Denmark detects iBook design defect

Stephen Withers
Monday, 07 May 2007 03:53

Your IT - Home IT

Denmark's Consumer Complaints Board has determined that a power-related problem with the iBook G4 stems from a design defect, and that Apple must accept the return of computers showing this fault.

The problem is a tendency of year-old iBook G4s to lose power. Even though "thousands" of owners around the world had experienced the problem, Apple's position was that it was not a design defect and that the computers were out of warranty.

Various owners had restored their iBook to life by applying clamps or  fitting cardboard shims, and "This made the Consumer Complaints Board suspect that the problem was a design fault with which the computer was born," said board officials.

Independent electronics lab Delta was commissioned to examine a faulty iBook, and it found a broken soldered joint was the problem. (No great surprise there, as a mechanical fix for a electrical or electronic  problem normally suggests a poor connection of some kind.)

The important part of the findings was that the break was caused by internal movement occurring when the iBook is turned on and off. "It is a bit like a person dying a little bit every time he breathes because the cells break down.  In the same way, the computer dies a little every time you turn it on and off", says Frederik Boesgaard Navne, a lawyer for the Consumer Complaints Board.

Eventually, the joint breaks and the iBook won't start unless the connection is pressed together.

Board officials said Apple has settled a number of complaints in Denmark on the basis of the report, and "The question now is whether Apple is going to go on denying that there is a design fault in the same type of computer in the world outside Denmark’s borders."