4 ms·

I don't understand... Apple is supposed to be the company that produces premium technology, their products supposed to signal status, it's supposed to be the ep

I don't understand... Apple is supposed to be the company that produces premium technology, their products supposed to signal status, it's supposed to be the epitome of aesthetics. How come in the recent years they're doing these easily preventable mistakes? I don't think Apple doesn't have a well-paid QA team. They probably do. So they found this bug and decided to ship it?

mental1896 8y ago
They probably found it too late and couldn't stomach the idea of recalling it right before Christmas.
falcolas 8y ago
I imagine that, much like LCD screens, the "failure" rate for a reasonable production batch is too high to reject every slightly bent iPad. Still sucks, and I believe it's reasonable that that the iPad pro could still be profitable even with a high reject rate, but not profitable enough.
psychometry 8y ago
Their obsession with thinness and lightness has stretched their manufacturing QC beyond its breaking point. Almost all of the widespread hardware problems Apple is experiencing these days could've been avoided if they would just allow themselves an extra millimeter or gram here and there.
- Guereric 8y ago
  >Almost all of the widespread hardware problems Apple is experiencing these days could've been avoided if they would just allow themselves an extra millimeter or gram here and there. That's a bold claim. Can you back up it?
  - izzydata 8y ago
    >That's a bold claim. Can you back up it? They made similar products in the past that were thicker and not easily bendable. That seems to speak for itself.
    - pazimzadeh 8y ago
      That's true, although their thinnest products always had a small surface area as well (iPod nano), so less torque could be applied which probably contributed to the durability.
    - ken 8y ago
      Apple also changes materials and processes all the time. Despite being thicker (and shorter), the iPhone SE bends more easily than newer iPhones like the 6S [1], 7 or 7 Plus [2]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWRnDVcfA3g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWRnDVcfA3g [2]: https://www.squaretrade.com/press/SquareTrade-Labs-iPhone-7-Generation-Makes-Splash-Water-Resistance-Still-Falls-Hard https://www.squaretrade.com/press/SquareTrade-Labs-iPhone-7-...
      - eridius 8y ago
        Every device that supports 3D Touch is highly resistant to bending, because AIUI the way 3D Touch is implemented basically puts a metal plate inside the phone. This is why the iPads never got 3D Touch, because they’d end up too heavy with a metal plate that large.
  - scrooched_moose 8y ago
    It's basic engineering mechanics. All bending equations come back to the second moment of area [1], which for a rectangle is b*h^3/12. Double the thickness and your object becomes 8 times stiffer. Second gen 10.5" iPad Pro (can't find dimensions for 3rd) is 6.1mm. Change that to 7.1, and it becomes (7.1)^3/(6.1)^3 = 1.58x stiffer. Not indestructible, but a massive improvement for a small change. 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_moment_of_area#Rectangle_with_centroid_at_the_origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_moment_of_area#Rectangl...
samfriedman 8y ago
The bend can be thought of as exactly that: a unique differentiator that adds status and flair to an already desirable item. For a manufacturer as highly lauded as Apple, the opportunity to acquire a one-of-a-kind iPad with a bespoke chassis camber will surely be sought after by consumers. If anything, we should be congratulating those involved for their ability to bring organic design inspiration to the highest echelons of computing; and affordably too!
- jeklj 8y ago
  Ugh
Isamu 8y ago
>easily preventable mistakes Considering that iPads are machined to very high tolerances, they are extremely flat as built, at least early in the process. Also many of the later steps in construction are highly automated, relying on custom fixtures that would tend to detect an out-of-tolerance part. That suggests that bends in the final product happened late somehow, possibly from mishandling in shipping and final packaging. Depending on your quality inspections at that point, a certain number of out-of-tolerance devices might make it though (because early on all iPads are checked individually, but maybe not re-checked as late as in packaging.) Apple is also known for holding its manufacturers to high quality bars that sometimes are often difficult to meet. So they are under pressure to both meet the agreed upon standards, but also ship tremendous quantities of product without high amounts of rework, the costs of which they, the manufacturer, would have to eat, not Apple.
- chooseaname 8y ago
  > Apple is also known for holding its manufacturers to high quality bars that sometimes are often difficult to meet. So they are under pressure to both meet the agreed upon standards, but also ship tremendous quantities of product without high amounts of rework, the costs of which they, the manufacturer, would have to eat, not Apple. According to Apple: >The bend is the result of a cooling process involving the iPad Pro’s metal and plastic components during manufacturing, according to Apple Apple is ultimately responsible. They designed this device. Their materials people knew how flexible this chassis would be. I find it highly unlikely they didn't know it would bend until manufacturing ramped up.
jeklj 8y ago
Their claim that this is normal and expected reeks to high heaven. These people are persnickety beyond belief and they just... don't have a problem with this? I don't buy it.
kllrnohj 8y ago
Apple uses premium materials & packaging but they historically have not had very good engineering quality. This goes back years and years, too, it's not a recent thing. Apple frequently does "Exchange and Repair Extension Programs" for these mistakes. I think it's unfair to blame their QA team, either, as some of the issues should have been obvious without QA. Like the recent 6-core macbook pros that didn't receive a thermal capacity or VRM upgrade in response to using a CPU with a higher power usage. It's just not really a thing Apple does. They focus their engineering on the parts you physically see & touch, not the ones you don't. They just deal with that later with repair & replacements programs or crude workarounds.
- chemmail 8y ago
  You refer to Apple like only one person works there. There are hundreds of thousands of engineers making hundreds of products with thousands of suppliers. Have you even opened a few devices yourself? The engineering in most other phones are pretty trash compared to how easy it is to work on Apple mobile devices. Their iPads are the most reliable things ever made. I have almost never seen a truly dead iPad while anything Samsung tablet that does not power on goes in the trash. If you have an Apple mobile device you will find TONs of people willing to fix it. Other brands? Good luck. Their computing devices though...
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    There are only 100K total employees at Apple. Engineers number a small fraction of that. And not hundreds of products - the total is much less than 100, and only that high because of the different configurations of the same product. The reliability thing is true.
  - kllrnohj 8y ago
    iPads may be Apple's unicorn then because right now there's an extended repair & replace program for the iPhone 6 plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 7, iPhone 8, and iPhone X. The narrative that it's reliable & well-engineered doesn't at all match the fact that nearly every single phone they've made in the last few years needed a special warranty program for a common issue. And that's ignoring things like antennae-gate & bend-gate, too, these are issues that Apple themselves are considering common enough to necessitate a special program to handle. Perhaps there are tons of people willing to fix Apple products because tons of people need their Apple products repaired? That market doesn't really exist if the devices were "the most reliable things ever made" Like it's great that Apple will at least do these programs for the issues, but they also don't have a strong reliability record here, either.
ken 8y ago
I'm sure everyone at Apple is very well paid. (Aside: I truly wish the canard that people who are not well paid must not be good at their jobs would finally die.) There's a story I heard from a former coworker who worked at Apple QA during the time of the first iMac (take it as you will). The infamous puck mouse had hundreds of reports filed against it. They were vetoed, from above. So I would probably agree that Apple has a QA team, and that the company knew about this decided to ship anyway. I disagree that any of this is just "in the recent years", though. The Titanium PowerBooks fell apart easily. The 2013 Mac Pro has no internal expansion, but it's far from the first Mac to suffer from that. For any problem I hear about Apple's hardware today, I can think of other examples of it happening years or decades ago. Lacking a real escape key seems odd on the new MacBook Pro, but the (otherwise cute if big) Apple Adjustable Keyboard had the same problem (and not even the TouchBar as an excuse). And so on.

