Thursday August 10, 2006

- Airport Express: News From the BattleFront [updated] - Eric - 13:56:04

Couple of weeks ago, we have launched a worldwide campaign aiming to determine the real impact of the short lifespan issue affecting Airport Express. The average lifespan, calculated from more than 400 reports received to date, did not really change and remains low: 15.8 months. When looking at the production weeks of defective APX (from serial number), it also remains similar to the first one we have published.




In addition, the number of defective APX manufactured in 2005 and 2006 have started to emerge in reports proving that the issue is present and remains over time. As we expected, reports corresponding to production weeks within 2005 demonstrate our 15.8 months of average lifespan calculated from 2004 defective APX records.



To conclude, number of reports originating from 120V countries (mostly USA) have recently sky rocketed, arguing that not only 230V countries are affected as we originally though, or that our campaign has finally reached US users ears despite the fact that this issue and our action have not been really relayed by US Mac-dedicated website (not politically correct?). Let's hope that it will change in the future and makes Apple reacting to this problem.

Thanks to the help provided by Jennifer; Antoine and David, we have followed the track of the Fairchild "power switch DM0265R" identified as a faulty component in some APX. The following information have been obtained:
- the faulty model is still produced by Fairchild, however different models are available, the main difference between them is the maximal operating temperature.
- the reference design for this component does not seem to have been followed by Apple in the APX power board (remain unknown if the design was modified by Samsung or Apple).
- the DM0265R includes an Internal Thermal Shutdown Function. It seems that in most defective APX cases this protection did not work since most users have reported that the station was becoming so hot that it was hard to hold it in hands.

We have contacted Fairchild about this issue, and they have very friendly started investigating on their side. We will keep you inform.

If one can accept failure of a electronic device, having a product defective after only 13 to 18 months of use is not really acceptable, especially if the manufacturer, here Apple, has decided not to provide any comment or even dismiss the issue. Overall, this behavior can not really support Apple's claims on customer's satisfaction policies. Following messages from readers (Thanks Tom and Kim), our attention has been drive to a European directive, named 1999/44/EC, voted and promulgated in 2002.

This directive states: "The relevant EU Directive is 1999/44/EC on the sale of consumer goods and associated guarantees. As a result of this legislation, consumers have a right to a minimum guarantee of TWO YEARS on products that said all consumer products are covered by law from 2 years of sale." As a consequence, even if Apple website states a one year warranty for the APX, all unlucky EU customers can claim the legal 2 years warranty if they have purchased their APX in one of the EU countries. As European directives, it applies to all countries even though some of them have not translated in their local law yet.

To confirm this point, we have received reports from Finnish readers who have obtained replacement of their defective APX free of charge despite the 12 month warranty indicated on AppleStore Finland. They simply sent notice to Apple Support that the APX was covered by a 2-years warranty by the law, and not one year as stated by Apple. So, if you own a defective APX bought in one of the EU countries, you now know what to do :)

Hereafter is the inresting part of the EU directive:

(17) Whereas it is appropriate to limit in time the period during which the seller is liable for any lack of conformity which exists at the time of delivery of the goods; whereas Member States may also provide for a limitation on the period during which consumers can exercise their rights, provided such a period does not expire within two years from the time of delivery; whereas where, under national legislation, the time when a limitation period starts is not the time of delivery of the goods, the total duration of the limitation period provided for by national law may not be shorter than two years from the time of delivery;

- Bulk Update - GuyG4 - 10:05:00

Here's a quick update to keep you informed of some important software updates:
- Mac OS X Server has been updated to 10.4.7. It is now able to manage Intel based Macs (More Info)
- The OS X Server administration tools have also been updated to 10.4.7 (More Info)
- Office has been updated. Apparently no new functionality, just a security update. Note that this update exists for both Office 2004 and Office X (More Info for Office 2004) (More Info for OfficeX)
- XPress 7 is now a Universal Binary. You can download a demo from Quark's website (Plus d'infos)
- A new beta of Skype for the Mac is available. It is now at version 1.5.0.61 (More Info)
- FinderPop is now at version 2.0. Still in beta, and only for the PowerPC until September, when the developer of this indispensable software will buy a Intel Mac and gratify us with an UB version (More Info)

[translation by jwa]

- The First Mac Pros arrive! - bad_duck - 09:51:30

Announced as being available immediately, the Mac Pros have already started arriving in the United States. A member of macrumors has just received his (standard config: 2x2.66 Ghz, 1 GB of RAM, GeForece 7300GT, 250 GB HD) an took the opportunity to post some photos and benchmarks.

Something that will be of interest to many readers, the Mac Pro seems to be a very quiet machine.

[translation by jwa]