iPad fire

[Forge]

I figured you guys might enjoy rubbernecking the scene of my accident.

The complete photos: http://bit.ly/bOQSCL (flickr set)

So last night I finished reading for the evening, plugged in my iPad, set it on my nightstand, and went to sleep (around midnight). Around five AM, I got disturbed, woke up, and went for a wee (no genteel way to say that, I suppose). On my way back to bed, my brain finally hit minimum startup temp and turned over. I noticed there was a nasty sharp smell. Hey, that's burning plastic! Last time I smelled this (many years ago), a PCP&C PSU had gone rampant and cooked much electronics. I therefore assigned this high priority and ran to the basement. No smell. No cooking PCs. Good!

I headed back to bed, sniffing and searching as I went. The smell was coming from my nightstand!


Holy crap! That's melty! It's almost on FIRE!

I grabbed the cord and pulled it out. It was very melty, but more or less in one piece. Oh noes! My precious!

I grabbed up my iPad, and it promptly slid out of the limp rubber shell I normally have it in. I grabbed it! Holy sweet dear zombie of deliverance!!!! I'm not sure how hot it was, but it was a lot. Very a lot. My spine intervened, I let go, and my hand shot into the air.

While I did the Reflex Injury Dance, my iPad hit the floor and bounced. Ouch.


HIT!


BOUNCE!

Well, I have an appointment at the Apple Store. We'll see what they say. They've treated me well before, and I hope they'll take the physical damage/crack/dent in context with the BLAZING FREAKING HEAT.

[Mentawl]

I'm kinda impressed it was able to get that warm, with a relatively low charging current and all!

[Forge]

Well, it had five hours of constant 10W+ supply. It may have been storing and then released all at once, too. There's ~25W/Hours in those batteries, IIRC, and they should have been nearly full. Hours later, the iPad turned on fine, but the battery is way low (and dropping further while off), so I think some sort of battery failure or charging circuit failure may have occured as well.

[just brew it!]

I don't think anything short of a catastrophic battery failure (or a short-circuit that dumped most of the energy of the battery in one go) could produce symptoms like that.

[Forge]

I can't tell you from here. I'm not inclined to pry it open.

Both the rear case and the front glass were quite toasty, as was the AC->USB power brick. The power brick was not melty, however.

Apple Store appointment in 40 minutes. I'll let you know what they say.

[cphite]

Apple Store appointment in 40 minutes. I'll let you know what they say.

They'll say you were holding it wrong

[morphine]

They'll say you were holding it wrong

... and that's why he dropped it

[cphite]

And obviously if he'd had it sitting on the nightstand properly, it would have never overheated...

[Shinare]

Anxiously awaiting your return.

[just brew it!]

Hey, this thread made the front page news!

[Captain Ned]

Hey, this thread made the front page news!

I wonder how quickly links to that story will cause thread deletions in Apple forums.

[Forge]

My email update, copy and pasted for your enjoyment.

Sorry for the spamming, wasn't sure what the right address was.

Full recap, summary to follow:

I went in, waited for my appointment, and approached the Genius Bar. I
recounted my story. The Apple Rep seemed quite sympathetic, said "Oh
wow, can I see it?". Without waiting for a response he took it from me
and disappeared into the back for ~20 minutes. He then returned with a
very small box. "Well here's what we'll do". He opened the small box
and took out an AC adapter, leaned across the counter, and took mine.
He handed me the new one.

"For this [iPad], I can't do anything because of this [gestured at
screen]." "What, the crack?" I replied. "No, this [pointed at screen
again] This there, Cydia".

"I can fix that for you" I said. Started a full wipe. "No, no, that
voids the warranty completely. It's not covered for anything at all".

An hour later, the full wipe has not completed. My iPad is stuck on a
screen with an Apple logo.

I asked for a hard copy of this decision for reference to a lawyer.
Apple minion snatched up my iPad again and disappeared into the back
[No admittance!]. After another twenty minutes, he returned with
"Robert H., Store Manager". Robert explained to me that any
unauthorized software was a modification. All modifications completely
void the warranty. I asked if the iPad having been restored would not
make this moot.

"Oh no, because the issue would be gone now too." Really? "Yes, and
now there's this crack in the glass that voids the warranty as well."

"Because I dropped it, because it was very hot". "Shouldn't have dropped it."

So Apple's official position is that jailbreaking makes your iPad
catch fire, and that's "Not their problem anymore".

Anyone want to buy an iPad with a crack? Catches fire easily. Also for
sale, one iMac, one iPod Touch, and anything else I find in my house
with an Apple logo. CHEAP.

- Rich

[Forge]

Oh, and the only "written" anything they would provide is a copy of the "Applecare Protection Plan for iPad", with two lines highlighted.

"unauthorized modification"

and

"(iii) Third-party products or their effects on or interactions with the Covered Equipment, the Product OS or Product Software;"

[just brew it!]

Unfortunately, they are probably legally within their rights. That doesn't make them any less wrong though.

This further affirms my decision to never buy an Apple product. I've never owned one, and probably never will. Not even a 99 cent iTunes track.

