Attorneys: Apple's Volume Limit Admits Flaw

There have been plenty of articles about Apple finally introducing a maximum volume setting for the iPod. In France Apple was forced to do this because laws there require no device to pump more than 100 db in order to protect the hearing of the public. And, of course, there is a class-action lawsuit against Apple here in the US as well.

This particular article from CIO magazine speaks to an important issue – by adding the volume control Apple is legally admitting guilt.

I don’t like how our culture has become lawsuit crazy. People seem to sue for anything and everything – it’s become a new type of legal lottery. However, I will say that I strongly believe that the Apple iPod has a serious design flaw and I’m very pleased that this lawsuit is proceeding.

When I listen to my iPod Nano when walking or running, I will often adjust the volume so that I can hear the music over the ambient noise level around me (improving the signal-to-noise ratio). Sometimes I’m in a quiet setting so I set the volume low, and other times I’m on a busy street so I set the volume up.

Since this lawsuit began I became aware of this and I noticed that in those noisy settings I was turning my Nano’s volume up to the maximum without realizing it. As an experiment I tried listening to it at maximum volume in a quiet setting and it was so loud it made my ears ring – without realizing it I have been hurting my ears for months!

I’ve been experimenting with several headphones and I’ve discovered that the earbuds require more power to overcome ambient noise because they don’t block outside noise the way normal headphones do. I’ve also experimented with some noise-canceling headphones and with them I can still enjoy my music with about 20% less volume. This new volume limiter feature would help protect me and many others.

I checked my other portable music players and ALL of them have volume limiters on them, so this is not a new idea. From what I’ve read even this new feature is flawed – I want to be able to optionally simply set the Nano to produce “safe levels” of audio without having to guess how many db that is "by ear".

I do think that Apple is guilty in this case and I hope the lawsuit is successful against them. I find Apple’s “we know better than you” attitude to be quite arrogant and tiresome. My next music player will be a Creative Labs Zen Vision: M.