Gizmodo 
Enter your username and password.
Tip your editors:
Editorial Director:
Brian Lam | | Twitter
Editor:
Jason Chen
| AIM | Twitter
Features Editor:
Wilson Rothman
| Twitter
Senior Contributing Editors:
Jesus Diaz
| AIM | Twitter
Mark Wilson, Reviews
| AIM | Twitter
Contributing Editors:
Matt Buchanan
| AIM | Twitter
Adam Frucci
| Twitter
Sean Fallon
| Twitter
Jack Loftus
| Twitter
John Herrman
| Twitter
Dan Nosowitz
Chris Mascari
Danny Allen
| Twitter
Rosa Golijan
| Twitter
Chris Jacob
Columnist:
Brendan I. Koerner
Interns:
Don Nguyen
Kyle VanHemert
Comment Intern:
Nick Ellenoff |
Comment Account Questions:
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
11/24/09
cigarettes are bad for some people, not so bad for others. I've been smoking for 8 or 9 years now, and have no diminished lung capacity. I can walk 30 miles in a day without slowing, and i dont really exercise. I can eat a pound of bacon in one sitting, and yet i'm still in good shape. i have ridiculously low blood pressure and i very rarely get sick.
then there are total pussies who can't deal with cold temperatures, with allergies out the yin yang, and a whole other miriad of health problems. they are the kind of people who should not smoke. but there exist many many people who, for whatever reason, are not adversely affected by tobacco products.
i know this is slightly OT since this isn't about smoking itself, but it always needs to be said: the current propaganda on smoking is just that: propaganda. it is simply a small step towards controlling more and more personal aspects of our lives in the name of 'public health'.
11/22/09
11/24/09
that's complete and utter bullshit.
2nd hand smoke is about 1/1,000,000th as concentrated as first hand. third hand is another couple orders of magnitude weaker. it doesn't take a mathematician to see that extremely minute amounts of cigarette smoke will have no measurable effect on anything. FYI you're exposed to hundreds of times the levels of carcinogens in 2nd hand smoke by simply walking next to a somewhat busy street, or sitting in traffic.
11/22/09
Then there is another problem the terms of the warranty should be what determines wether the machine is covered. I would hope that apple actually used the terms of the warranty to disqualify/qualify warranties. If the warranty was not broken then they still owe that service weather or not they are OSHA compliant they better find a way to provide the service.
11/22/09
11/22/09
11/24/09
right, because we are all children, and the government is our mother, and should have the power to force me to do whatever it thinks is best.
11/22/09
11/22/09
But denying warranty coverage because of OSHA is BS. OSHA is between Apple and its employees, and is not an excuse for Apple (or any other company) to violate its agreements with its customers. There are ways of upholding the warranty without violating OSHA (appropriate PPE or hardware replacement). You don't get to back out on legal agreements because it's too much hassle.
11/21/09
11/21/09
#tips
11/21/09
11/21/09
11/21/09
11/21/09
11/22/09
I'll be in the hospital right along side of a bunch of fat people, people who never ate enough vegetables and no longer poo correctly, perhaps a few that over indulged in sex, old people because we all die at sometime and that stay isn't cheap either. Not only that, but I'll be saving people even more by dieing early and not relying on social security, if that even exists then.
Anyhow, yes, smoking is bad, bad, bad and I, along with a bunch of other people need to quit, but I don't buy the idea that I am a strain on anybody elses pocket and the health finger needs to be pointing at a much broader category than smokers.
Also, smoking is extremely addicting, it's not quite as easy to do as, say, taking a jog at the park. Try asking a heroin addict to quit using heroin, that won't go over so well either.
Sure, my smoking might smell, but I go out of my way to try to wash up and not expose others to the smell. Now if everybody else would please be more respectful to my senses by laying off the Indian food, discontinuing their perfume and cologne usage, and not being so damn ugly, I would appreciate that.
11/22/09
Socialized medicine can work - In Israel, people pay for basic health insurance in their taxes, which covers everybody for basic doctors visits and preventative medicine. In Israel, doctors run a barrage of tests not to protect themselves from malpractice but because they can - it doesn't cost anyone anything extra. There's no bullshit with government bureaucrats deciding who gets what treatment and whether or not Granny's meds should be paid because there's enough for everyone.
And yet, there's a private business side to the equation as well. Private HMO's compete to provide supplemental insurance - to pay for expensive cancer treatments, in case you need to leave the country for surgery, etc. This comes out to about $100 a month for a family of 4.
What's so awesome about the system? It WORKS - over there, because people don't give a damn that they have to wait 15 minutes for a doctor instead of 5. It works, because people stick together and bring food to people in the hospital instead of the hospital providing food. It works because cultural institutions allow for it.
