Apple Sics Lawyers on SomethingAwful 512
bheer writes "Apple has sent a threatening letter to SomethingAwful about a post in its forums that describes how to fix the overheating in some MacBook Pros by applying thermal paste properly, according to a post on Gizmodo. The post includes a brief excerpt from Apple's Service Source Manual which Apple wants removed. Gizmodo continues: 'the real problem [is] that the image shows the extremely sloppy manufacturing process that is causing the MacBook Pro to run at temperatures as high as a 95 degrees Celcius under full load.'"
Apple goes after people posting service manuals (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Actually... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why is this news? (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting (Score:2, Interesting)
Dell Inspiron 6400/E1505 Service Manual [dell.com]
Couldn't they just provide a link to the Apple manuals online?
Re:Actually... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, they're going after a site with Mother Teresa with a Broken Finger and Pizza the Hut on the front page. The one that reviewed the Vore [somethingawful.com] RPG (NSFW... RNSFW), and has a running section called The Horrors of Porn [somethingawful.com] (NSF...NM). Going after them is a lot like shouting at a woodpecker to stop bashing their skulls into a tree, especially with the Legal Threats [somethingawful.com] section so prominently featured on the front page.
Don't get me wrong, I love Something Awful. They're one of the few sites that believe in truth in advertising. I just wouldn't expect them to respond to legal threats in anything other than a deragatory comedy fashion. I expect a review soon that gives Apple's threatening legal letter a score of -48. Worst Legal Threat Letter Ever.
Actually, technically, they're going after the forums [wikipedia.org]. 'cause those people on the forums really listen.
it's not even correct info (Score:1, Interesting)
The paste itself isn't supposed to be a big gooey heatsink. It's supposed to fill the microscopic gaps between surfaces so that thermal transfer is maximized for a surface area.
Putting globs of heat sink paste here just makes an insulator. You should put a very tiny amount on the surface, and scrape off all but the thinnest possible layer. Any place where the copper of the heatsink can directly contact the surface of the chip, you should prefer that contact over any paste. Ideally you only want the paste where there are gaps. By "gaps" we're talking mainly about fractions of a micron.
That said, I admit that it is entirely possible that a big
Never respond to a letter threatening to sue you, until the letter actually gives the docket number of the pending suit. Until then, it might as well be the guys grocery list. When they describe the evidence that they plan to take to a judge, and they stipulate the precise section of law that they claim protects them, and when a court has accepted this proposal, only then do you respond to it, and even then, only in a manner which is consistent with the legal process and rules of evidence.
Re:Actually... (Score:2, Interesting)
Luckily law is easier to understand than engineering (but harder to get into due to their unions^H^H^H^H^H^H bar associations). Any properly managed company can keep its lawyers in check easily enough. Sounds like Apple has some management issues.
Of course, the easiest place to point whenever you talk about management issues and Apple is Steve Jobs' huge ego. In this case, that may not be too far wrong. (Jobs is probably too busy writing nasty letters to six year-old girls with Ipod suggestions to supervise them.)
Re:Actually... (Score:3, Interesting)
All you can really conclude is that Asustek has poor quality controls, regardless of the brand under contract.
It has *EVERYTHING* to do with fair use (Score:5, Interesting)
Wrong, it has *EVERYTHING* to do with fair use, as evidenced by the letter from Apple:
By playing the copyright card, Apple themselves are making this about copyright, and thus (by definition) fair use is a factor.
Note that NOWHERE in the letter that Apple sent, do they mention trade secrets (which is what you believe is going on here.)
Re:Take your own picture (Score:2, Interesting)
By the way Apple can't even AFFORD to owns its own manufacturing plant. Get your facts straight.
Re:First revs? whats with Apple (Score:2, Interesting)
Seriously. They contract out both design and manufacturing to the lowest bidder. Their systems are riddled with buggy drivers. Their printers spam your system with buggy updaters that crash all the time... I can't tell you the number of "hpupdmon.exe cannot be closed" I get on clients computers at shutdown time. They are overpriced, run slowly, and are hardly ever stable.
Avoid HP like the plague. Their Lazerjets I hear are still good, and there was nothing wrong with the HP iPod, but those are the only things from the company you should even consider touching.
So allow me to be the one to say "Don't buy that HP. It's an HP. Wait for the QC issues to be fixed in about 20 years."
Re:Actually... (Score:5, Interesting)
When everything Apple happened mostly in Cupertino, if Steve Jobs got a whim that something needed to be changed right that second, he could just take a golf cart over to the other campus, bark out some orders and probably %80 of them could understand the mans english.
Now he has to make a call to someone else. That person takes his orders to "make a plexiglass window with cool LED's" and translates them to "Blossoming lotus spreads its petals for the bees inside" That bad translation gets out to the manufacturing floor where %2 of the people *might* understand steves direct order and totally fuck it up. The other %98 percent say "That's a fucked up translation" and goes about building the machine like all the other machines being ordered on the line.
Finally, it takes a week or two for the first production run machines to arrive. QA back at ASUS realizes there's a %30 failure rate, but figure they'll take their chances on RMA's and refurbs. Apple just gets the cream of the crop machines to look at before the entire production run starts shipping.
The new machines are in stores, people are buying them not realizing %30 of them are ticking time bombs waiting to fail. Some do, folks get pissed off and return them.
There is some value in having your manufacturing 2 blocks away from your office. You have very tight nit control over quality, and changes to the assembly line can be done on a daily basis.
Finally, the reason i'm making this argument, this used to be part of the price of buying an apple. Apples used to be made to very high standards, at least compared to screwdriver shop PC's. I'm still a PC fan, you can't beat the satisfaction of "rolling your own" and saving a buck or two in the process, but that was never apples market. Apples market has always been "I just want to plug it in and it works" You can't have that guarantee with the shoddy overseas craftsmanship happening now.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, inducing someone to break a contract is a tort.
