Apple weathered that Antennagate storm surprisingly well, but now
there's another potential cloudburst on the horizon, and it's been
pre-named for your convenience: "Glassgate." Or maybe
"Glass-That-Shatters-If-Scratched-By-A-Casegate." Ryan Block has just
posted a story on gdgt citing sources "inside and outside
Apple" claiming that Apple has discovered a different flaw -- or
weakness, shall we say -- in its iPhone 4 design. The basic problem
seems to be with non-bumper cases, specifically ones that slide on to
the phone, and the danger of trapped particles scratching the back of
the phone while taking the case on and off. Case-caused scratches are
nothing new (though still annoying), but the big problem seems to be
that these scratches can lead to cracking and even full-on shattering
of the back panel. Apparently this lead to Apple severely limiting its
reselling efforts of third party cases for a time (which you might have
noticed), and while Apple currently has some third party cases online
and in its stores, none of the hard cases are of the slide-on variety.
Apple also purportedly has a new test program set up to understand this specific issue.
Of course, plenty of questions are raised by all this: is this a
widespread problem with folks that have managed to acquire a slide-on
case? We haven't really heard of such a correlation so far. Do the
snap-on folks, many of whom received their cases free of charge from
Apple, have anything to worry about? And does Apple have any intention
of warning its consumers about this potential danger? Apple didn't
respond to Ryan's request for comment, and we doubt they'll respond to
our own until they're good and ready to talk -- let's just hope there's
not another faux hat-in-hand press conference in our future!