After years of having to avoid reporting about the faults in their favourite Apple toys, the Tame Apple press is jolly happy about a small number of cracks turning up in the touch cover of Microsoft’s Surface.

Microsoft announced that a small number of covers for its Surface tablet are prone to splitting after two weeks or less in users' hands and that it's replacing the defective ones. The company is "aware of a small number of instances of material separation" of the cover accessory, Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft said in an emailed statement. The cover serves a protective jacket for the Surface, the tablet computer released last month.

The defects with the Touch Cover, which users said had begun to split apart at the seams, were reported earlier on technology industry websites. Normally when stories like this appear about faults in Apple gear, the Tame Apple press rush to point out that they are small numbers of gear due to a production problem on one Chinese production line.  Apple usually denies that there really is a problem and people soon forget about it.

The Surface has had good reviews, but Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer admits that sales have been “modest”. Given that Ballmer is not known for his modesty, it is probably fair to say that he probably means “not as good as I hoped.”