[G4] Ipod Story

[sr ferenczy]

there has been 3rd party replacement batteries for the ipod for a while 
now (much longer than apple's service) and most are about 1/2 the price 
of the fruit.

"They agreed to provide this information, and said they had no problem 
telling users how to solve the problem. I, in turn, provided webspace 
and bandwidth for them. The bottom line: after two days of lies and 
false starts, and milking my institution's generosity by providing 
almost 100,000 downloads and 0.7 terabytes of data transfer, they NEVER 
posted any information about how to solve the problem that they 
promised to post. Their agenda seems clear, and that's sensationalism, 
melodrama, and attention. The full email exchange is here:"

http://das.doit.wisc.edu/neistatoriginal.txt

that quote from the guy at u of wisconsin's it department that 
originally hosted the website pretty much says it all. these guys were 
out for their 15 minutes and a bit of sensationalism. there were other 
options, and they chose not to explore them. as for apple's pricing on 
repairs-well, its the same reason i dont take my car back to the VW 
dealer after the warranty is up - 2-3x going rate for labor, then about 
4x markup on parts. not to mention the price v-tech wanted to charge me 
for a replacement battery for my cordless phone-i could have bought 2 
new phones for it (lucky for radio shack)....

being "creative" would have been posting the video and demoing 
self-replacement of the battery.

my 2 bits
sandor


On Jan 3, 2004, at 7:44 PM, Franck wrote:

> In the spirit of full disclosure, following is the Neismat brothers 
> point of view, which is posted at the top of the page I sent earlier.
>
> Two comments:  1) You guys thought that a (untold) $250 battery 
> replacement was acceptable?  for an Ipod? for a car? for a PC?
> 2) What happened to the "think different " spirit?  Theses guys love 
> their Ipod and their Mac.  They make music and film with it.  As good 
> consumers, they felt they were being taken for a ride by Apple, and 
> they resolved the issue the Apple way: creatively.  In the end, we 
> Apple consumers won: Apple offers a $99  battery replacement.
>


> >snip