Reporting about Apple's exploding devices is wrong

Seems one reporter is Apple to the core.

Apple's tame press is demanding that hacks stop writing stories that are bad for Apple.

Arik Hesseldahl, writing for Businessweek, finally crossed the line of being simply pro-Apple and moved into the realms of covering up Jobs Mob's mess.

For those who came in late, Apple has been having a problem with exploding Iphones and Ipods lately. Although, for Apple, it is not so much a problem with the devices blowing up, as much as the fruit-themed toy-maker wanting people to stop reading about their products blowing up.

So Hesseldahl has stepped in to help. He claims that an ordinary house lamp is more dangerous than an Ithing. So why isn't the media up in arms over faulty lighting fixtures?

Bravely he slams the British press for focusing on the explosions and defends Apple's antics of demanding that people whose expensive gadgets exploded sign a gagging order before the company will look at the fault or offer a refund.

Hesseldahl seems shocked that the British press turned a perfectly innocent NDA into a "gagging order". He insists, quite wrongly, that it is perfectly normal business practice to issue such legal threats to buyers of your faulty products.

We can only guess he is so used to signing NDAs to receive press releases that he finds them normal. But we think the rest of the world does not find gagging orders part of a sane company's policy on returns, particularly when the company could be sued into penury for selling dangerous products.

Hesseldahl says that stories of up to 15 Ipods exploding in the US are nothing to worry about. After all, since 2001, Apple has sold 218 million Ipods worldwide.

"Let's say there were 1,500 documented cases. That would still amount to only 0.0007 per cent of the devices sold, " he writes.

He thinks that is nothing. But if the same statistic applied to airliner flights it would mean that an aircraft would crash every day. Would that be acceptable?

Hesseldahl accuses fellow hacks of picking on Apple because they haven't looked at other MP3 players in circulation to see if they had similar problems.

Anyway, the cause of exploding Ipods is the battery and therefore has nothing to do with Apple. Even if Apple puts dodgy batteries in its machines and then seals them in so no one other than its service teams can get them out of the little beasties.

Then Hesseldahl gets back to his argument that the press makes no mention of the 28,300 fires caused by faulty wiring, overheated domestic appliances and the like. When's the last time you heard media outrage about lamps? he asks.

Following that logic we would not write about faulty tech gear at all.

Anyway the comments page on Hesseldahl's story is amusing. The top comment accuses him of being an Apple press officer [It wasn't us, honest - Ed].

Certainly we would think that if Hesseldahl wants to beat up other hacks for reporting how a huge company flogs dodgy gear, he should hand in his press card and go to work as an Apple press officer.