Benefiting from someone's decision to break a contract, in general, is neither illegal nor a tort. If someone who signed an agreement with Apple regarding the service manual submitted the picture to SA to contribute to the discussion, that someone may have breached a contract and become liable, but SA is likely not. To be liable, in general, SA would have had to
1. have knowledge of that contractual relationship
2. intend to induce a party to the contract to breach the contract
3. lack any privilege to induce such a breach, and
4. caused damage to the party against whom the breach occurred
You're going to have a hard time proving elements 1, 2 and 4. Especially item 4, since you would not be arguing about direct damages, but rather indirect and/or consequential damages.
Your doctor and patient hypothetical does not prove your point. How can the patient sue the newspaper under the contract when the newspaper isn't part of the contract? It's a poor example because the right to privacy and medical privacy laws are layered over the whole problem, and have nothing to do with the SA/Apple situation.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:3, Interesting)
a) Apple is not breaking any laws
b) The heating issue is not causing any systems to catch fire nor is anyone claiming that it will
c) It is not disclosing any other public danger
Re:Why is this news? (Score:2, Interesting)
If you violate the "Statute of frauds" in the definition given by the link, then you aren't the person who signed the contract. You are not in fact the writer of the contract, because no such contract actually exists in writing.
The Statute of frauds, which apparently is going to vary from state to state, says that certain contracts must be in writing.
Are you suggesting that Apple violated the statute? This seems unlikely, as v1 has shown that there does indeed exist such a written contract.
So, I am somewhat confused. Could you explain how the statute of frauds applies in this context?
Is the advice in the article sound? (Score:2, Interesting)
Apple had slathered on far too much thermal grease, he found that using a more modest amount dropped his MacBook Pro's temperatures by [a few] degrees
Before: Running at 95 degrees Celcius, and
After: Running at 93(?) degrees Celcius
I would certainly not open up a laptop to change this.
At any rate, what can happen? You may get some bit errors (Soft errors) at 125(?) degrees Celcius, but no damage to anything. Aluminum melts at over 700 degrees Celcius.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:4, Interesting)
In theory, they are illegally using one existing monopoly (the printing of apple service manuals) to gain an unfair advantage in another market (repair and other service on apple computers)
Re:Fair use? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I've lost all respect for Apple. (Score:3, Interesting)
Nobody reading your post actually believes you own an iBook. This isn't even a good troll. Yes, this action by Apple is irritating and stupid, but saying it is tantamount to subverting the first amendment and the constitution is hyperbole to say the least. There is some real subverting going on against the constitution these days and I suggest you place your ranting efforts against those.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:3, Interesting)
So, the best course of action for me would be to anonymously spread this information as far and wide as I possibly can, after which I can use this now-public knowledge with very little risk of being caught; and even if I'm caught, I can claim that I heard it from the Internet.
I absolutely refuse to obey any law that forbids me from utilizing information I have. Doesn't mean I couldn't pretend to obey it, thought.
I guess we're about due for another revolution... This Intellectual Property mess is starting to resemble the divine rights of rulers of old, in that only the IP holders have actual rights and everyone else has whatever those IP holders will graciously grant them out of the goodness of their hearts - or would if they had goodness or hearts. Guiljotines solved the previous problem, maybe they would solve this one too ?
Re:Hot cooler good, cool cooler bad (Score:2, Interesting)
Here's exactly why Apple constantly defends it's confidential or internal information. A picture like the one currently circulating from the Service manual leaks out, associated by a post from someone who thinks they know something about computers, and with little more than rumor and hearsay, and their little science experiment using one computer, they conclude they must know more about the design of Apple's computers than Apple's engineers do. This information starts circulating through major tech sites and the majority of people whose familiarity with thermal paste is recalling how much they've put on the AMD processors of their homebrewed systems, which isn't nearly as much. It's FUD from people that don't really know what they are talking about. [b]It seems like a lot but it's actually the same amount as used in the previous lines of PowerBooks, which never had an overheating issue or negative rumor mill circulation of such behaviour.[/b] The only reason this is an issue is people that want the latest, greatest and most powerful machines don't understand that the price for that technology is a machine that runs hotter overall than their older, less powerful system they are comparing it to.
Here's the thing, the systems are designed so that a significant amount of the heat is [b]supposed[/b] to dissipate through certain parts of the case, primarily the bottom, but also above the keyboard, where hands rarely are through typical use. This is an efficient design that allows the fans to run quieter and more efficiently, and not like a jet plane taking off, like some other portable computers do. Powerbooks have had this exact same design yet ran cooler overall because of the less powerful processors. Yet they still get hot, especially if you upgrade the RAM (ram slots on the bottom of the case) and run anything off an optical disc (play a cd or a dvd movie). These computers have not been laptops in quite awhile and the manual specifically states the bottom will get hot and not to be in contact with it for any extended length of time.
If you are doing anything to change that behaviour, you are trapping the heat inside the machine. Sure, it feels cooler but what's gonna happen when the CPU burns out in 6 months and these guys send it in to AppleCare for repair and it's discovered that they voided the warranty by removing the majority of the thermal paste that was supposed to be there? Please, everyone that's stating that this is too much thermal grease, as if they know something about it: do a little actual research, compare this process to the Powerbooks that came before and maybe get a job working as an Apple hardware designer so that you have some credibility when spouting off your 'expert' testimonial.
Seriously, this is a prime example of why internet sites have a hard time gaining credibility as responsible journalists, there was almost no fact-checking involved in determining the validity or accuracy of these claims that there's an 'overheating' issue with MacBook Pros, several sites just picked up the story and ran with it.
Re:Fair use? (Score:3, Interesting)