And that's why it wouldn't work in the US - because people can't stand that here. Doctors can't stand the fact that their salaries might be brought down to closer the world average; patients can't stand the fact that they would be subjected to a small loss of quality (especially the upper class which can afford better); insurers can't stand the fact that they'll be going out of business.
Because capitalist health care systems can work too - they're cheaper (to taxpayers), produce better care, and contribute positively to the economy. The problem is that they're more expensive (to consumers) and not everyone can afford it - hence, why the correct answer in the US is tort reform for starters.
And taking a jog in the park is not easy for fat people. Losing weight is hard: you have to actually DO something to lose weight; you can't just cut calories out. In order to lose weight, besides a proper diet people need to run and work their muscles. These take time out of people's day, besides the physical extenuation involved. It's not as simple as flushing all your cigarettes down the drain and quitting smoking cold turkey, even if that is a hard action in and of itself, because quitting smoking is a DON'T DO something. Same as quitting heroin or any addictive drug: you'll go through the hell of withdrawal, but you don't need to actually *do* anything to keep the process going.
And have some respect for other cultures man: saying you hate the smell of Indian food is like me asking you not to salt your cooking before you serve it to me, since I was brought up without any salt in my diet and any salt just overpowers the dish. To each his own: fundamentally American.
11/22/09
11/22/09
[www.marketwatch.com]
11/22/09
11/21/09
Like an idiot, I kept an ashtray right under my iMac. The smoke of course rose up into the iMac and created a haze in the upper left hand corner of the screen. And one of my fans was started running at about half as fast as it should have been. So I didn't put two and two together (for some unknown reason) and took it to a Genius.
His first question was, "Do you smoke in front of your iMac?" And I told him yes, I'm an idiot, and was expecting to pay them clean and fix my fan. BUT they replaced my fan free of charge and cleaned my screen. No complaints here.
11/21/09
11/21/09
11/21/09
11/22/09
11/21/09
Fix the effing machine. Some jerk off wants to pass the job to someone else 'cos it smells bad, have at it, but someone better fix it. If it was my computer, bet your butt I'd be hauling Apple into small claims court for denying warranty coverage. Christ, *biohazard*? With all the other toxic crap inside the computer? You have to be kidding me. You might as well not service computers owned by people with cats 'cos those cat hairs and cat dander get sucked up into the machine and some people are allergic to it.
11/21/09
@AmphetamineCrown:
11/21/09
B'sides, I thought smoking was part of that hipster culture Apple marketed too...
11/21/09
I was just giving an example of what can happen at an extreme. I tend to agree with most everyone else that Apple is being pedantic about this. I doubt that the case was extreme like that. If it was, I could understand Apple, but otherwise I think it's just them being afraid to touch something because it's ''icky''.
11/21/09
11/21/09
11/21/09
11/21/09
I can make sure to you that here in sanfrancisco/bayarea/silicon valley (apple central) smoking (cigeratts at least) is very un-hip and totally not cool,
11/21/09
11/21/09
11/21/09
11/21/09
11/22/09
11/22/09
11/22/09
11/21/09
temperature or humidity), unusual physical or electrical stress or interference." I'd consider an location being so smoky as to cause malfunctions an improper environment. The first case was overheating which can easily be caused by smoke and tar residue in heatsinks or clogging airways, and the second was that the computer "quit working," which is about a technical an explanation as "dun got blowed up," so that one is on the fence.
I'm not pro- or anti-Apple policies, and I'm not pro- or anti-smoking, but I am pro-personal responsibility. You have the choice to smoke, but with that comes the knowledge that your car and home might sell for less, and that your computers might have problems.
11/21/09
11/21/09
Now, that would only cover damages resulting from a smoky environment. If your RAM starts giving you errors, that's probably not smoke-related and they shouldn't deny based on that. From what I can tell from the Consumerist article (and from the admissions of both people who admit the computers were used around indoor smokers), the problems could have been caused by smoke.
11/21/09
Nothing about smoke causing damage to the systems in question.
11/21/09
11/21/09
11/21/09
11/21/09
It's a comfort thing for me- when I'm taking apart someone's computer, I shouldn't have to wear gloves to deal with slimy, discoloured residue.
11/21/09
My point is, one can't pick the components of a job one wants to do. As a computer repairman, one has to clean and repair computers and guess what, it's the really dirty computers that need cleaning and repairing. That's the point of repairing a computer.
11/21/09
You're correct, one can't pick the components of a job one wants to do, but there's also the question of what is considered to be something within the scope of what your job is. Cleaning out computers that are full of gunk, grime, tar, and so forth, in my opinion, is not something a computer repair technician should reasonably have to deal with.
11/21/09