up on life so they can't take mine, or do I live my life, accepting that there are risks in simply leaving the house?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Opposition to terrorism is mostly for show. Most of this post-9/11 crap is.
Gee, the department of homeland security, eh? Tell me, would their job be DEFENDING people in our country? Maybe we should have a department of defense instead?
Oh wait! We've got one of those, but all it's interested in is bombing the middle east!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
(excuse me answering my own question - I read some more of the article hehe)
"I am curious as to the mechanism by which they spontaneously combust"
Article says "Their batteries were short-circuiting and bursting into flame when microscopic metal particles came into contact with other parts"... so there we have it.
That's what they want you to think. The reality of the matter is that the reality distortion field, colliding with the common sense field, caused a tachyon burst that, coupled with remodulation, opened up a micro wormhole that resulted in the explosion. Oh wait, this isn't the writers meeting for the proposed new Star Trek series? Sorry, moving along.
Re:Why banned on airplanes? (Score:5, Funny)
It may surprise you to know that airlines regularly transport large quantities of flammable kerosene on their aircraft. Not only that, but they often deliberately set fire to it during the flight. That sounds really dangerous to me and I think it should be stopped.
Parent
Re:Why banned on airplanes? (Score:5, Insightful)
It would only be a nano-fire anyways...
Besides, of the nearly 0% (0.001% according to BlueG3) of Nanos, of the far less percentage on airplanes at any given moment...
Say one catches fire, what the hell are the odds of anything but "Shit, Not My Nano!" and a puff of smoke happening? Anyone holding/directly attached to one would notice really quick, and its not exactly a bonfire, dropping it would probably put it out, any in luggage, would probably just smolder a bit, but do nothing but wreck a shirt or two... hell, even in optimal conditions, I don't think anything of significance would happen, unless you happen to transport your nano wrapped in a bag of gasoline or something, and even then isn't the luggage compartments at atmosphere (ie: not pressurized like the cabin?)...etc...
How many planes caught fire and crashed when smoking was still legal on planes? (still is on some airlines)... probably zero, and thats an open flame and/or ember... im sure a few seats, or maybe a curtain has caught fire from that... ive never heard of a crash or anyone dying from it though [Citation Please?] If it exists.
Parent
Re:Why banned on airplanes? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Why banned on airplanes? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's certainly going to be a lot more violent than an ember from a cigarrette.
Parent
Re:Why banned on airplanes? (Score:5, Insightful)
No no no no no.
You could get a paper cut tomorrow from a newspaper in a subway station, and it could get infected, and you could die of gangrene! Easy to fix: ban newspapers in subway stations!
What about that keyboard you're using? Did you know there are springs in keyboards? Did you know that a spring could pop out and go directly into your eye? We'd better ban springs in keyboards, it's easy enough to make horrible springless ones.
The proper way to tell what should be fixed is not how easy it is to mitigate. It's how expensive it is to mitigate versus the value of doing so. And note that neither of those are measured in dollars - they're measured in a much more abstract concept, "worth".
Weigh the chance and danger of an iPod bursting into flame on a plane (extremely low, and extremely low, multiplied together) versus the compounded irritation of every traveler in America being unable to bring the most popular music player on the planet with them on a plane (extremely high, times a huge number.) Sure, it would be easy to fix . . . but it's just not worth it.
Parent
No major injuries... (Score:3, Funny)
Apple is downplaying the problem, pointing out that no major injuries or damage have been reported.
Considering Apple's stance on mouse buttons they'd probably consider losing your right hand a "minor" injury.
Re:No major injuries... (Score:5, Funny)
losing your right hand a "minor" injury.
But in /.-land, a tremendous setback to the love life.
Parent
Re:No major injuries... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Because You're Terrorism's Dream Date? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, now I understand that you can be easily frightened into irrationally giving up reasonably safe conveniences just so long as someone says "airplane" near you.
The end of apple as a name of "quality". (Score:5, Informative)
Between their replacement of true color displays with crappy TN models which push their own calibration tools off the charts, their terrible all around macbook quality (mine's 1.5 years old and literally falling to pieces, including the graphics unit), and now these exploding batteries (again!, even dUll didn't pull the same mistake twice!), I say the days of apple as a quality brand are over.
Anyone have suggestions on where to buy quality hardware i can load osx86 on?
Re:The end of apple as a name of "quality". (Score:4, Insightful)
You're aware that Apple's "Pro" line is the one that's rated for unusually high quality, right? Not the consumer grade iMac or MacBooks...
Parent
Re:The end of apple as a name of "quality". (Score:5, Interesting)
You're aware that Apple's "Pro" line is the one that's rated for unusually high quality, right? Not the consumer grade iMac or MacBooks...
I'm also aware my friend is now on his third macbook pro in 2 years, and he has to ice-pack it all the time because it overheats.
He's been a user since system 6, and we're both unimpressed.
