Apple sued over exploding iPod Touch

Apple are really getting shoddy in their quality control.

hmm was thinking about a iphone, this has put me off a wee bit now, although my ipod hasn't blown up yet!!

mental distress?? did he lose his music library? kids tend to be really resilliant, so it sounds like the parents are going for anything they can get! I doubt that he would have lasting mental problems for the rest of his life
but i agree that they should sue for the physical injuries though!!

The use of the word "exploding" in this story (not just here, but everywhere) is typical journalistic hyperbole, meant to grab the reader's attention. A loud "pop" followed by intense heat inside of the pant leg does not constitute much of an explosion.
I guess "overheating iPod" does not attract as much attention as "exploding iPod".

"physical and mental conditions which will cause him to suffer pain, mental distress, emotional distress, and otherwise for the rest of his life."
what a joke, another ridiculous lawsuit!! They are just trying to get paid, will this ever stop????

Ridiculous lawsuit? so your solution would be to mark it up to a one time incident, ask for a new machine and forget about it? In the mean time Apple walks away unpunished. What about next time when it happens and a house with sleeping children is burnt to the ground and they all perish? These seemingly friviouls lawsuits are what drive change and public awarness. Imagine what would have happened if no one took GMC to task over their exploding pickup truck gastanks several years ago. $225,000 isn't much for a company as large as Apple, and that's only if the plantif wins the entire amount. But now millions of people will know of a very serious and potential deadly problem with these devises..

Don't be idiots, this kind of thing could absolutley scar a kid emotionally aside from the physical scars. Maybe not a 15 year old as much but I could see my nephew having issues over something like that for a long time.
A kid got 2nd degree burns. You really think it should go without any blame, punishment or compensation ?!

It was an explosion...all exploding batteries do not "explode" the way we think of explosions... they usually burst into extremely hot flame like this one.

hal9000, this isn't the strap on your "Buzz Lightyear" lunchbox falling off dude! this is a bursting battery that caused a fire and injury to someone! I agree with ivid and Helox, this had the potential to cause a fire in a house or apartment and kill someone...THINK BEFORE YOU COMMENT dude...

hold on a minute, ivid, if you look at my previous post i said that kids are resilliant, but also said that they deserved to be sued over the injury.

the burn is not going to scar, as it is a second degree burn, so will be two layers of skin blistered, but the skin is unlikely to be broken, hence no scarring!

mental distress for the rest of his life? no one knows till later in the day, so shouldn't be a matter for the courts......yet! physically injured? too right, go sue them!

Scary stuff. Are there any other possible external influences which could've caused the iPod to supposedly "explode"/burn? Sweat/condensation/compression perhaps?

I won't be keeping my IPT2g in my pocket any more.

It was hal's comments, sorry to lump eveyone in that statment...

The family should definitely sue Apple for the damages both for now and the future.
I get reminded of when I used to smoke cigarettes and had purchased a foreign made re-fillable butane lighter - no it was not made in China, but made in Spain. I kept the lighter on my desk at work - wooden desk and luckily I was there but the lighter just decided to spontaneously light up right there on the desk. I was able to put it out immediately as there was an ashtray nearby. At the time all I did was make sure to drain all of the butane fuel out of the lighter and I threw it away. But this definitely could have caused a fire if no one was around, the wooden desk being wonderful fuel for the fire. I felt it would have been impossible to sue anyone regarding this and no real damage had been done and there was a wittness present that saw the whole thing. It was just amazing and I never used the lighter again nor bought any more of these wonderful things. I am now a non smoker of 10 years plus.

spanish ligters rocks!

oh, sorry!

but how can you sue for something you're not sure will actually happen, in respect of the mental aspect?

Statute of limitations is what in this case? or State. I am sure he would not be able to sue say if in his 30's he suffered mental distress related to the incident.

225K...yeah, that's about right. The kid's a born loser if he'll suffer mental and emotional stress over this. What a pansy. And people wonder why the world thinks we Americans are weak.

hmmmm. nylon spandex underwear? and what type of pant was he wearing? Could be something to do with static electricity causing the issue more than the iPod itself.

that would be a good point jake, if the battery was uncovered! so i'm not too sure how the battery would expl0de with out it liturally touching cloth(excuse the pun!) to gather the electricity??(if that makes sense?)

chances are it was probably a real hot day and the battery has had enough!

either that or it was a sony battery??

