KRAKOOM! iPad Air explose in fireball, terrified fanbois flee Apple store Apple fanbois around the world are on red alert after one of the latest fruity fondleslabs caught fire and exploded in an Australian Vodafone shop. A demonstration model of the new iPad Air caused a fire so intense that the fire brigade were called. Although no-one was hurt in the fire, fanbois around the world will be …
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I have no fruity devices and no interest in an "fanboi" groupings, but that does seem a bit of a daft dismissal of a device that will sell millions. Surely that's true for just about anything ever - the first version is the game changer; everything that follows are merely refinements
The latest Ford Escort is just a bit better version of a Ford Model T, but plenty of people are still interested in them and certainly doesn't make them "a bit rubbish".
The latest Ford Escort/Orion was worse than a model T in oh so many ways. There was the steer by leaning function - the chassis flexed so bad it was like wing-warping without the wings. The seats had all the appeal of a damp kindergarten waiting room chair. And oh god the engines - CVH aka Clattery Vapid & Harsh or CVS aka Catatonic & Violently Smokey. The gearlever would have been more at home as the twist grip on an elephants colestomy bag. Then there's the body roll - akin to a greased up Hutt dropped off a skate ramp & the body panels that were a total loss if it rained hard. The only part of the bodywork that had any structural integrity whatsoever was the rear spoiler.
The Focus is better but many seem to have sourced their electronics from either Lucas prince of darkness or Renaults spare parts division - a bunch of people that make the coalition government look like Gods on earth.
I've driven both and I'd still buy a model To over a series 5 Orion any day of the week. once you learn the controls the T isn't that hard - just be careful if it acts up on starting -handle kickback on that engine *hurts*. The number of people broke fingers or even arms using handle starts was why the big old engines used a flywheel clutch starter - you turned the flywheel and then clutched it - start a Tiger II on a direct handle and get it wrong and your entire arm would end up somewhere in darkest Wales.
I am inclined to agree
The only part of my Orion that ever worked was the Fuel Computer. Every other piece of electronics in that mobile pile of rust didn't work properly. Fuel leaks. Windows wouldn't wind. Interior and exterior lighting seemed to be some sort of optional extra. Never noticed the body roll at the time. But that could have been because my shocks were made from solid lumps of steel.
I had a Mk1 ('84) Orion Ghia and it was a nice car, like an armchair on wheels, the CVH engine was ok for the time and it had decent styling. Then the Mk2 came out, the soft plastics gave way to cheap hard plastics, the styling was blander, it actually had less equipment than the Mk1 and the CVH engines were being showed up by Vx's OHC engine and others. Then we had the complete and utter train wreck of the 1990 model Escort/Orions. It seems only Ford could turn out progressively worse cars with each new generation.
I actually have a Focus now and it's a decent car but I'm surprised Ford are still in business today considering some of the crap they turned out from the mid 80's up to the late 90's.
Don't entirely agree - I've owned a few Mondeos - and although they obviously lack the cache of German brands and arguably are not as long lived/reliable as some Japanese/Korean manufacturers - they've always been fine to drive and I've never had a serious problem. I have just bought a Fiesta ST - and that's great to drive. Tue, I'll have to see how well it lasts over the years - but for the money you pay - I think you get a good deal. Or maybe I'm just being defensive... If you've got plenty of money - or really care that much there are plenty of options available. If you've not - I believer that Ford is among the manufactures that deliver value for money.
Splendid up to the minute deconstruction of the motor industry there. It's called a Focus these days Grandad.
Still, no fruitiness here either, nor did I ever have any liking for Madonna, so that analogy is perfect!
@Duncant You do know that 'The latest Ford Escort' is now a decade or so old don't you ? Other than pristine ones for vintage collectors and the Cossie variant, provided it's not been ragged, they are a bit rubbish compated to their modern equivalents, made by FMC or not.
"Your correspondent visited the London iPad Air launch and was unimpressed: Yes, it's an iPad, which weighs a bit less than the old one and is quicker."
