Flawed Screen Haunts iPod nano. Apple Responds.

Within a week after launching the sexy, diminutive, ultra-chic iPod nano, reports started rolling in of bad screens, cracked screens, scratched screens.

‘Uh oh,’ said some. Is the nano Apple’s new Cube? What’s the scoop? Is the nano plagued with a bad screen? Could this hiccup derail the iPod machine?

In a word. Yes. And no. Hmmm. That’s two words. But it’s the right answer.

Yes, amazingly, a number of the new iPods came off the assembly line with defective screens. The screens were easily cracked and very easily scratched. In fact, it was so easy to crack an iPod nano screen that some were left wondering how Steve Jobs got his nano out of his jeans pocket without damage.

As often happens in the media, ‘reports flooded in of damaged iPod nano screens.’ The flood became an uproar. So you would think by reading the news.

Even a few websites went up specifically to document all the comments and sad iPod nano user’s attempts to get Apple to wake up and smell the screen.

One of the first was iPodnanoFlaw which, though not a pretty site, explained the day-by-day, blow-by-blow problems of an iPod nano user, his bad screen, Apple’s responses, and eventual redemption.

Note that “ipodnanoflaw.com” and “flawedmusicplayer.com” both point to an Apple .Mac web site.

That’s a gutsy move on the part of anyone, let alone an iPod owner hoping to get Apple to replace a defective iPod.

After all the noise, rumors, news, complaints, speculation, and fear regarding the iPod nano’s screen, what’s the scoop?

Well, there’s two scoops. The first scoop has to do with the iPod nano’s screen. So does the second scoop, but for different reasons.

The first scoop is the broken screen scoop. Yes, even Apple has admitted there are problems with broken screens. How many problems?

That depends on who you talk to, but it looks like a small number. As in one-tenth of one-percent small. Still, out of a million iPod nanos that would be, uh, let’s see, um, 10-percent would be 100,000, and 10-percent of that would be 10,000, and a tenth of that would be, uh, divide by two, carry the four—- 1,000 customers with bad screens.

What’s Apple doing about it? Got a bad iPod nano screen? Call AppleCare and you get a new one. No questions asked (well, a few, but not the tough kind while sweating under a hot overhead lamp in a dank, dark jail cell).

OK, that’s the first scoop. Apple owns up to the 1,000 whiners and decides to fix the iPod nano screen issue by issuing new iPod nanos to complainers… er, customers.

The second scoop had to do with gazillions of customers supposedly complaining about how easily the iPod nano screen gets scratched. I’ve had a few iPods and none of them have a scratched screen, including the iPod photo with the color screen.

Still, the noise on the web continued to grow about poor screen quality. Maybe the noise was generated by the same news people who reported stacks of bodies in the New Orleans SuperDome. Na da.

No scratched screens. Why? Apple says the iPod nano screens are made of the same plastic as the regular color iPod and that iPod remains ‘complaint free.’ So far. If there’s a concern about the screen becoming scratched, Apple suggests using a nano case to cover the nano screen to prevent the nano scratches. Nanoo, nanoo.

Again, Apple addressed this issue quickly, head on, and decided to ‘do the right thing.’

I’m proud of our Cupertino computer folks. A problem cropped up and they jumped at a chance to fix it. What say you, Microsoft?