“Apple finds itself in a peculiar situation after a MacBook in Australia catches fire, apparently from a malfunctioning battery. However, the battery was not on the list of recalled units,” Ed Oswald reports for BetaNews.
Oswald reports, “The report, first posted on the Australian Mac enthusiast site MacTalk, indicates that the user awoke in the middle of the night to find the laptop on fire. According to witness accounts, before the fire started, a hissing sound and large amounts of smoke poured out of the device. Damage was confined to the laptop along with the bookshelf it was placed on and some magazines nearby.”
Oswald reports, “It is not immediately clear what Apple may do in response to the issue, as requests for comment went unanswered as of press time. However, the issue once again highlights the quality control issues in some laptop batteries produced by Sony, Apple’s supplier.”
Full article with photo and links here.
MacDailyNews Take: So far, an isolated incident. We’ll keep watch to see if other similar reports surface.
Related articles:
Sony apologizes for botched batteries, says won’t quit battery business despite massive recalls – October 24, 2006
Sony recalls 340,000 more Sony-botched batteries, includes Sony Vaio laptops – October 23, 2006
Sony recalls 90,000 Sony-botched batteries, plans to widen the recall – October 17, 2006
Sharp recalls 28,000 Sony-botched laptop batteries – October 13, 2006
Hitachi joins recall of Sony-botched laptop batteries – October 06, 2006
Fujitsu recalls 287,000 Sony-botched laptop batteries – October 04, 2006
Toshiba to recall 830,000 more defective Sony-made laptop batteries – September 29, 2006
Lenovo recalls 526,000 Sony laptop batteries; Sony to initiate global battery replacement program – September 28, 2006
Virgin Atlantic lifts total ban on in-flight use of Apple, Dell notebook batteries – September 25, 2006
Virgin Atlantic bans use of all Apple, Dell notebook batteries in-flight – September 18, 2006
Korean Air bans use of Apple PowerBooks, iBooks, and all Dell laptop models during flight – September 05, 2006
Dell Japan President blames Sony for recall of fire hazardous batteries – August 29, 2006
Sony-made battery fire in discontinued Apple notebook computer reported in Japan – August 29, 2006
Apple to recall 1.8 million Sony-made iBook G4, PowerBook G4 batteries – August 24, 2006
Apple, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and others working on battery standard – August 23, 2006
Qantas first airline to restrict in-flight Dell laptop use due to fire-prone batteries – August 23, 2006
Dell and Sony knew about battery problems nearly a year ago, waited for catastrophic failures – August 21, 2006
Dell issues largest safety recall in history: 4.1 million laptop batteries due to fire threat – August 14, 2006
Another Dell laptop goes up in flames – July 28, 2006
Dell laptop fires may have been downplayed – July 22, 2006
NY Times: Dell’s exploding laptop and other image problems – July 10, 2006
Dell laptop explodes into flames at Japanese conference – June 21, 2006
Not good for Sony, again….
Not again. $%&* ! ! !
I think Apple should request the machine for evaluation and send the owner a replacement ASAP. It would be good PR and also would allow Apple to quickly work out the root cause of this seemingly isolated incident.
Following the investigation, Apple should return his HD to him (if it still has readable data on it).
just my thoughts right off the cuff
What? How can this be? I thought only crappy Dell laptops caught on fire?!?!?!? Yes, that was a sarcastic comment about how MDN usually takes great delight in pointing out the “inferior” quality of other company’s products.
Considering G3 laptops, G4 laptops (and probably G5 for sure if they ever existed) and now (probably) Dual Core laptops have all had battery re-calls, its time to pull the plug on Sony as Apple did to IBM for PowerPC.
Enough is enough.
A bolt of lighting also killed a dog the same damn day. Who cares. A renegade battery and it gets panting, breaking news status.
expect all kinds of panicky, dumbass responses by a whole range of idiots, starting with the press.
Hmm…wonder why would happen if it was a Dell that caught fire. I can figure anyway. Benevolence with ones and no-tolerance with others. Quite typical…
Flame away (well, that’s what I suppose will happen), literally, of course!
JustCantBe,
Moron, the common denominator is SONY. Not Dell. Not Apple. Not Toshiba or any other laptop maker.
Apple: dump SONY batteries! You should’ve dumped them after the last round of fires.
Extra-Extra- Bush catches fire in the Australian Outback. Isolated incident. On a similar note, Mac laptop catches fire on shelf. Isolated incident. Which one will be reported around the planet?
Not G. W.
A bolt of lighting also killed a dog the same damn day. Who cares
Well, c YOU would $!%*ing care if it burnt your house down and trapped your kid upstairs who then died of smoke inhalation.
“Extra-Extra- Bush catches fire in the Australian Outback. Isolated incident.”
ron, I thought you meant a really hairy Sheila.
My recall replacement battery went dead after 5 month. First it caused erratic shut downs and then failed to allow the machine to run. The entire time it appeared to hold a full charge according to the charge indicator on my computer.
not G.W. dude, you crack me up.
did anyone notice the magazine is burnt in the same place as the macbook!!! looks like the numb nuts left it underneath the macbook!! thats a cause of a fire to me, overheating without ventalilation. thats what the 4 raised bumps are suppose to help do!!!
That was a actually my laptop, but no worries. It was just a Disco inferno.
I’m with ello – after looking at the picture from the link, it appears the magazine may have been under the Mac, since the burned places seem to match up on the magazine cover where the machine caught fire. Not saying there wasn’t a problem with the battery, just wondering if the magazine “helped”…
“the user awoke in the middle of the night to find the laptop on fire. According to witness accounts, before the fire started, a hissing sound and large amounts of smoke poured out of the device.”
This does not make sense even at first reading — and still less sense at subsequent readings.
The owner woke up to find his laptop on fire — i.e., he was asleep until after his laptop had already started to burn.
Thus how would anyone know if it started hissing and pouring out large amounts of smoke BEFORE the fire started?
I call BS until we know a lot more specifics.
Talk About Toast
I work for an Apple Service provider, and we are going through about 5-10 batteries per week… JUST MacBook batteries. Maybe 1 or 2 of ALL the other models per week.
Been waiting for a formal recall to happen on these batteries. They are dying left and right, now one has flamed up. Recall time.
The Dude abides.
Big Deal.
Windows Mobile based devices can catch fire much more frequently today and its their 7th generation.
Trumpet,
The sarcasm clearly went over your head. If you recall the trash posted by MDN when the first reports of the problems Dell had with their laptops, you might think differently. But maybe not.
JustCantBe,
What “trash” did MDN post?
Link please.
We’re waiting…
Shadowself
Here is the original account from the owner:
http://forums.mactalk.com.au/showthread.php?t=28926
Basically it explains how another person was in the room where the laptop caught fire, hence a ‘witness account’.
I thought the lithium-polymer batteries in the MacBooks and MacBook Pros were not prone to failure and combustion, in contrast to the lithium-ion batteries that made headlines in so many notebooks last year.
Is Sony supplying Apple’s lithium-polymer batteries too? Uh-oh.