This might not be Apples fault though. There are plenty of reasons why an iPod Touch explodes. How do you know that the kid hadnt jailbroken his ipod and hacked it to run faster than it was designed to? Lots of kids in my school jailbreak their iPods. Theres a hack you can do to overclock the CPU in the iPod to run faster and that could be why the iPod overheated. I tried it once ran a game and after a few minutes my ipod was very hot. Also it doesnt mention what he was doing with the ipod before it exploded How do you not know he just overclocked the CPU then put it in his pocket and then it exploded. After all ipods have no way to cool themselves thats why they are underclocked before they leave the factory.

mental distress?? emotional distress?? Arnt they both basicly the same thing? What sort of emotional distress could an ipod exploding really have on a teenager? i could understand emotional and mental distress if it exploded and killed his dog or cat or anybody he knows but not if it just burned his leg. Im 15 and if my iPod Touch exploded in my pocket it wouldnt be mentally or emotionally distressing for me i'd just never buy an iPod again (Well an iPod Touch anyways). It seems to me that the family are just being greedy thinking they could get more money if they mentioned that but I'm not saying that they dont deserve money for something like this happening I'm just saying they should be getting enough to pay any medial bills and a refund for the iPod

And before anybody asks I'm not a fan of Apple or working for them i just think its cruel for people to presume that its Apple's fault when it could just be misuse of the product

"Plenty of reasons why an I-pod Touch explodes." hahahahahahahaha.

I think Apple has joined Al-queda and is making I.E.S.D. 's, Improvsied Explosive Sound Devices'. They should be put on a terrorists watch list.

"Plenty of reasons why an I-pod Touch explodes.", that's too funny.

I had my own TV repair shop for 8 years and I never worked on anything or have seen anything that could cause so much damage and was so small. These things could be used as fuses for bombs.

I can't stand Apple or anything they sell, I hate the whole ideology and stupidity of their products and commercials and the arrogance of a lot of people who use these products.

Imagine, debating whether someone should be compensated because their IPod went up in flames and burned them. It must have happened pretty quick if you couldn"t get it out of your pocket or just dropped it.

Good thing he wasn't sleeping with his headphones on.

Why does He have a iPod in his pocket in school?

Maybe he was a suicide-ipod-bomber Great question!

Whoops I ment why an iPod Touch WOULD explode

Im not debating that Im just saying it might not be Apple's fault i just think its a bit evil to blame a company thats been producing good products for around 30 years straight away with out considering that the product could have been misused or damaged and besides i find it a bit strange that it mentions he never tried to take the ipod out instead he ran to the bathroom and took his pants off if it was me i wouldnt care where i was that i wouldve pulled the ipod out straight after the pop that way if it caught fire i could just drop it on the ground and save myself from burning. Also if the ipod was on fire wouldnt some1 notice the smoke like a teacher

Look im not trying to point fingers here but dont you think its unfair to blame the manufacturer straight away? After all your only doing this because you hate the company and believe me i did too about 2 years ago until i bought an ipod classic and realised that they just want to make products that look good and you dont need a manual to use it after all id take a macbook with the one buttom mouse and the 2000 euro price tag over my current laptop running the bloated windows vista any day so before you say alot of crap about apple find one of your friends who has an ipod and try using it you never know you might like it

I'd say that could even be teenage hormones and a pretty girl.

Not if it was real hot. He may have felt it too hot too touch. Young people's hands are as tough as old farts like me.

I hooked an I pod to my sound system. It sounds like crap. That's just not Ipod but all MP3. I don't like Ipod's. I was given one and gave it back. I purchased an MP3 player that plays anything really really cheap. I build my own computers and have built every computer I have ever owned. Apple's are for technical people who run less technical programs. They are incpable of running any of tjhe CAD programs I run so they are useless. If they cannot run CAD then they are useless in the manufacturing industry. Are you typing on an Ipod,does it have spell check, or does Apple really have a 1 Buttom mouse.