This respondent doesn't give a fuck for the opinion of this so called correspondent but is amused that he wasted his time going to the launch of something he clearly was going to hate - just so he could hate it.
By the way, the tablet in the Daily Fail photo isn't an iPad Air. This is the second time this afternoon I've picked up on a 'The Recycler' supposed journo who's simply cut and pasted from some other incompetent fucking idiot journo elsewhere.
What are the qualifications to do this job exactly?
A marvellous example of a wrongly constructed sentence calling for properly constructed sentences. Still, it's good to see the grammatically challenged displaying ambitions to improve themselves and others, no matter how futile and ill-advised. May I deduce, from your own lack of mental clarity, inadvertently demonstrated while aiming to point out that lack in others, that you are an Android user?
Ok, fine, you've got to call the fire department in a retail shopping area, that's fair. But people ran away from an 'exploding' iPad? Lame.
How are people supposed to learn what happens when things go wrong if they're running away from it? Failure to observe not only the events, but how they were managed, indicates these people are incapable of rational thought, risk assessment and any sense of wonder. The big push in the West for more engineers may have come too late if this is what we can expect from the educated, middle and upper classes (Apple's core market).
Maybe next year at intern selection time I'll have something catch fire and see how they respond.
Oh cool another Apple product that self-destructs, it must be that time of year again.. I'm assuming having all your products self-ignite is some sort of marketing scheme to encourage the purchase of extended warranties..
So far that makes the macbook, iphones 4 and 5, ipods, and now ipads. I don't care if it was an ipad 4 or ipad air, it's still another exploding idevice. I also don't care if the fault lies with the battery.. Apple has had about a decade to figure out how to buy batteries that don't blow up and so far they seem to have unusual difficulty finding some that are stable at room temperature.
You do realize that Apple has sold a few hundred million iPads right? They experience very few fires, especially considering the quantities that are out there. You stand a better chance of being strafed by machine gun fire from a Zeppelin on a bombing run than you do of experiencing an iFire.
Even the best manufacturing facilities have some problem products that slip through QA. You simply can't expect perfection from a mass production line. The media makes a big deal out of Apple failures because Apple kind of sets themselves up as 'superior' and it's always fun to kick those kinds of companies in the shins.
"You do realize that Apple has sold a few hundred million iPads right? They experience very few fires, especially considering the quantities that are out there. You stand a better chance of being strafed by machine gun fire from a Zeppelin on a bombing run than you do of experiencing an iFire."
Actually, as things now stand I have an infinitely greater chance of experiencing an iPad burning. Several Vodafone Australia customers will back me up on my version, how many people can you dig up that have even seen a Zeppelin? On a strafing run? While dropping bombs?
Your comment "they experience very few fires" isn't exactly reassuring. They sell devices to people who live in homes, have families and often give these over-priced iCandies to spoiled children. I may dislike spoiled children but even I will admit setting them on fire is going too far.
Here's the thing, if you're going to sell something to millions of people, saying "They're pretty safe, you have a fair chance of this unit not burning your home to ground while you family sleeps in it.." is not exactly a resounding endorsement. We aren't talking about the occasional fire hazard here, they have enough fire-starting devices to get very, very noticed every time they sell something new. If Apple has sold it in the last decade, you can almost guarantee a larger than normal number of whatever it is has tried to kill its owner.
Being unlucky should mean that one or two devices over a multiple generations of a device explode. Getting bad batteries in the hundreds with the release of each new device you sell means QA is a concept that Apple only has a passing familiarity with. What's next? Giving the Apple QA stamp of approval on cell phones that drop their calls because of the way you hold them?.. wait..
The Daily Mail is the only website with a photo of the device in question, and it doesn't look like an iPad Air. The chassis and bezel look like they come from an older model iPad. The exposed internals don't match up with the teardown photos of the Air on iFixit, and they don't look much like the iPad 4 either.
Shoddy journalism from the DM, and even shoddier journalism from all the other sites that picked up on the story.
Has to be. Store full of fanbois and other cell-phone carrying junkies and not ONE live video of the event? People take video of the buildings burning around them, there's no excuse for there not being a live video of this. Except if it's a hoax. Q.E.D.
