Apple voids warranties over cigarette smoke, users say
It’s stories like this that keep surfacing and keep me wondering why my libertarian friends love their Macs so much. The tyrant Jobs keeps the hardware and software safely under lock and key…GodSteve forbid that you should be able to install any graphics card or hard drive you want, or use your iPhone with Verizon or some such. I get the impression that you don’t so much buy Apple products as Apple grudgingly lets you pay them to use them according to the Dictates of Jobs.
But if you’re comfortable being told what to do by Higher Authority, well, everybody swings to their own tune, I guess. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
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Having seen photos of computers of users who smoke in front of them, I can almost see Apple’s point. I don’t believe there is a health hazard to working on the computer of a smoker. I do believe all that gunk from smoking builds up on a computer and shortens its useful life. So I could see charging a smoker a slightly higher price on an extended warranty, but nothing else.
I think the best way to deal with the issue of people smoking is to change the Surgeon General’s warning on a pack of cigarettes to read: “Smoking these will kill you unless you manage to do something even dumber that kills you first!”
I have a hard time believing (after actual experience with both smokers’ and non-smokers’ computers) that smoke gunk is any worse than the dust bunnies and other crud that most people’s computers accrete after a year or so of operation. It’s a weekly chore here in my office to keep the air intakes of the six machines I have running clear of dust, and on top of that they all get vacuumed out twice a year. And at that, they still end up with a coat of sticky ick that attracts dust and defies real cleaning.
The real solution, of course, would be to seal cases and install filtration devices on the air intake(s). But nobody wants to spend that kind of money. It would be expensive to ensure a positive seal around all the little plugs and ports, not to mention the floppy drive (if you still have one) and the optical drive tray. This is the kind of machine that Og probably sees on a regular basis on his job, not the kind of machine that you and I need in our homes.
And I’d make the point that if the warranty doesn’t explicitly state that “gunk” accretion voids a warranty, then Apple should rightly be smacked around. Assuming this is actually a true story and not an urban legend, of course.