DT Daily: Apple’s iPhone woes, high-tech repo men, Apple Wave hoax

By Bill Roberson September 26, 2014

Today on DT Daily: Apple’s double dose of fail, the repo man goes high tech, and please, don’t put your iPhone in the microwave.

Following what appeared to be a record-setting rollout of the iPhone 6 and iOS 8, Apple has suddenly been hit with two setbacks surrounding both their big new phone and the bits that run it.

The first big problem cropped up early this week when Apple released an update to iOS 8, which was promptly met with fury from iPhone users as their phones’ OS went AWOL, slowed to a crawl or otherwise stopped working as expected. Apple immediately pulled the update and apologized. Then, owners of the iPhone 6 Plus reported their new phones were bending and warping after spending too much time in their skinny jeans.

Apparently, owners who take their bent Pluses back to Apple stores have been getting fair treatment, including new phones if their original more closely resembles a Salvador Dali painting. Also, go here to find out how to return your iPhone to its pre-iOS 8.0.1 update condition.

It used to be that if you missed some car payments, Big Lou and some pals would stop by for a friendly chat and request the keys so they could politely return your car to the dealer.

Well, those days are long gone apparently, since now, if you fall behind on your payments, The Man can just disable your car where it sits – by remote control. The device, called an ignition interrupt, is typically installed in cars sold to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings who have financed their new wheels. The high-tech repo men can even GPS-track and switch off your Honda from a smartphone. Not surprisingly, they say the tech motivates people to pay up.

As expected, privacy, safety and financial rights questions have popped up, especially after some rather scary reports of cars simply being turned off while they were being driven.

And getting back to the iPhone 6, we wanted to warn you of a dangerous new hoax known as “Apple Wave” that has bubbled up from the depths of the interwebs.

The convincing Apple-ish looking advertisement for Wave says you can quickly recharge your new phone by putting it in your microwave oven and nuking it. Seems reasonable, right? Just to be clear: don’t ever, ever do that. You will definitely nuke your phone into oblivion, and if you take the crispy remains into an Apple store, you’ll probably be roundly mocked and they will not replace it.

Also, putting a metal phone in a microwave could also ruin the oven and even start a fire, as some unfortunate persons have learned. So just to recap: don’t ever try to charge an iPhone – or any phone – in a microwave oven, and your new iPhone is also not waterproof or able to levitate.

Your host today is Jillian Rabe.

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