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iPods Don't Really Make You Deaf

by Amar Toor on January 4, 2010 at 08:01 AM

Our grandparents always warned us that going outside with a damp head of hair will give us pneumonia, that too much "personal time" would make us go blind, or, more recently, that compulsively listening to our iPod would eventually deafen us. The jury may still be out on the first two, but one U.S. judge has already ruled on the third -- and it sounds like our ear drums are safer than we thought.

That's because Apple has just won a legal dispute over the volume level of its iPods, spurred by complaints that the products were defective because of their superhuman capacity for kickin' out the jams. As the BBC reports, the two plaintiffs claimed that their iPods and their 115 decibel maximum volume levels were responsible for their own hearing loss. Senior Judge David Thompson, however, would have none of it, saying that "the plaintiffs simply do not plead facts showing that hearing loss from iPod use is actual or imminent." He went on to point out that Apple does in fact attach a warning to their iPods, advising judicious volume control.

We're not really sure how a case this inane ever made its way to court -- isn't this a little like someone suing Ben & Jerry's for the cost of their triple bypass surgery? Listening to your iPod full blast all the time probably isn't great for your ears, but it's pretty nice to know that Steve Jobs isn't out to destroy our hearing. [From: BBC; via: TechRadar]

Tags: apple, david thompson, DavidThompson, ipod, ipods, study, top

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