Another lawsuit chips away at Apple's design prowess

With yet another lawsuit looming, this time over its iPhone, Apple is in familiar territory. In 2005, the scratch-prone Apple Nano got the firm into hot water, and last year it was over MacBooks that mysteriously shut down. And this isn't the first time customers howled about the lacklustre battery life of an Apple product. In 2003, a class-action lawsuit was filed by aggrieved customers who felt Apple misrepresented the battery life of the iPod of its day. Sure, you can argue that suing a company for a non-replaceable battery is a frivolous gesture, but when viewed in the context of Apple's recent design history, a disturbing trend begins to emerge about the reliability of Apple products. You would have thought after the iPod battery life lawsuits of a few years ago, Apple technicians wouldn't repeat the error with the iPhone.

Tech hardware manufacturers operate under the knowledge that the shelf life of most gadgets is not very long. The built-in obsolescence of high-tech products is such that new product cycles emerge every few years. But when you're paying hundreds of pounds for a product, shouldn't you expect it to perform well for at least a couple of years? What seems to get Apple into such hot water is not so much the design flaw, but the non-existent customer service that goes along with a $500 product. In the case of the iPhone battery, it would cost more than $100 for a replacement battery, shipping and a loaner phone. New York State Consumer Protection Board calls this unacceptable. Jose Trujillo, the Illinois resident who filed the most recent suit over the iPhone, has some powerful allies.