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Comment by grawprog | Hacker News Reader

This might be off topic or overly pedantic but why must this be referred to as 'rattlegate'? How is this a 'gate'? In what way does a line of rattling heaphones resemble an incident where the president of the united States was caught incriminating himself on tape in a hotel? Why must this term be used for everything?

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About a hotel break-in, while in the White House. Not in a hotel.

But -gate has long since genericized into a suffix for scandal/coverup, it's not going back. Maybe someday it'll be replaced by something better – but that'd require some affirmative new coinage that signifies the intended meaning(s) even better.

As it happens, the situation described in the article hardly counts as a scandal or coverup, either - about the worst allegation that can be drawn from it is poor QA or process engineering.

Unfortunately, it's Apple themselves who effectively expanded the meaning of -gate when they refused to acknowledge the antenna issue in an iPhone version (5, iirc). They were trying a coverup ("you're holding it wrong!"). Antennagate transitioned -gate into "large-scale hardware manufacturing problem that company won't admit", and here we are.

I totally agree that it's a bit annoying, but considering the number of minor quibbles that have now been suffixed with -gate [1], the battle is probably lost and it's best to just accept it and move on.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_%22-gate%22_scandals...

I agree, there has to be an active cover-up or scandal for it to be a "-gate".

But more importantly, your summary of Watergate is wonderful. It reminds me of John Mulaney's line about the NY Post: "It's like you're talking to someone who heard the news, and now they're trying to give you the gist."

I'll let the other pedantics on HN correct you, I'll just encourage you to go read up a bit on the topic so you get the bits in the right order.

It's a catchy and (now) descriptive way to name a scandal. I agree that you're being a little pedantic.

He said “overly” pedantic not “a little” pedantic. Sheesh.

To reify something you have to name it, apparently.

I see nothing wrong about it. Apple spends billions on R&D yet still manages to push crap designs to the market (as evidenced by Louis Rossmann).

If naming something *-gate will make a dent in the public's "premium" image of Apple, I'm all for it. They sell the same crap as others, just overpriced, maybe with software that's better in some aspects.

Apple almost never owns up to their mistakes when it comes to defective product design.

Apple has an excellent warranty, takes care of their customers, so they totally cover defective products out of their own pockets. and Louis Rossmann is clueless about good product design.

It also doesn't seem like Apple is simply ignoring the issue. They aren't advertising issues with the AirPods pro, but there are support documents which discuss the issue, possible solutions and to contact support if it continues.

Based on my experience and anecdotes presented here, it seems people having this problem are getting it replaced.

That said, what happens when the warranty ends?

Lots of words lose their original impact and become widespread. Decimate was originally used to refer to killing 10% of a company's soldiers as collective punishment or something like that, but today we use it for much less serious events (and usually ignore the actual percentage magnitude).

It's off topic and overly pedantic. In the same spirit, Nixon wasn't at the hotel.

It does seem silly. The name of the hotel where the break-in occurred was Watergate. If it had been a Marriott Courtyard I suppose we'd be calling this "Rattleyard".

> This might be off topic or overly pedantic

You are correct.

Antennagate set the precedent.

I like to think how everything must be so right in the world were this people live that what makes them the most active and angry is their pieces of cheap consumer electronics not working perfectly.

And yeah your Airpods are cheap, $250 for a wireless noise cancelling pair of headphones that fit in a pocket is wonderfully cheap and Apple can only sustain that pricing because this fashionable products are almost a loss leader.

Is there a source for that? Similar products are only a fraction of the cost of Airpods. Granted, they don't work as well, but that's to be expected as Apple has complete control over the device.

Accessories like this are generally where Apple has enjoyed huge margins.

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