Claiming that the iPod Nano has a widespread propensity for scratching easily, lawyers this week filed a class action suit against Apple Computer on behalf of those who have purchased the diminutive music player.
Claiming that the iPod Nano has a widespread propensity for scratching easily, lawyers this week filed a class action suit against Apple Computer on behalf of those who have purchased the diminutive music player.
I wish people were as tolerant towards Microsoft.. Windows has a widespread propensity for being infestated with spyware/viruses/etc…
No it hasn’t, that is just a rumour
lol There have been class action suits versus MS in the past! I remember we had an opportunity to claim some cash out of a 1 Billion $ suit. I don’t remember what my dad did with the papers though.. It was only like 100$ for combined Office and Windows softwares. still not bad….. I’ll ask him what happened
I find that this suit is unfair though, Although I don’t have a nano, suiing becuase some expensive toy scratched easily? If I spent a lot of cash to get a nano, I’d make sure to treat it well!!!!
–ZaNkY
don’t drop your Nano on the floor, don’t put in the same pocket as your car keys, and stop step on your nano.. then it’s likely to get less scratched.
Besides – if it’s too scratched you can get it replaced for free…
typical lawyers…
and keep it out of reach of your toddlers. But a lawsuit? Sheesh, why? is Apple refusing to accept it as a warrenty claim or something? Or get it at wal-mart instead, they take anything back.
I am wondering if the new iPod (the one that plays the videos) has the same problem? I’m wondering if they use the same processes to produce them, and therefore have the same problem?
Apple should talk to Motorola. My mobile (cell) phone shares my pocket with my car keys and house keys, and I chuck it around the place, and it only has 1 small scratch after 6 months of use.
i have one thing to say to these whingers…
f–k off!!!
oh did you scratch it…poor diddums.
I don’t know where you are coming from with this post.. but please… go back there.
It works both ways….
“I have one thing to say those Apple fans!
f–k off!!!
Oh, buying shitty product because cause it’s cool!”
Your not adding anything to the conversation, Apple isn’t the holyy grail of everything. It’s divine or special. It’s just another corporation that can brainwash idiots like you to buy their shitty products that sell only because of marketing (nothing wrong with that btw, just stating my view on how Apple products are sold),
Not all apple products are “shitty” but I would agree with what you are saying in principle.
Fans are by definition … well fanatical. Apple has more than it’s fair share of fans, perhaps due to it’s marketing, but in part due to the fact that it can and does make some very nice products that people like.
I’m writing this on a PowerBook, so I can’t pretend to be unbiased in my views. I have owned many computers and several laptops. This is the best I’ve used. That doesn’t make me a Fan, I’m just stating my view. Apple’s marketing is not effecting my opinion, I simply enjoy using this computer. And its case doesn’t scratch by the way!
When a product is flawed, it’s only right that the consumers rights are protected, even if the consumers are dumb sheep that want to look cool and can’t tolerate a scratch on the screen of their latest little toy.
The problem is that these devices are more than tools. You see.. if it was viewed as a tool, it would be alright if it scratched up a bit as long as it still works. Some people buy iPods to pose on the bus with it, so it’s not a tool to play music, it’s a …. prop. Another fashion accessory that tells us something about the guy that shelled out the money for it.
Apple have marketed it this way. They have marketed it to these sort of users. They talk about it as though it’s cool. So I think if it scratches up, it’s no longer cool. And if I was one of the posers on the bus who bought a Nano to impress da chicks on da bus (or something like that) then I wouldn’t be delighted if it looked like I was carrying a scratched up piece of plastic with a cord sticking out of it.
They want to make money for themselves. Nano owners are merely the most recent excuse. Stupid suits like this is why the tech industry is the 3rd most sued in he US.
“…the diminutive music player.”
Now that was beautiful!
Obviously some people expect little black shiny things (like the iPod nano) to remain pristine and flawless forever, no matter what they do. Shoot, I’ve already put a few hairline scratches on the shiny back of my 4Gig iPod Nano (black). Am I ranting and raving about it?