That or El Reg is slipping and didn't link to said live video?
"The only part of my Orion that ever worked was the Fuel Computer. Every other piece of electronics in that mobile pile of rust didn't work properly. Fuel leaks."
Wait, did it actually account properly for the fuel leaks? 8-) Just kidding haha
Anyway, seeing the fixit page on this, well... the ipad air and air notebook both looked like the battery was kind of a bag of, I guess, lithium ions that is squished into the unit and glued in place. I would expect a higher rate of damage (either during assembly or after) compared to a more conventional rigid battery case.
"Ok, fine, you've got to call the fire department in a retail shopping area, that's fair. But people ran away from an 'exploding' iPad? Lame."
Burning electronics put out nasty fumes. Plus if the store employees are busy dealing with this burning ipad, they can't attend to the customer or sell them stuff anyway. I mean, I wouldn't go to an Apple store to begin wtih but I'd leave pretty quickly if this happened.
It might be the glue fumes igniting, thats as good a theory as I've heard.
I noticed that a lot of new devices exhibit quite strong odours when taken out of the box so if fumes built up with a single exit point (ie the charge port) and a static spark was generated then yes a KABOOM could result.
The same mechanism is also responsible for the flaming battery effect seen on some older model phones; its not so much the Li-Ion chemistry itself that is to blame but the hot electrolyte vaporising and escaping from the safety vent.
"Shit Bins" yeah?....y'know...those big wire baskets in the middle of
Supermarket aisles that they use to flog all the shit that they've
overstocked on...well if you're concerned that that this' incident'
could impact on sales of the unit and you don't want to end up
with loads of stock that you can't off load, then all you need to do
is get a load of "Shit Bins "in your shops yeah, and stick them all
in there...SORTED. The British public don't care about spontaneous
combustion just as long as it's been heavily discounted.
What on earth is it between you and anything Apple? Almost every day this week you have lambasted something/someone connected with Apple in any way. Personally I thought your rather snide article on Tim Cook' support for ENDA (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/04/tim_cook_launches_workplace_equality_drive/) was about as low as you were going to plummet with the "Even though he's not discussed his sexuality publicly, Tim Cook was placed in the top spot of a Power List of gay Americans ..." paragraph. Does it matter if he is gay or not? Also I don't see you mentioning Gates or Ballmer's support for ENDA (http://www.ontopmag.com/article.aspx?id=12285).
Give it a rest, will you?
You'd think with all those sensors and apps there might be one to turn off the juice before the fire breaks out.
The next one will tbe iPad elements. You know the various stages an iPad goes through in it's life time - (rare) Earth, Air, Fire, Water - I guess it's end state would of course be Carbon - hey wasn't that a Mac API?
Or maybe the iPad fX - with built in fire Xtinguisher.
This could be a fun little game.... name that iPad.
I read all the comments saying this story is fake, so I looked a little deeper. This supposedly occurred in Canberra. Looking on the local news site canberratimes.com.au. One would think this would be a big incident that would be all over the local news, but nope, not a word, as a matter of fact mum is the word all just about every Australian news site.
- "saw a "burst of flames" shoot out of the iPad's charging port."
Are they sure it wasn't the firewire connection.
I bet I get flamed for this one.
Some bright spark thought it would be good for a laugh but I suspect its a smokescreen.
Good for those with a burning desire to own Apple kit. It must have been a hot deal.
It's the new "crim" chip apple have fitted to the ipad air. When a criminal picks up the ipad it will automatically burst into flames, thus putting the criminal off trying to steal the ipad. For some reason this chip seems to be working more effectively in Australia than any other country at launch?
The ILighter.
64GB of music, OLED display AND it lights your finest Cuban cigars etc with its advanced flame free technology (tm), 36 hour playtime or 100 lights, inductive charging plus Lightning(tm) emergency charge output.
Plus doubles as an emergency flare in the event of a water landing, or getting lost in the middle of nowhere with a flat phone battery 'cos *phones *hate* being used at -10 Celsius...
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