“Apple on Friday said that it’s open to cooperation with French authorities, who are exploring the possibility that two of the company’s devices were linked to the crash of EgyptAir Flight 804 in 2016,” Roger Fingas reports for AppleInsider.
“The flight’s first officer may have plugged an iPhone 6s and an iPad mini 4 into the wrong socket in the jet’s cockpit, French officials told Le Parisien,” Fingas reports. “That may have triggered runaway heat, in turn sparking a fire.”
“Apple told the Parisien that it wasn’t aware of evidence linking its devices to the EgyptAir disaster,” Fingas reports. “EgyptAir Flight 804 vanished over the Mediterranean on May 19 last year, killing 66 people. ”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The results of this investigation will be interesting. We wouldn’t jump to any conclusions, yet.
In other news, planes are so f’ing fragile, that plugging in an iPad mini can crash it!
Pilot must’ve actually owned a SamSplode phone & SamSizzle tablet.
First, Apple’s iOS devices incorporate charge controllers which limit current – 2.1A @ 5Vdc is unlikely to cause a “runaway heat” incident leading to a fire unless there is another problem. Second, aircraft avionics and power systems are designed for robustness and safety and include circuit protection. This just doesn’t sound reasonable at all.
Apple pledges to help with the investigation. How noble, how responsible. If there was no reason to expect such a catastrophic failure based on design then Apple should reject this hypothesis immediately and vigorously. Allowing such rumors to persist is unconscionable.
There is this notion called “the scientific method” that says you should never reject a hypothesis until after you have gathered all the facts and shown that they are inconsistent with the hypothesis.
I doubt that Apple can “immediately and vigorously” reject the hypothesis that under some peculiar circumstances plugging an iDevice into a high-voltage electricity source (possibly using an unknown third-party charger or adapter) could possibly overload it.
Since the company stated that it was unaware of any evidence to support the hypothesis, I am sure that they are scrambling now to gather evidence to refute it. Until the research is complete, it is too early to make denials that might later have to be walked back.