I’ve also left the plastic covering over the front of my nano, to preserve it as long as possible, until I buy an “InvisibleShield” for it.
I know the black nanos show fingerprints and scratches more than the white ones and I would have got a white 4Gig for that reason, but… the ONLY place that had 4gig nanos *AT ALL* was this one Best Buy in Phoenix, AZ. And not white ones… just black. And not the Apple Store… oh no… the very company that MAKES the nanos can’t keep them in stock, but you can get them elsewhere (if you’re lucky).
Common sense seems to have left this planet, when it comes to some people. I mean, would these same people be suing Apple over this ridiculous issue, if Apple threatened to stop making iPods because of it… or close up shop all together? It might teach them a lesson…
Or maybe these idiots are the once who will look for ANY excuse to bash and hurt Apple… or get a dollar. It’s insanity, I tell ya. And it needs to stop.
Now, as far as bad iBook/PowerBook batteries and flaws with computers and such that are genuinely Apple’s turf… THAT I have no problem with. Sue ’em til they learn!
But this whole iPod Nano issue… it’s just utter nonsense and I hope it gets thrown out of court or… better yet, Apple gets money from the plaintiffs instead for them brinig such a silly issue to court! Ha!
Apple thought the ipod dead battery issue was a non issue too until they lost the class action suit.
The fact of the matter is that the Nano is easily scratched. People who have been very careful not to scratch it has still managed to do it.
They advertise the nano as 1000 songs in your pocket. Maybe it says in the fine print that “you can’t have the nano in your pocket because then it’ll get scratched beyond recognition”.
if it werent apple and say microsoft what would you say?
Correct me if I am wrong, but any portable media device with a LCD screen scratches easily.
If I put my PSP in my pocket with my keys would it scratch as easy as an iPod? You bet.
I have owned 6 iPods since they came out. iPods are something you cannot live without once you get one, but never have they been a quality product. The previous 5 that I owned had harddisk failure about 14 mo into owning them (Warranty WAS 1yr., now its 6mo.). At least the nanos are flash based and that won’t happen.
Oh yeah, and all my iPods got scratched to hell. Wether it was the LCD or the shiny metal backside, none of it withstands scratches.
Never ever buy the first rev. of any product or you’ll get disappointed, wait for rev B or C.
And yes, I’ve been using Macs for years.
ALL of the cars I have ever owned have scratched easily. ALL of the electronic equipment I have ever owned have scratched easily. In fact, all of the electronic equipment I own (Canon Digital Rebel, HP 48GX calculator, Motorola Cell phone V60) have LCD screens that I have had to protect with LCD screen plastic protectors. My Motorola phone LCD screen got scratched so I bought these LCD screen protectors and put them on all LCD screens I have (as well as my wife’s phone and son’s phone).
– Mark
Maybe, just maybe, they put a special alunium (magnesium?) case edition of iPod and dub it “iPod Lawyer Edition”. Add a sapphire glass too while you’re at it. Make all lawyers in the world buy this.
You mean like the iPod Mini?
This suit is an unbelievable crock of sh*t. You put your Nano in your pocket and it gets scratched, and somehow that’s Apple’s fault. Its a portable device! Its going to be subject to normal wear and tear. The lawyers who filed this should be sanctioned big time.
Yay way to go…kick apple and job’s stinky a$$….for releasing a cheap quality product…
What the hell do people expect will happen when they put their Nano in a pocket along with keys and coins? Are people effing brain-dead nowadays?
Hell, I even keep my cellphone in a different pocket from my car keys, which are designed to have pretty scratch-resistant screens.
I agree with you on this, people are getting to be a little brain dead. I blame the media.
Didn’t Jobs have the Nano is his pocket on the unveiling event and pull it out to demonstrate it? I wonder if he had keys in his pocket?
