Andrew Wirtanen is a usability specialist in Cary, NC More »

Sony Takes the Heat for Apple and Dell Battery Recalls

Things aren’t looking good for Sony these days. The largest consumer electronics vendor in the world has had heaps of problems recently ranging from the rootkit fiasco, consumer complaints against the PS3′s future pricing, Blu-ray delays and problems with initial hardware, and last week’s Dell battery recall.

Now, Apple is recalling 1.8 million batteries used in 12″ G4 iBooks, and 12/15″ G4 PowerBooks that use cells manufactured by Sony. The newly released MacBook and MacBook Pros are safe. If you have one of the Apple laptops, go here to make sure you are affected by the recall and to get your new battery.

In related news, the form on Apple’s website does not work for me, and I am not the only one. I submitted the serial number under my iBook keyboard, and the the one on my battery and the form says that my battery serial is invalid. Hopefully, Apple fixes this. I tried calling their 800 number yesterday for the battery recall, but it said that they were too busy and directed me to the website.

Meanwhile, Sony shares are falling. The Dell and Apple recalls are the two largest consumer electronics recalls in history. Sony is sharing the cost of the battery recall with Dell and Apple.

EDIT (8-26-06): Apple has revised the list of affected batteries. It does not include my 12″ iBook battery, so I will not be getting a new one

There seems to be a widespread problem with the website.
I have a one-year old iBook with a battery in the given
range here in Finland.

The same problem with the web page apparently happened with the previous
battery recall – something is (again) wrong with
the database. I hope this will be fixed soon.