Lousy iPod Touch screens blacken Apple’s rep

Shortly after the new iPod Touches hit the streets complaints about a glitch with the screens began popping up on the Web. Those afflicted with the bad iPod Touches report that they play video very darkly, with black shades so exaggerated they resemble an old film negative.

A post on a Web site called Apple-Touch.com actually included videos comparing a flawed iPod Touch playing the same scene side-by-side with an iPhone, which also sports a 3.5-inch screen. The difference in quality and the issue with dark areas in the iPod Touch’s video is obvious.

Some unhappy customers asserted that the flaw resulted from Apple using a poorer quality LCD screen in the iPod Touch relative to the one used in the iPhone. Some exchanged their bad unit for another bad unit. In forums, some customers countered that their new iPod Touches looked perfectly fine.

With accusations flying in every direction, I decided to stop by the Apple Store in Towson Town Center yesterday to have a look at the iPod Touch for myself. The store had four on display. I looked at some video on each one and could detect no hint of the problems I saw depicted on several Web sites. In fact, I thought the video on the iPod Touch looked pretty darn good.

I then moved over to the iPhone table and repeated the exercise (for the record, I played videos stored on the devices, such as the Ratatouille trailer, not YouTube videos). Frankly I could not discern a quality difference between the iPhone and iPod Touch, although I could not study them side by side since all the devices were tethered to their respective display tables.

One of the store employees said the staff there knew of the problem (although they learned of it by reading about it on the Internet; the Mother Ship hadn’t supplied any info yet) but had not seen any defective units, either in the store or brought in by a customer. In fact, he said they checked their entire iPod Touch inventory just to make sure.

My guess is that a bad batch of early-run iPod Touches slipped past the quality checks into Apple’s retail channels. If Apple was leaning on its suppliers to make deadline for the product launch, it’s not hard to imagine them shortchanging quality assurance procedures to satisfy Apple’s demands. I don’t think the iPod Touch screen is innately inferior to the iPhone’s. It is possible, but until there’s hard proof otherwise I’ll give Apple the benefit of the doubt.

Apple can’t afford to appear callous when serious problems surface in any of its products.

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/business/appleaday/blog/2007/09/
faulty_ipod_touch_screens_blac.html