mental1896 8y ago

They probably found it too late and couldn't stomach the idea of recalling it right before Christmas.

falcolas 8y ago

I imagine that, much like LCD screens, the "failure" rate for a reasonable production batch is too high to reject every slightly bent iPad. Still sucks, and I believe it's reasonable that that the iPad pro could still be profitable even with a high reject rate, but not profitable enough.

psychometry 8y ago

Their obsession with thinness and lightness has stretched their manufacturing QC beyond its breaking point. Almost all of the widespread hardware problems Apple is experiencing these days could've been avoided if they would just allow themselves an extra millimeter or gram here and there.

Guereric 8y ago
>Almost all of the widespread hardware problems Apple is experiencing these days could've been avoided if they would just allow themselves an extra millimeter or gram here and there. That's a bold claim. Can you back up it?
- izzydata 8y ago
  >That's a bold claim. Can you back up it? They made similar products in the past that were thicker and not easily bendable. That seems to speak for itself.
  - pazimzadeh 8y ago
    That's true, although their thinnest products always had a small surface area as well (iPod nano), so less torque could be applied which probably contributed to the durability.
  - ken 8y ago
    Apple also changes materials and processes all the time. Despite being thicker (and shorter), the iPhone SE bends more easily than newer iPhones like the 6S [1], 7 or 7 Plus [2]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWRnDVcfA3g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWRnDVcfA3g [2]: https://www.squaretrade.com/press/SquareTrade-Labs-iPhone-7-Generation-Makes-Splash-Water-Resistance-Still-Falls-Hard https://www.squaretrade.com/press/SquareTrade-Labs-iPhone-7-...
    - eridius 8y ago
      Every device that supports 3D Touch is highly resistant to bending, because AIUI the way 3D Touch is implemented basically puts a metal plate inside the phone. This is why the iPads never got 3D Touch, because they’d end up too heavy with a metal plate that large.
- scrooched_moose 8y ago
  It's basic engineering mechanics. All bending equations come back to the second moment of area [1], which for a rectangle is b*h^3/12. Double the thickness and your object becomes 8 times stiffer. Second gen 10.5" iPad Pro (can't find dimensions for 3rd) is 6.1mm. Change that to 7.1, and it becomes (7.1)^3/(6.1)^3 = 1.58x stiffer. Not indestructible, but a massive improvement for a small change. 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_moment_of_area#Rectangle_with_centroid_at_the_origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_moment_of_area#Rectangl...