If you use a good MP3 encoder such as LAME at standard settings (high bitrate), mp3 files will sound so close to the original that most people will be unable to hear the difference for most music even on fairly costly Hi-Fi systems.

There must be something wrong with your mp3 files.

Scott LC 290 Tube Amplfier , Matching Scott Pre-Amplifier, Tapered Quarter wave tubes, Miller Kreisel Subwoofer. It's not my system and I have tried all types of MP3. The line level output is so low on a IPod that when brought up to decent line level it distorts. MP3's played through CD's of course sound better. On my Onkyo system with the same speaker set up (except there are 5 more speakers for 7.1 Surround, the same applies).

Of course, if your one of those people who think CD's sound better than Vinyl (forget about scratching issues) then whatever. CD's at best are missing much information in the midrange level. This is well documented and I am not going to play teacher to anyone, who would want that.

MP3's recorded well do sound good but generations have missed out on the 3d presence of analog music, the front to back experience that allowed you to place musicians in the room they played in (not talking about the highly mixed stuff). Left to right is easy, it's front to back presence that does not exist in MP3, not enough information. DVD-Audio would have solved the problem but most people don't know there is a problem. All music is analog at the speakers.

Try listening to the Gold CD of "Dark Side of the Moon" compared to an MP3 version. The experience is completely different. It's like watching "Lord of the Rings" on a wristwatch and trying to compare that to an 100" 1080i Projector. But you know this already.

Yes, I'm definitely one of those people!

I think we could discuss this and mp3 quality a lot without agreeing on much, but this thread doesn't seem like the right place to do it.

Yeah but still if it was 2 hot 2 touch wouldnt u still pull it out because ud rather it burned ur fingers for like a few seconds rather than burning ur leg for alot longer

Im sorry but if its mp3 why not try a lossless format like Apple Lossless or even WAV (which is just a stream copy of whats on a CD) and besides it might have been the cable u were using because i plug my ipod into my stereo system and it sounds great.

You must be talking about the MacBook or iMac because im pretty sure their not designed for running programs like CAD You should try a Mac Pro i heard their very powerful

No im not typing on an iPod im using my laptop besides whats that got to do with this thread and yeah apply really has a 1 button mouse

That or he could be using the MP3 encoder built in to iTunes which sounds bad at bitrates below 192 Kb/s. But i do agree with the fact Lame sounds great at high bitrates it even sounds great at 128Kb/s if you set it at high quality

I think my system is above the "fairly costly Hi Fi system". That's that problem. With crappy cheap ear plug buds, IPODS sound O.K.

I agree with you about the ear buds that come with the iPod. I have to say with a product that costs around 200 euro in Ireland should include a lot better ear buds after all the Creative Zen X-Fi comes with alot better ear buds and its 60 euro less.

its funny i plugged my ipod into my computer the other day and it turned blank so i waited a second then i felt something burning me and it was my ipod, something hot had come out the side and burned my hand did feel like sueing?no it scabbed over and i was fine.... omg but im soooooo emo now and and cut myself all the time...not i even bought another ipod...greedy family

I do agree that demanding that much in damages is going overboard. I'm sure there are a greater number of serious burn incidents from hot beverage spillages than from self-destructing batteries in consumer products. But then again, this hasn't stopped people from suing restaurants over their burns (e.g. this famous example).

Let's also not forget that fires and overheating are not just limited to handheld products. In the past couple of years, I've spoken to people who had an electric blanket fire, TV fire, Macbook overheating (battery shorted out, but no fire) and a colleague at work who lost the content of his basement after his washing machine went up in flames. No one here tried suing the manufacturers, let alone contacted the media and the only claim made was against the home insurance to over the damage caused.

Just to add a bit of information as an MD, a 2nd degree burn can occasionally result in scarring if it's deep enough or hide in parts 3rd degree liesons.

That being said, I really find it difficult to understand why some people feel this suit is exaggerated; Apple is a huge company that sells millions of these gadgets worldwide - even if 1 out of 10000 is defective, it could result in hundreds if not thousands of people getting injured. 150K Euros is not alot of money to ask for physical and emotional damages, I would have expected this to be much more; the financial claims in any trial always correlate to the defendant's financial status and earnings due to the malpractice at hand.