Dan Riccio, Apple’s VP of hardware engineering, has reiterated that the company stands by the tablet and its premium build quality. This happened days after Apple confirmed to The Verge that some of the new iPad Pros might come with a slight bend or curve out of the box.

Riccio offered the most informative response yet on the matter  when he responded to a customer email, saying that the 2018 iPad Pro,

“meets or exceeds all of Apple’s high quality standards of design and precision manufacturing. We’ve carefully engineered it and every part of the manufacturing process is precisely measured and controlled.”

Riccio’s email goes on to say that,

Apple’s “current specification for iPad Pro flatness is up to 400 microns which is even tighter than previous generations. This 400 micron variance is less than half a millimeter (or the width of fewer than four sheets of paper at most) and this level of flatness won’t change during normal use over the lifetime of the product. Note, these slight variations do not affect the function of the device in any way.”

Riccio does not contradict or deny The Verge’s initial report that some iPad devices are shipping from the factory with a bend in their chassis, which the company claims is the result of a cooling process during the manufacturing of what is an extremely thin and lightweight unibody aluminum device.

After that initial response, many were left frustrated and disappointed that it seemed Apple was shrugging off iPad Pro units coming bent (however minor) right out of the box, deeming it unacceptable for such an expensive product.

At this point, the company has not launched a special replacement program for the iPads.