There’s actually some truth to this whole thing. I know someone with a nano, and thirty minutes after taking it out of the box, it was notably scratched. I was with him the entire time, and all he did was hold it, set it down on the table, hand it to me to play with, and then put it in hi *empty* jacket packet for a total of like 5 minutes. I had heard about the scratching, so I asked him to look at it, to see if there was any evidence of what I thought was a load of crap. Yes, Virginia, there is a scratch problem. So, I decided to do some more testing on my own. (He said that he didn’t mind, since he was going to get it replaced under the warrentee if it got too scratched.)
First thing I tried was gently rubbing the side of it with the same cloth I use on my glasses (it’s a lens cloth from walmart, works rather well.) Yes, there were noticable more scratches in the corner after I finished. I tried felt, and then the cotton cloth from my shirt. All of them left fine scratches, except the cotton, which really seemed to scratch the hell out of it. I had my friend come over, and asked him if there was one more thing I could try: I wanted to rub the side of it along the carpet for 5 seconds. I was gentle about it, trying to simulate normal wear and tear. Man, the thing looked like shit when I was done.
My friend has sense decided that sending it back under warrentee is too much, so he did what he did with his old ipod: he bought some large tie-dye stickers, and cut them to fit the nano, and made a home made skin for it. Over the screen (which I’d been careful to keep pristine) he put a screen protector from his palm-pilot, cut to fit. (That went on before the skin, so you couldn’t tell it wasn’t stock. Now, he has a sweet looking nano, with no worries about scratches! However, there is some truth to all this.
Of course there’s some truth to this. If there weren’t and this thing didn’t scratch any worse than other LCD mp3 players, then why are companies making scratch-resistant products specifically for the Nano?
http://www.macminute.com/2005/10/13/ipod-nano-scratches
Of course, Apple pundits will scream that there are no problems with this device, because afterall … we all know Apple is perfect.
so you scratch it, ……… Big frickin whoopdy-do.
If I buy something and I don’t want it scratched I take care of it.
If I scratch it I don’t go and whine to the manufacturer because I scratched it, I don’t call Okley and b!t(h because I dropped my sunglasses in the gravel.
why should this be any different
deal with it people.
The problem with the nano wasn’t that it scratched in general, it’s that it scratched with VERY minimal effort. People reported putting their nanos in their pockets with NOTHING in them and them getting scratched. It’s not people mistreating their nanos, it’s that some of them scratched just by looking at them.
“People reported putting their nanos in their pockets with NOTHING in them and them getting scratched”
Not wanting to sound like the RDF got to me, but I find that very hard to believe.
The next iPod will feature a back made out of minerals and a front made out of, as someone already suggested, synthetic sapphire.
It’ll be called the iPod ceramic and will be sold at the bargain price of $999.-
There there, no more scratches
What does Apple have to do to get any criticism from the fanboy…If they weren’t so irrational then maybe Apple would produce products that might even be better. Most every other Company can produce portable devices , phones , mp3 players etc etc that don’t scratch the first week U have them. Its not even as if its an isolated case…fill in previous design error and fanboy excuses…
Doubtless, when Apple is forced to actually produce something fit for the purpose the fanboys will go into raptures about the cool new feature… scratch resistant screen , Go and buy one and chuck the old scratched version in the bin,lol.
An artist at my work recently bought an iPod Nano. Having heard the rumors, he coddled it like a mother would coddle a newborn. Yet after two weeks of being toted around in an optical grade chamois bag, it is more scratched up than my cellphone (which I abuse horribly). There are even clearly swirling scratches around the scroll wheel, and he doesn’t have fingernails. A plastic so soft that it can be scratched by skin? Users have reported that within weeks they can become so scratched that text on the screen is illegible.
While many posters here are dismissing this as a natural part of modern gadgets, there is a real manufacturing flaw here. Apple used a grade of plastic that, while pleasing to the hand, is far too soft for real use. I can’t seem to find the link, but the plastic that the Nano is made with clearly should not be used in the outer coating of any consumer device.
