It seems that there are quality control issues within Apple but are not as bad as previously thought.  Though, you can go ahead and thank Steve Jobs for wanting to rush these things out the door since he was upset enough that the Touch was not available the same day like the other iPods. A possible explanation has cropped up on the Apple Discussion pages.

Someone who claims to have been/is in the LCD engineering business has offered up a possible explanation, going by the name drvelocity, he says the following,

I’m an engineer with experience in the LCD industry and after seeing enough photos of the Ipod Touch I feel that I can make a pretty accurate assessment of the “black level” situation. It appears to me that it’s a problem with the anti-reflective coating. The good news is this is most likely a temporary situation due to quality control issues.

(Added explanation: The AR coating is essentially a clear layer that prevents light from reflecting off of that surface. What’s happening here is the upper glass layer is reflecting light from the LCD screen back down onto the said screen. Without an AR coating you get exactly what you see – shimmering blacks. The problem isn’t noticeable with vibrant colors on screen. Rotating the screen will change the way this light is reflected to your eyes and may minimize the problem, but since the LCD was engineered to give best color output when looking straight on, you’re left with a losing battle.)

The good news is that it’s not technology itself but rather a faulty application of the AR coating which is a rather important and easy to mess up process, if rushed and it seems that’s what has happened.

The bad news is that it will still require a trip back to the factory for repair.  Now, if only Apple could deal with the hissing and software problems, we’d be golden.

I just hope that drvelocity is right and if he is that leads to the question, why didn’t Apple just copy the process right over from the iPhone or use the same assembly process?  I don’t recall the iPhone having this problem.

Related:

Entry was posted on Monday, September 17th, 2007 at 8:29 am under Apple.

Read more entries by Jonathan Schlaffer.
Stumble It!