[Swordmaker]

An Apple iPhone 7 has been found to have over heated and/or caught fire during shipping to its purchaser. BGR reports "All joking aside — and before other sites catch wind of this story and go crazy with it — this clearly appears to be an isolated incident, at least for the time being" . . . but it is worrisome. It is known that Lithium Ion Polymer batteries have a failure rate of approximately 1 in 6,000,000 in this fashion, and estimates are Apple sold more than 12 million in the first weekend of iPhone 7 sales, so just on the expected LIP battery failure rate, there should be two. Look for at least one more. — PING!

Thanks to Mark17 for the heads and Shanghai Dan for posting the article.

Could it be the number 7 that causes fires?
Ping!

The latest Apple/Mac/iOS Pings can be found by searching Keyword "ApplePingList" on FreeRepublic's Search.

If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

An Apple iPhone 7 has been found to have over heated and/or caught fire during shipping to its purchaser. BGR reports "All joking aside — and before other sites catch wind of this story and go crazy with it — this clearly appears to be an isolated incident, at least for the time being" . . . but it is worrisome. It is known that Lithium Ion Polymer batteries have a failure rate of approximately 1 in 6,000,000 in this fashion, and estimates are Apple sold more than 12 million in the first weekend of iPhone 7 sales, so just on the expected LIP battery failure rate, there should be two. Look for at least one more. — PING!

This isn’t the space program, in which the loss of one life was considered unacceptable because of the PR implications; this is real life. In real life, people get killed just driving to the store to buy a phone at a very low - but nonzero - rate. You would like to think that failures “in this fashion” would usually not have fatal, or even egregious, consequences. Maybe yes, maybe no . . .

I would suggest that people be informed of this risk - “informed consent” and all that - but in reality that is not in the cards. It is well-known that people overreact to low probabilities - e.g., people pay good money for bad (i.e., impossibly long odds against a payoff) lottery tickets all the time. And we have an entire, very influential, industry - journalism - which is pretty much exclusively dedicated to provoking public overreaction.