Apple sells the Nano as a sexy, sleek uber-toy. Yet due to a negligent plastic choice, which is compounded by choice of color and scale, Nanos quickly lose their main selling point. Again, they’re selling these things because people can’t help but find them irresistable. You expect that to last for at least a little while. When that attraction ends so quickly due to a major manufacturing defect that should have been easy to spot, you can’t help but feel swindled.
Sure, cars can scratch too, but if you paid a premium for a BMW and within a month of normal highway driving the windshield was so scratched you couldn’t see through it, you would demand your money back. Or a fix. Or at least an acknowledgement of the problem. Apple has pretended that the issue doesn’t exist. Unfortunately when a company does that, the only recourse left is to sue.
I believe it. I saw a nano today, the display model at a local CompUSA. Never been in someone’s pocket, just out being held in people’s hands. All scuffed up – lots of very fine scratches that just destroy the nano’s slick, shiny black look. Looked awful. The 4th gen, 20 GB iPod color next to it was in much better shape (and had been on display much longer). And I held the 4G model at various angles to really check to see whether it was scratched as much as the nano (white does not show them as much as black); it wasn’t, nowhere near. The 4G iPod looked pretty good, the nano looked tired and worn.
There *is* something wrong with the polymer that Apple selected for the nano. Someone else asked the same question I have – will the new 5G video iPods have the same issue?
STOP BUYING STUFF YOU HAVEN’T RESEARCHED! Sorry for the all caps, but sometimes you have to yell to get through to people.
Maybe the whole US should form a class action suit against these people for encouraging badly thought out products to get them to market quick
.
If you ask me. The only thing wrong with the Nano is that silly color screen… I don’t want to spend $200 to break a color LCD in my key pocket (that’s the name of that small pocket on your jeans, you’d never fit your keys in it
). So why didn’t they put those nice, sturdy, non-color screens on them? Because people are stupid and they buy things based on looks not craftsmenship..
A color screen in no way helps you navigate a text play list, and there’s almost no reason to keep pictures on your digital jukebox — it’s as stupid as bell bottom pants.
I still don’t think they have a right to a class action suit though. That’s what you get for being an early adopter… It’d be silly to expect every first-gen product to not have some major defficiency.
As far as scratching the case though. There they’re just being panzies…
Sometimes you have to yell to get through to people. …Because people are stupid and they buy things based on looks not craftsmenship…it’s as stupid as bell bottom pants….That’s what you get for being an early adopter… It’d be silly to expect every first-gen product to not have some major defficiency…As far as scratching the case though. There they’re just being panzies…
Wow. This problem is really bringing out the best in the OSnews community.
This sounds almost as stupid as the lady who sued McDonalds for 4 million because the coffee she poured on herself gave hurs burns – claiming that she did not know that coffee is hot. And she won!
Only in the USA. God bless us all.
I don’t think anyone expects a device made out of plastic to survive constant abuse without any cosmetic damage. If it was just scratched when dropped or put in a pocket with keys and coins then I don’t think this class action suit would exist.
From what I’ve heard the Nano is getting badly scratched even when people are careful with them. A bit of pocket lint or slightly rough cloth shouldn’t scratch the hell out of it. I’ve had a Rio Carbon for about 6 months, that’s made out of plastic and I haven’t been particularly careful with it, but it only has a couple of tiny scratches.
If other devices aren’t so easy to scratch then it’s clear that there’s a real flaw in the Nano’s construction. Whether that justifies a class action suit is another issue…
Some people’s may scratch easily…if you’re worried about it buy apples nanotubes. They actually work pretty well. If you can afford to shell out $250 for a music player, I’m betting you can afford $30 for some plastic sleeves. And for anyone wondering about the Nano’s durablilty, I had mine in my truck when it caught fire 2 weeks ago. It got a little melted and hosed with water. I popped it open a few days later, cleaned it and let it dry, recharged and voila! it works again. Even the half melted scroll wheel still works.
This is what it looked like before I cleaned it up:
http://mysite.verizon.net/hartsec/crispy/images/p1004243.jpg
So its not all bad
WOW, that is awesome….
