Dangerous Apple Power Adapters? 240
An anonymous reader writes "Even with all these exploding Dell notebooks and other notebook safety problems, Apple has seemed relatively immune. Every once in a while, some odd thing came along, but it seemed like relatively calm waters. Not anymore — Apple's notebook power adapters appear to be the source of some serious safety concerns. Every iBook and PowerBook user should read this and keep a close eye on their adapter — the adapters suffer from very poor design including wires that seem prone to short out and burn and zero short circuit protection."
Re:Not poor design (Score:3, Insightful)
No facts (Score:4, Insightful)
How many is "many"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Blogs = Science? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not poor design (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:No facts (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field (A) multiply it by the probable rate of failure (B) then multiply the result by the average out of court settlement (C). A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of the recall, we don't do one.
However, with computers, there's usually no out of court settlements, as they can usually just replace the part, with no harm done to the user. Therefore, it's very rare that you will ever see a recall on computer equipment. It's almost always cheaper to fix the ones that come back with defects, and leave the rest in the field.
An anonymous reader? (Score:5, Insightful)
"I'm currently starting up an exciting new company, Zink Foods. We are poised to revolutionize your perception of "healthy food" by combining taste and nutrition in a completely unprecedented way. Finally, real food, real taste, real nutrition!"
This sounds like a real expert that we should listen to? I guess it's not that hard to use slashdot to drive up your pageviews afterall.
Re:caveat emptor (Score:1, Insightful)
Many of the factories in Taiwan & China that manufacture and assemble the consumer electronics devices that you strap to your belt have ISO 9001 certifications, which gives you an idea of what their QA processes are like. Even with such a cert., you will almost certainly get a few devices that fail during their lifetime, so all of your bullshit about shoddy work done by outsourced manufacturing is way off base.
I don't know why I even took the time to respond, but you are a moron.
You can only abuse your suppliers for so long... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, there is an option (c) that basically says they will cut just a few too many corners so that they can only just meet the bare minimum requirements and stick it back to their abusive customer. This is, at least in part, what you're seeing today.
TANSTAAFL...
Re:Look at Country of Origin (Score:4, Insightful)
Tom
Re:Guy is not an EE (Score:3, Insightful)
If the author believes that the power supply has ineffective current limiting or that it is a fire hazard, the complete circumstances should be reported to the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the test agency whose approval mark appears on the power supply. That's the way to resolve a suspected safety problem. Griping accomplishes nothing.
Re:Look at Country of Origin (Score:3, Insightful)
Whatever put you under that impression? Many of Apple's machines are made by the same manufacturing company as Dell's machines and many of their products use the same key components (like their monitors, etc...). Apple's are just generally designed more thoughtfully. This is even true of the power adapters, which often have niceties like built in cord storage.