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A brief history of hardware epidemics

Capacitors that overheated, leaked, or even caught fire. Lead-free solder that couldn’t survive being heated and cooled repeatedly. Butterfly keyboards that didn’t work.

I’d like to unearth a couple of mass graves from the past that have surely contributed to landfill around the world: capacitor plague and lead-free solder, and a recent problem with butterflies. Many have turned out to be duff, so-called counterfeit capacitors: in the early years of this century, a series of fires in mainly industrial and commercial premises were blamed on catastrophic failure of strip light ballasts. I repeatedly hear of those whose Macs have been replaced or repaired at no cost in order to satisfy customers, even though warranty, AppleCare or extended service programmes have expired.

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