Sweet merciful space goat with a Thermos full of Postum-- does Apple have another serious quality control crisis on its hands? You all know that the miniPod is selling like gangbusters, right? Or, rather, it is anywhere that shoppers are lucky enough to find them. Ever since Apple finally admitted that demand had outstripped supply so completely that the company was delaying the miniPod's international launch by three months, scattered reports have flickered in claiming that shipments of miniPods to Apple's resellers have all but dried up completely. So where 'da 'Pods at?

Well, here's where the "quality control" question comes in: faithful viewer Paula Cuccurullo notes that BBC NEWS is reporting a miniPod complication of potentially dire proportions. Apparently some people are complaining about hearing "screeching sounds and static," even when they're not listening to Noise To Cringe By: The Best of Screeching Sounds and Static Vol. 1. (Inexplicably, it's not available at the iTunes Music Store yet; sorry, kiddies.) It seems that some owners, after spending just a few weeks with their miniPods, are finding themselves with extreme sound problems which the Beeb attributes to "jack issues." The article links to a posting at UNL in which a biologist describes his findings after dissecting one such afflicted unit, and what he found may technically qualify as an "uh-oh" under current manufacturing guidelines. Or at the very least a "whoopsie."

Here's the deal: reportedly the miniPod's guts include a main circuit board that's screwed to the case and a secondary, smaller board (which houses the all-important headphone jack) which is not. These two boards are connected solely via a single rigid ten-pin connector that is locked down with some "shoddy soldering." The problem arises because the connection "has essentially zero flexibility," but the miniPod's case is made out of aluminum, which has a little "give" to it. All it takes to start wrecking that connection and bringing forth the aforementioned screeching and static is "repeated pressure on the case"-- like, say, plugging and unplugging the earbuds, carrying it around in a pocket, or otherwise actually using the thing. We sense a Neistat Brothers sequel involving the phrase "iPOD MINI'S UNREPLACEABLE SOLDERING LASTS ONLY 45 DAYS."

It's worth pointing out, of course, that while Apple admits there's a problem, it claims the sound issues are currently limited to "a few isolated reports"; there's every chance that most miniPods are fine, and the sick ones were all soldered together by a guy named Francis who had hurt his solderin' hand in a spirited drunken hammer fight down at the local bar the night before. Still, we have to admit that the whole "rigid connector in a squishy case" design sounds like it might not have been Apple's brightest idea ever.

So are the miniPod shipping delays purely the result of demand gone haywire, or has Apple quietly ceased production of the lil' fellas until it fixes this alleged soldering ickiness? You don't have to be paranoid to think it's plausible, especially since faithful viewer frozen tundra notes that, according to MacRumors, Apple has contacted customers with pending miniPod orders and offered to "replace [their] iPod mini with a 15 GB iPod at no additional charge." Remember, that's a $299 'Pod (with space for about 2,700 more songs) for $249; surely Apple wouldn't be acting so "generously" if something weren't up. Here's hoping that this whole problem is really as "isolated" as Apple claims.