[Forge]

Unfortunately, they are probably legally within their rights. That doesn't make them any less wrong though.

This further affirms my decision to never buy an Apple product. I've never owned one, and probably never will. Not even a 99 cent iTunes track.

Yep, they are completely within their legal rights. I am also within said rights to become the most militant and entrenched anti-zealot they will ever experience. That is my plan currently.

[just brew it!]

FWIW the domain name myipadexploded.com is available. Just sayin'.

[SNM]

I imagine that jailbreaking grants you access to the device's power management, no?

[Forge]

I imagine that jailbreaking grants you access to the device's power management, no?

Not as far as I know. Still had all the same Apple control panels and options as before.

I certainly overlooked any 'overheat and catch fire' toggles that jailbreaking might have added.

[SNM]

I'm sure you didn't add any such apps, but at some point in the process I'm pretty sure they have to root the device, and that gets you all kinds of goodies. It doesn't need to be anything malicious, either, just maybe something that accidentally skips the "do things if power problems start" function calls.

Not saying that's the case here, but if I sold several million versions of a product and one person who was running illicit third-party software had an issue I wouldn't be too worried about it either.

[just brew it!]

I imagine that jailbreaking grants you access to the device's power management, no?

Even if it did, the charger/battery should've had sufficient built-in protections to prevent this sort of thing from happening. If Apple is relying on software running on the same CPU that runs the applications to prevent the device from potentially catching fire, they've got some really stupid engineers. (And I don't think Apple's engineers are stupid...)

[morphine]

The best part for me was the manager pointing out the crack in the device, when the device was only cracked because it almost caught fire to begin with.

So in summary, iPad catches fire == software problem. I wonder when Apple will provide a fix.

[cphite]

You obviously forgot to check the "Don't catch on fire." box when you installed your software...

A decent company would acknowledge that regardless of what you've done with the OS or even firmware, overheating to the point of melting is a pretty obvious flaw in their hardware. Their legal standing in regards to the warranty etc. aside, this falls under the bulls*** category.

Yet another reason to stay away from Apple.

[rcs2k4]

Sucks a bit, and I feel for you and your expensive paperweight. You cutting your losses and getting rid off all things Apple? Can't say I blame you I guess.

M$ are no saints neither, but there's a lot to be said for open source software. Maybe put Ubuntu onto the iPad and show Apple store drones what a decent Os looks like. You can also say something like "Oh, look, it's not broke it. Funny that"

[Forge]

Sucks a bit, and I feel for you and your expensive paperweight. You cutting your losses and getting rid off all things Apple? Can't say I blame you I guess.

M$ are no saints neither, but there's a lot to be said for open source software. Maybe put Ubuntu onto the iPad and show Apple store drones what a decent Os looks like. You can also say something like "Oh, look, it's not broke it. Funny that"

I doubt you can get Ubuntu onto the iPad. It's not just the ARM CPU, it's a near-totally-undocumented bootloader/mechanisms.

Also, it would still be broke, since the hardware is baked.

[rcs2k4]

^ Someone out there will be trying! Soon, "there will be an app for that"

Didn't realise it's totally cooked. Does it not do anything at all?

[Forge]

It turns on, and the wipe appears to have finally completed, after a reboot loop that lasted for quite some time.

Before taking it into the Apple Store, I had noted that since this morning's "event", the battery drained at a pretty decent clip even while in standby or cold off.

The batteries appear to have done something bad while making the iPad into a hotplate.

[sid1089]

Well that just sucks. This issue has been seen with the magsafe adaptors on macbooks too. So i am sure it has nothing to do with the software. But obviously, they will use that to avoid fixing it.

Why not take the ipad now stuck in the apple logo screen to another apple store? Tell them that it got stuck after heating up, so you tried to reflash it and it got stuck permanently.

In general though, Apple has very good customer service. Just 3 days ago, I took my warranty expired macbook to fix a screen damage issue, and they did it for free. Maybe the guy you spoke to wasnt too generous.

[annabel]

Oh not good :/ my friend got buggered in the same way for jail breaking an iPhone and then taking it in when it did something crazy. When he argued that he could reset it and take it somewhere else they tried to tell him they could always tell if it had been jail broken before XD that's bollocks though

Time to buy yourself something new Forgey

[rcs2k4]

Why not take the ipad now stuck in the apple logo screen to another apple store? Tell them that it got stuck after heating up, so you tried to reflash it and it got stuck permanently..

Might have limited mileage with that one? The screen has a small crack in it on one corner, and it looks slightly dented from the pictures in the same area. We all know why it's there, but another store wont see it like that. The 1st store took the melted cable back too, so now it would look like he just dropped it and is trying to pull a fast one?

Makes me mad really, their customer service is pretty poor. Still, there is a hope that if Apple see this bad Pr on here something "magically" happens in Forge's favour? It's happened in the past on other sites, and TR is big enough...

[Forge]

I'm not holding out a lot of hope for intervention from upper management. I feel like a pariah, like I've been branded and am now untouchable.

WTF Apple.