Apple's torture-test lab

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At one point, MacAddict magazine did a story on the Apple torture test lab (circa 1998 or so) and they talked about some machine that would click a mouse a few thousand times before passing it to another machine that would roll the mouse “a million miles.”

Ikea has a simulated butt as well for their chair torture test lab; I wonder if by now there’s a reasonable business in just starting a company (“SitCo,” “Buttmaster”) that makes electronic butts?

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Have to say my one experience with Apple over an issue like this was pretty fantastic.

My ipad2 was dropped slightly, and happened to hit the corner of a piece of furniture with its edge right where the volume button is. This bent the case in a little, depressing the volume button keeping the sound off and the volume icon up all the time. I brought it into a store hoping they might be able to disable the hardware button for me or something… but they just swapped it for a new one for free (and, no, I never buy extended warranties).

From the video of this bending it looks like it is basically the same thing. There is a bit of a weak spot at the cutout for the volume button.

My favorite detail in this whole story is that Apple chose to go public with a very specific number of affected units: nine.

I mean, that is such an easily falsifiable number, I am led to believe it is probably true.

According to previous articles, it sounds like such tests might include “playful pillow fights”, “verbal scoldings”, and “dour looks”.

There really should be an ANSI or ISO standard butt test…

Yes, though for a slightly different industry. Quite a bit of competition there already too.

https://twitter.com/darth/status/515270779487780864/photo/1

Courtesy Darth Smallberries.

I want a app so if I drop my phone it screams on the way down.

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And cry after it crashes on the ground?

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[1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.a.a.aaah[quote=“SamWinston, post:9, topic:41760, full:true”]
I want a app so if I drop my phone it screams on the way down.
[/quote]

There’s an [Android][1] version and there was an Apple version submitted,

but I can’t find it on the Apple store. @Gareth_Spor would be the Boinger to speak to.

And there’s also some sauce-code here: GitHub - jeradesign/falling-wilhelm: Falling Wilhelm — Your iPhone knows when it's falling.

Should be doable with something that polls the accelerometer. Likely to eat batteries, though.

I held a friend’s phone yesterday which, as he showed me, vibrates if it undergos a certain amount of pressure or torque. I thought that was neat.

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Excellent. So now I can have a phone that screams when I drop it and begs for mercy when I crush it. :smiley:

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