There's little argument that Apple's quality control had improved mightily in the past year. If you hadn't noticed, think back to the Amelio Era (also referred to in the Apple history books as "those dark, scary days"). Remember the Power Mac 4400, which didn't just look like a PC, but acted like one, too? Between its high out-of-box failure rate and the near impossibility of actually fixing the thing, we're trying to forget that Apple ever stooped so low as to ship such an utterly un-Mac-like Mac as the 4400. Then, of course, there were those Wintel-laptop-looking PowerBook 190's and 5300's; they weren't just overpriced and underfeatured, but they were constructed so poorly, Apple had to promise to replace the plastic housing on those things for years, since they'd crack if you looked at them sideways. And don't forget the highly entertaining syndrome whereby a mild-mannered PowerBook 5300 could suddenly become a "PowerBook Flambé." Ah, those were the days...

Stuff like that seems a lot less frequent from the Apple of today, but odd little problems still materialize every once in a while. For the "Weirdest Quality Control Problem" award, we've got a new issue surfacing that displaces the "PowerBook G3 rattling around loose in the box" syndrome that popped up several months ago. According to NoBeige, iMac keyboards are showing up warped-- but so far, the reports of warped keyboards are limited to Singapore. One of their readers claims that keyboards pulled from three iMac boxes were warped to the extent that they couldn't rest flat on the table; the fourth one they looked at was okay. How's that for a strange one?

As near as we can figure it, we have to attribute this syndrome to some kind of mutant plastic-eating bacteria running loose in Singapore. Apparently the bacterium in question is an inexplicably picky eater and only targets Bondi blue translucent plastics-- and only when used in keyboards. After the bacterium is done feasting on its favorite dish, the iMac keyboard warps due to its lessened structural integrity. Our only other hypothesis is that the Singapore iMac growers are letting the keyboards dry in the sun too long; once picked from the genetically-engineered Keyboard Tree, the fruit should be dried for only twelve hours in direct sunlight for maximum key response and optimal shape. Any longer, and the keyboard first starts to warp, and then to shrivel like a raisin. But whatever the problem is, we're confident that Apple will find it and correct it, guaranteeing iMac customers worldwide a warpless keyboard experience.