iPod warranty extended

Macintouch reports that Apple has extended the warranty on (at least some) iPods. A reader entered his serial number and purchase date, and found that his iPod, purchased in November, still is under warranty.

By the way, Think Secret reports that Apple will introduce a 20GB iPod Wednesday for $499, dropping the 5GB model, and dropping the price on the 10GB model to $399. As a stockholder, I hope they will also announce out-of-the-box Windows support. (I know about XPlay, but that doesn't introduce the heathens to Apple software design.)

I just checked my serial number at the iPod Service site, and after entering my serial number, I got:

According to our records, your iPod (5 GB) is still under warranty. Apple's limited warranty does not cover damage which is the result of an accident, abuse, misuse, or misapplication. If it is determined that your product has failed for one of these reasons, it will be either returned to you unrepaired, or you will be contacted with a quote to repair it out of warranty. If your warranty has been voided through accident, abuse, misuse, or misapplication you should acknowledge that below so that credit card information can be collected to avoid delays in repair.

If this is true, it's great news, as one of the knocks on the iPod when it was introduced was that it didn't seem especially rugged. It's a shame Apple always does these things secretly (see Airport Base Station, PowerBook 5300, AppleVision 1710AV display, Seagate hard drives in the original Mac II, etc., etc., etc.).