Why Apple Won't Recall Your Bum PowerBook

Lately I've been hearing about a problem on certain PowerBooks. Specifically, a problem that causes vertical lines on the LCD panel, on model number M9689 of the 17-inch G4 PowerBook running at 1.67GHz. According to this website, 171 people so far are demonstrating this problem. Certainly there are more.

The outcry isn't over the problem, per se, but that a) Apple hasn't recalled the affected computers and b) that Apple is censoring comments on its official website regarding this issue.

The second problem is pretty awful. The first, I'm sad to tell you, is par for the course.

Technology users are often quick to call for a product recall any time there's a problem with their device. It's hard to blame them: One of these PowerBooks may have cost $3,000 when it was purchased. You're right to expect it to work properly.

But should Apple recall every product of this model number and replace the screen, just in case? That's not the way things work, I'm afraid, and I'm hard-pressed to name any company that's ever recalled a product in this manner.

Why? Product recalls are serious business that cost serious money. They are—almost without exception—limited to problems that could result in the death or serious injury of the user. In fact, the only computer recalls I know of relate to laptop batteries. Last year's recalls are the most recent example.

Will a company recall everyone's laptop because a few hundred people have vertical lines running down the screen? To even suggest such a thing reflects a gross naiveté with how business is done. If Apple sold just 10,000 of these computers, a recall would probably cost it somewhere in the realm of $5 million to repair. Those are pretty wild guesses, but the actual figures are probably much higher. Recalls are also reserved (and rightly so) for issues of real social significance. Stuff like kid's pajamas bursting aflame. The fact that a few lines are running through your GarageBand session don't quite cut the mustard.

What should Apple do? Fix any computer that has this problem for free, of course, even if they're past the one-year warranty. (Extending support for this specific problem another 12 or 18 months makes good sense to me.) And of course, stop censoring forums explicitly designed to let people talk about their computer problems. But should Apple launch a full recall? Um... no.

Still, I'm happy to draw awareness to this issue, especially if you're a Mac owner who thought you were alone with such a problem. Getting together with others definitely helps to push Apple into doing the right thing and getting the problem fixed. Feel free to vent in the comments section below if you've got the "pixel lines issue" on your PowerBook.