SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Electrical shock / short

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20120305-83021-2147469581. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Matched catalog product: Apple Ipod touch 3rd gen. Source model text: IPod Touch 8G / A1367. Incident: I have 5 Apple IPod touch devices. Two of them have been dropped short distances and the glass screen have shattered creating small glass shards to come off of the screen and then also very sharp edges on the cracks of the remaining surface of the touch screen. Because the devise is a touch screen my children want to continue to slide their fingers over the damaged screen and risk being cut. I have talked to Apple about this issue and they say there is nothing that they can do about this and that it is customer misuse to drop the product and create the hazard. I would argue that it is foreseeable misuse that a hand held device marketed to children will be dropped and that it should not fail in a hazardous way. If the only way to create a touch capacitance screen is to use a breakable glass then I feel that Apple should not only have to warn of the hazard but also create a covering or a coating that keeps the glass from separating from the surface and that would protect fingers from a laceration hazard after the screen is cracked. The first incident happened on 12/26/11 the day after the devices were given to my three 8 year old children. The device was dropped about 2.5 feet onto a laminate floor and the screen shattered. On of our older children was able to get the device before my younger child could cut herself on the device or the small pieces that came off of it. The second incident occurred on 3/02/12 when the second device was dropped about 2 feet onto a concrete surfa