Are iPods Too Hot To Handle?

Amy Clancy of KIRO 7 TV in Seattle recently investigated reports of iPods overheating, smoldering and catching fire. The complaints, made to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, amount to over 800 pages of documentation covering 15 incidents. Here’s the kicker. Apple’s iLawyers repeatedly tried to prevent Clancy from accessing this info under a Freedom of Information Act request.

That doesn’t sound good for Apple, and the optics of using the iLawyers to stop this info from coming out suck. But it may actually be worse that that. Consider the following:

• A Korean newspaper says that Apple has apparently agreed to recall first-generation iPod nanos sold in South Korea following four reports of the device’s batteries overheating or exploding. Although Apple denies any specific recall or change in its policies.
• Japan warned iPod users in that country of a similar risk a year ago.
• There’s an Apple support document from last year that talks about this issue.

So does Apple have some sort of problem on its hands? At first glance, it seems so. But in the absence of hard facts, that’s hard to say. One thing is for certain. Until facts come out to either prove or disprove this, this won’t be good for the public perception of Apple Inc.