Apple has acknowledged customer complaints about flaws in its iPod nano digital music player, saying one problem is a "real but minor issue."
Early iPod nano customers have filled several internet sites with complaints about broken and scratch-prone LCD screens.
Macworld magazine quoted Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, as saying the broken screens were due to a "vendor quality issue" that affected "less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the total iPod nano units that we've shipped."
Schiller said customers who had broken screens could receive replacements.
He also said Apple (AAPL) had received few complaints about screen scratches, and that the iPod nano screen was made of the same materials used in other iPods. He said if customers were concerned about scratches, they should use a case.
The comments seemed to satisfy some of the users who had complained about the problems.
"I am very delighted to see Apple take this issue seriously," said Matthew Peterson, an iPod nano owner who set up a website to collect photos of damaged iPods, in a statement on his site.
"It is sad that it took a website and a lot of publicity before they finally investigated, but at least future nano users with the same problem I had will not be subjected to the same treatment that I was."
- - -
No HD for Xmas: Toshiba is delaying its launch of next-generation HD DVD players in the U.S. market to around February or March, revising its plan for a year-end start date.
Toshiba said it would take several months to build up inventories after starting mass-production in mid-December.
Toshiba had originally planned to launch HD DVD players in the fourth quarter of 2005 in both Japan and the United States, while Sony plans to put a Blu-ray disc drive in its new PlayStation game console to go on sale next year.
The company said it still plans to introduce HD DVD players in the Japanese market by the year-end.
Toshiba won powerful support when Microsoft (MSFT) and Intel (INTC) said that their products would support the HD DVD format, dealing a major blow to the Sony-led Blu-ray camp.
- - -
Cards neither rock nor roll: Virgin Records said it would release the Rolling Stones' latest album on a new encrypted flash memory card that will allow users to preview and buy locked tracks from four of the veteran rockers' previous albums.
The memory card, known as Gruvi, is manufactured by SanDisk, and will be available in November at select U.S. stores for $40.
To keep the content from ending up on internet file-swapping sites or otherwise distributed without permission, the card comes with copy-protection technology, or firmware, built in.
But tracks on the card -- even those from the Stones' latest album A Bigger Bang or any unlocked after purchase -- cannot be copied to a PC hard drive. A card reader-equipped laptop or desktop computer would be required to play the tracks.
Fred von Lohmann, senior intellectual property attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, said placing copy-protection technology on the SanDisk card didn't make sense because fans can already find the content online for free, so the copy restrictions only end up inconveniencing the customer who paid for the card.
- - -
Emergency leniency: The FCC backed off again on enforcing a deadline for internet phone service providers to disconnect all customers who haven't acknowledged that they understand it may be hard to reach a live emergency dispatcher when dialing 911.
The agency explained that the status reports required from every internet phone company last week showed that by "repeatedly prompting subscribers through a variety of means, the majority of providers have obtained acknowledgments from nearly all, if not all, of their subscribers."
The decision came a day before a deadline that would have required internet phone companies to cut off at least 10,000 of the estimated 2.7 million users of the service in the United States.
The FCC said providers who have received confirmations from at least 90 percent of their subscribers will no longer face the disconnection requirement, but still must continue seeking the remaining acknowledgments.
- - -
Compiled by Keith Axline. AP and Reuters contributed to this report.