Just to add my two cents. I have a IPOD nano, and it does straches easy, but I don’t think it’s anything unusuall. Its straches as easyly as having your glasses in a pocket
, or any other equpmnet…
As I said, just my 2 cents.
I like always to defend consumers from manufacturers greediness; but I don’t want also to harm those comopanies which feed the children of their workers.
For US market if you don’t like a product you have 30 days to return your product. So, anyone dissatissfied with the product I say RETURN IT. This class action suit will be appropriate in other countries, where you might get punched if you dare return your product to whome you bought it from.
I believe that’s 30 days if the product is unaltered. I’m sure scratches would count as altered… Just like wearing your new shoes on the street counts as altered.
And the customer is always right. When enough of them are as annoyed as they are here, the company is wrong.
Hate to tell you all this, but IT DOESN’T MATTER IF THE COMPANY INVOLVED IS CALLED APPLE. It is still wrong. Because its customers think it is.
Marketing and product management 101 is: this must not happen. Do whatever you have to do, but this must not happen.
Wow, this is absurd. Apple never said the nano wouldnt scratch.
I.D.I.O.T.S.
Apple makes all future models as carbon fiber based or brushed aluminum. Then they put a non-scratch cover plate over the screen.
They then sell these for $100 more and market them as the industrial tough models.
They then sell the current styles as they are and market them as their style line and point out that they scratch and will get fingerprints on them so if you don’t like this you purchase the industrial tough models.
Make the Industrial ones as BTO only.
I’m very suprised that a Nano would scratch. I know for a fact that a Nano (like all Apple products)is hand-carved from a solid billet of titanium by elderly master craftsmen high in the Swiss alps. In fact they are made by the same craftsmen that make expensive Swiss watches.
Some cynics claim that most of these expensive Swiss watches are actually mass produced and use $5 quartz movements manufactured in Asia. These horrible cynics also claim Apple make shoddy plastic products in cheap Chinese factories. I refuse to believe it.
The problem is gloss black shows scratches way more than white. Ever owned a black car? Ugh.
No comment aout the suit. My 2G Mini is an pristine as the day I bought it. Why? Because I bought a killer TrailVue case and treat it well.
All Apple iPods scratch super easy. (The mini a little less easy) soo scratching isn’t new. If there is a class action over this Apple owes 2/3rds of the market some dough, but not me… Because anything I pay $200 for is going to be well cared for. (Geez anything I pay $20 for).
Scatched LCDs are a fact of life. Unless you keep your PDA/MP3 player sealed in a lead-lined box or covered in wax 😉 it’s going to get damaged. How serious is this problem compared to, say: my scratched Palm, heavily scratched Sony Minidisc player’s screen, scuffed iPod or the front of my cheap Casio watch?
I think some of this people should visit Africa once.
I know, I know, it’s oversimplicistic and rethorical; but please, this is just too much.
We’re going a bit offside don’t you think? OK it’s not a crime to ask back money to the people we actually gave a lot or OUR money, and who constantly “steal” (please note the quotation marks!) from us by forcing us to buy everithing by the means of invasive advertising, but maybe we could avoid all this. How?
Trying to only buy what we really need and assuring ourself it’s exactly how we need it to be. Opinions?
on a side note: does Preview works in Konqueror?
A few peeps scrach their yuppy trinklet, move along people nothing to see here…
Do they have nothing better to do? So where does it say “Ipod will not never ever in no way even consider scratching”? Besides that, if you bought it to look at then why did you carry it around. You should have put it in a safe and never touched it. Stupid!
I have had an iPod mini since february or march. It actually has no scratches on the screen. I am surprised, since I don’t take particularly good care of it. I have dropped it twice that i can remember. I I never put it in jean pockets, but I put it in my sweatshirt pockets.
How the hell is it even possible to even do something like this.
I think it is up to the people that buys stuff to care for the tings they buy.
Is this what freedom in USA stands for.