Apple to recall 1.8 million notebook batteries

Reuters (excerpt) ^ | August 24, 2006

[HAL9000]

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Computer Inc. will recall 1.8 million lithium-ion notebook batteries after nine devices overheated, causing minor burns in two users, U.S. safety regulators said on Thursday.

The recall is the second-biggest in U.S. history involving electronics or computers, after No. 1 PC maker Dell Inc. recalled 4.1 million lithium-ion batteries last week, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said. In both cases the batteries had power cells made by Sony Corp.

Cupertino, California-based Apple will recall 1.1 million batteries sold with notebooks in the United States and 700,000 abroad, the safety agency said. They were sold with Apple iBook G4 and PowerBook G4 computers from October 2003, through this month, according to the safety commission.

[SIRTRIS]

Well, looks like serious qualities issues whether from design, manufacturing or supplier based!

[Starter]

Whoops. You know what caused this? The people posting pictures of exploded Dell laptops and posting that "they should have bought an Apple." All that gloating caused a karmic backlash.

[Proud2BeRight]

First Dell and now Apple, both US companies get bad press but deep in each story is the Jap's Sony battery that is the cause. It is the Sony name that should be headlined not the US company. The headline-only readers of the drive-by media will only remember the shot at the US companies.

[Spktyr]

Looks like this isn't going to be a good year for Sony... first the rootkit, then the failure of their ATRAC format, the complete flop in the US of the UMD format, and now their batteries are slagging down.

I expect a large number of other laptop vendors to start recalling their batteries as well - IBM/Lenovo, for example, used Sony batteries in a number of their products.