Portable music players have always been cursed by parents and especially technologically impaired mothers afraid that their kids hearing will be damaged by the players. These complaints are usually just ignored but now Apple has been sued because its iPod players may inflict serious damage to a person’s hearing as the player can be turned up too high. A man from Louisiana therefore sues Apple and claims that it is selling a defective product that has a faulty design and doesn’t come with enough warnings regarding the risks for damaging your hearing.
Apple’s iPod players can reach a volume of 115 decibel which in the long runt can cause some serious damage, no doubt about that and at the same time it does send a long a warning that high volume will damage your hearing. In France this wasn’t enough though and it had to change the software so that it couldn’t play louder than 100dB. This was not done with the players in the USA though, which is why he chose to sue Apple.
”Apple was forced to pull the iPod from store shelves in France and upgrade software on the device to limit sound to 100 decibels, but has not followed suit in the United States, according to the complaint. The headphones commonly referred to as ear buds, which ship with the iPod, also contribute to noise-induced hearing loss because they do not dilute the sound entering the ear and are closer to the ear canal than other sound sources, the complaint states.”
Apple has chosen not to comment on the suit and we will have to wait and see how everything develops, but it is far from only Apple that should be considered guilty if it is found guilty as charged.
Source: SeattlePi
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