samfriedman 8y ago

The bend can be thought of as exactly that: a unique differentiator that adds status and flair to an already desirable item. For a manufacturer as highly lauded as Apple, the opportunity to acquire a one-of-a-kind iPad with a bespoke chassis camber will surely be sought after by consumers. If anything, we should be congratulating those involved for their ability to bring organic design inspiration to the highest echelons of computing; and affordably too!

jeklj 8y ago
Ugh

Isamu 8y ago

>easily preventable mistakes Considering that iPads are machined to very high tolerances, they are extremely flat as built, at least early in the process. Also many of the later steps in construction are highly automated, relying on custom fixtures that would tend to detect an out-of-tolerance part. That suggests that bends in the final product happened late somehow, possibly from mishandling in shipping and final packaging. Depending on your quality inspections at that point, a certain number of out-of-tolerance devices might make it though (because early on all iPads are checked individually, but maybe not re-checked as late as in packaging.) Apple is also known for holding its manufacturers to high quality bars that sometimes are often difficult to meet. So they are under pressure to both meet the agreed upon standards, but also ship tremendous quantities of product without high amounts of rework, the costs of which they, the manufacturer, would have to eat, not Apple.

chooseaname 8y ago
> Apple is also known for holding its manufacturers to high quality bars that sometimes are often difficult to meet. So they are under pressure to both meet the agreed upon standards, but also ship tremendous quantities of product without high amounts of rework, the costs of which they, the manufacturer, would have to eat, not Apple. According to Apple: >The bend is the result of a cooling process involving the iPad Pro’s metal and plastic components during manufacturing, according to Apple Apple is ultimately responsible. They designed this device. Their materials people knew how flexible this chassis would be. I find it highly unlikely they didn't know it would bend until manufacturing ramped up.

jeklj 8y ago

Their claim that this is normal and expected reeks to high heaven. These people are persnickety beyond belief and they just... don't have a problem with this? I don't buy it.

kllrnohj 8y ago

Apple uses premium materials & packaging but they historically have not had very good engineering quality. This goes back years and years, too, it's not a recent thing. Apple frequently does "Exchange and Repair Extension Programs" for these mistakes. I think it's unfair to blame their QA team, either, as some of the issues should have been obvious without QA. Like the recent 6-core macbook pros that didn't receive a thermal capacity or VRM upgrade in response to using a CPU with a higher power usage. It's just not really a thing Apple does. They focus their engineering on the parts you physically see & touch, not the ones you don't. They just deal with that later with repair & replacements programs or crude workarounds.

chemmail 8y ago
You refer to Apple like only one person works there. There are hundreds of thousands of engineers making hundreds of products with thousands of suppliers. Have you even opened a few devices yourself? The engineering in most other phones are pretty trash compared to how easy it is to work on Apple mobile devices. Their iPads are the most reliable things ever made. I have almost never seen a truly dead iPad while anything Samsung tablet that does not power on goes in the trash. If you have an Apple mobile device you will find TONs of people willing to fix it. Other brands? Good luck. Their computing devices though...
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  There are only 100K total employees at Apple. Engineers number a small fraction of that. And not hundreds of products - the total is much less than 100, and only that high because of the different configurations of the same product. The reliability thing is true.
- kllrnohj 8y ago
  iPads may be Apple's unicorn then because right now there's an extended repair & replace program for the iPhone 6 plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 7, iPhone 8, and iPhone X. The narrative that it's reliable & well-engineered doesn't at all match the fact that nearly every single phone they've made in the last few years needed a special warranty program for a common issue. And that's ignoring things like antennae-gate & bend-gate, too, these are issues that Apple themselves are considering common enough to necessitate a special program to handle. Perhaps there are tons of people willing to fix Apple products because tons of people need their Apple products repaired? That market doesn't really exist if the devices were "the most reliable things ever made" Like it's great that Apple will at least do these programs for the issues, but they also don't have a strong reliability record here, either.

ken 8y ago

I'm sure everyone at Apple is very well paid. (Aside: I truly wish the canard that people who are not well paid must not be good at their jobs would finally die.) There's a story I heard from a former coworker who worked at Apple QA during the time of the first iMac (take it as you will). The infamous puck mouse had hundreds of reports filed against it. They were vetoed, from above. So I would probably agree that Apple has a QA team, and that the company knew about this decided to ship anyway. I disagree that any of this is just "in the recent years", though. The Titanium PowerBooks fell apart easily. The 2013 Mac Pro has no internal expansion, but it's far from the first Mac to suffer from that. For any problem I hear about Apple's hardware today, I can think of other examples of it happening years or decades ago. Lacking a real escape key seems odd on the new MacBook Pro, but the (otherwise cute if big) Apple Adjustable Keyboard had the same problem (and not even the TouchBar as an excuse). And so on.