Parent
Re:The end of apple as a name of "quality". (Score:4, Informative)
I have to say I was pretty shocked looking at my friends macbook pro as it was getting incredibly hot, with only a tiny amount of ventilation at the back and a single solid piece of metal covering the bottom. Her system fan was getting very noisy with no easy way to clean it. I could've taken off the whole of the bottom casing, and would've if it was my laptop (leaving aside that if it was mine, it wouldn't be a mac), but it was still under warrenty and she was concerned that doing so could complicate that - better just to take it to an apple shop and let them deal with it. Incidentally this added to the whole pc-vs-mac debate, as whenever a pc of hers has had any kind of trouble, she has been able to sort it herself, but I won't get too much into that as I know many people on here are quite passionate about the whole macs-vs-pcs. So leaving all that aside, all I'm saying is it could at least have some vents on the underside :-p
Parent
Re:The end of apple as a name of "quality". (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone have suggestions on where to buy quality hardware i can load osx86 on?
I'd recommend Apple because (despite your cherry-picked examples) they make high quality, reliable hardware which meets the performance and durability needs of most of their customers.
Between their replacement of true color displays with crappy TN models which push their own calibration tools off the charts, their terrible all around macbook quality (mine's 1.5 years old and literally falling to pieces, including the graphics unit), and now these exploding batteries (again!, even dUll didn't pull the same mistake twice!), I say the days of apple as a quality brand are over.
Apple gets a hell of a lot of flack courtesy of their fanatical following of fanboys and fanatical following of trolls. The former crows everytime Apple does anything. The latter throw their hands in the air and cry that the sky is falling whenever any issue is reported, no matter how small.
Frankly, the rest of the internet wishes you'd both shut the hell up.
I've had Dell laptops separate at their hinges. I've had Sony displays with horrible color balance and atrocious response times. I had an IBM workstation that went through three power supplies in a year. Over the nearly two decades that I've been using computers, I have seen hardware from pretty much every manufacturer fail. Somehow, despite that, I don't feel the need to seek out a BBS, newsgroup, or website and bemoan that a few isolated incidents spell the end of "_____ as a quality brand."
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Funny, I beat the *shit* out of my laptops, and my MacBook is no worse for wear after 18 months. The last two HPs I owned, however, only lasted 12 months each. I'd love to see what you would have done with them...
How does a "graphics unit" "litterally fall to pieces" anyway?
"Only a 'tiny percentage'..." (Score:5, Insightful)
Airplane fire (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, the 'won't somebody think of the airplanes!' comment at the end isn't particularly rational. These are not big devices and the only way they will cause more than an inconvenience is if every one on the plane bursts into flame at the same time.
That said, a large chemical fire like you could get from those big battery packs those desktop replacement laptops use would be a special kind of nightmare for any pilot. If they do ever ban lithium batteries and other related things on airplanes it will be very inconvenient but not necessarily stupid.
Ultimately, I think we need better chemistry ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Lithium-ion cells are unstable, intolerant of overcharging, and energy-dense enough to be a real problem when they fail.
LiFePO4 is a possible answer. They're a little more expensive than Li-ion, and have slightly lower energy density, but they don't evolve gasses during charging, which makes them somewhat safer.
Ever See A Flaming LiPo Battery? Very Ugly. (Score:5, Interesting)
Some LiPos are pretty sketchy - we've had a few in prototypes "pillow" (fill with gas), but no explosions yet. Definitely a no-no in medical devices, particularly implantables!
Good for Japan! (Score:4, Interesting)
And the batteries in these iPods? "Made In Japan". Glad to see they take their own QA so seriously.
Lithium Batteries (Score:3, Informative)
It sounds like poor-quality lithium batteries or possibly a defective charging circuit are to blame here.
Lithium batteries have a very high energy density due to the use of highly reactive lithium in metallic and/or ion forms. Overcharging or too-rapid discharge can easily overheat them and result in a fire or even an explosion in extreme cases.
If the quality control is not excellent, they can be incredibly dangerous.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The batteries are controlled by circuitry that starts it charging, and stops it when the battery reports that it's full. If this circuitry is defective, charging can happen past its safe charge level causing overheating and eventual spontaneous combustion.
My guess would be (if there is correlation) that as nanos are targetting more towards the lower end of the market; people who are looking for cheap, there's more scope for reducing costs by skimping on the battery, which increases chance of there being def
Re:In Soviet Russia (Score:5, Insightful)
No.
The worst that could happen (and quite possibly will now) is that the airlines seize this opportunity to make passengers' travel even more unpleasant than it already is by banning or confiscating people's iPods. I wouldn't put it past them at all.
It would be amusing to see a mass boycott of all the airlines by all travellers until they learn to stop being such officious pricks. The way they behave towards passengers is not much better than animals might expect from the live cattle export trade.
The sad thing is that we have largely allowed ourselves to be cowed by this treatment.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)