But you’ve learned, and that’s the best thing. Really, more people in the world ought to be lazy and procrastinate like me. I’ve occasionally left the house completely determined to buy some expensive piece of electronica only to come home shaking my head and looking thoughtful and undecided. And when something breaks, I hunt for some way that someone ELSE can fix it rather than me.
I’m still going to work this weekend on my one beef with my iPod – namely, it scratches like a mofo. It scratches when you put it in its own freaking CASE. I’m going to buff it down with Brasso and buy a new skin for it. Seems a bit of a waste to buff it, though, considering it’s going to be immediately slid into something that will hide its prettiness.
I don’t regret my iPod in the slightest. What other music player can ALSO carry every single episode of Firefly?
You’re not seeing the point. The silly thing isn’t DESIGNED to be user servicable. That much is abundantly obvious. There are advantages and disadvantages to this. If all the components were modular and easily replacable, then the chances of something coming loose upon impact, which happens a lot with my ipod, are reduced, and the entire thing can be made more compact and solid. I have no fucking clue what the hell is wrong with my Rio even though I can open the case with no tools at all, fat lot of good that did me eh? I imagine if I sent the ipod in for repairs in a year or two it will be cheaper for Apple to just give me a new one than fire up the gigawatt lasers and cut open the case, and that’s just fine with me. If you bought an IPOD with the expectation that you were going to open it up and tinker with it, then you are both fool and knave.
Also I will require pictures of your ass before I enter into this wager. What’s in this for you, anyway?
I’ve had three iPods: one third, one fourth, and one fifth generation. I love(d) them all.
The only problem I’ve had was with the battery on my fourth gen model (20GB w/clickwheel version). The battery started to wear out (died after 6-8 hours) after about two years so I sent it in to Apple for a replacement (I had the AppleCare protection plan). I got a brand new one back in four days. Then I sold it on eBay to fund my new 60GB beauty.
Why on earth didn’t you send it in to Apple, username_taken. What customizations did you do to it anyway? For the record, if you’re talking about engraving from Apple they engrave the new one for you free of charge.
When your car breaks down do you try to fix it yourself, then just leave it on the side of the road if you fail?
I think it’s simpler than that – satisfied users don’t post rants.
Though the comparison to Windows doesn’t seem a good fit, since I’m sure that the number of folks affected by Windows malware is a lot more than 1% of the user base.
Apple regularly doesn’t do shit about hard drive failure.
I think all the bitterness comes from the fact that the iPod is a premium product with a premium price. People expect a little bit more, but what they get is a little bit less. My personal gripe is the lack of a hard reset button. If something can crash, it needs a hard reset button, inelegent or not.
After my iPod fried, I bought a little cheapity-cheapy RCA-brand MP3 player that’s about 3/4 the size of a roll of coins.
It operates on a single AAA battery, which not only means that the thing will actually outlast the charge on the battery (I mean honestly, changing the battery counts as “user serviceable” in the same universe as changing a lightbulb counts as “home repair”), but that also, I can use it while travelling. It will actually get me through a flight over the Atlantic or a train ride to Toronto because even if the battery runs out, I have another one right there, rather than having to stew in silence until I get near an outlet for an extended period of time.
It connects to my computer as a removable drive - no more dicking around with a cantankerous piece of software, just dump the files in there. I can’t tell you how much I hated iTunes. It never worked properly on my computer. This works like a charm.
And it has that incredibly advanced miracle of modern technology, an FM radio, which not only lets me listen to CBC news but also allowed me to catch the world premiere of the Pet Shop Boys’ new single on the Beeb when I was in London the other month. (It’s a disco-pop allegory of the relationship between Tony Blair and George Bush done as a gay love song. It’s called “I’m With Stupid.”)
Seriously, I don’t see what possible reason there is to have an iPod other than that it’s pretty and trendy. Much like certain ex-boyfriends.
I don’t understand why Apple doesn’t throw in an FM receiver. The iPod is ‘impossibly small’ now, why not make it possibly small and add a radio feature AND a removable battery. Seriously, why does the battery have to be permantly attached to the unit?
Slacker:
Yes, I reguarly fix my own car and motorcycles. I consider it a simple joy in life to perform work on things I own. I agree that I screwed up by changing the battery myself. However, I still doubt I had anything to do with my iPod failing. Since writing my little rant I have gone back into my memory banks (scary place) and believe I got AT LEAST 5 months out of my iPod after changing the battery. Flash forward to about 4 weeks ago. The unit began rebooting on its own after what I would consider normal use.
Ok, now to muddy the waters: I went out last night and bought a new 4GB nano :wally I decided to stay with Apple given all the music I have tied to iTunes. I have to say the sound is fantastic, but the unit is SOOO small. I liked that the Mini I had filled my hand while still being small enough to go to the gym with. This Nano is SMALL. So, I guess I lost all credibilty in this rant, but spending a day without music at work was unbareable! I had mindless drafting to do and so missed the days when I’d put my ear buds in and go about mindlessly drawing lines on a screen.
Any moderator out their feel free to close this thread. I think I have destroyed my own pitting thread :wally
You’re not a putz. A Nano is a perfect choice. You cannot suffer a hard drive failure on a design that does not make use of a hard drive. I’d say, if 4 gigs satisfies your storage needs, that you made an excellent choice. The Nano is like an elegant USB Flash Drive with a display. No moving parts.
The battery issue may well continue to be a sticky one, but get AppleCare on the Nano.
As a novice, I went to my local Fry’s Electronics to buy my first ever iPod. Talked to a salesman there (young guy) who owns an iPod and a Creative Zen MP3 player.
He told me both were good, but that the Creative MP3 had a removable battery that can be replaced if necessary, the machine was cheaper than the iPod and came with 8 gigs of memory.
Sounds like he gave me some good advice and I love the Creative MP3 player…and I just read that Apple is now suing Creative for copyright infringement, so obviously Creative is good enough to piss off Apple.
Mr Cazzle discovered that his in-warranty iPod Shuffle was competely dead on a Thursday. He immediately logged into Apple’s website and reported the fault. Over the course of the weekend, he realised he was an idiot, and that the Shuffle was merely flat - the USB port on his keyboard wasn’t capable of charging it, so of course leaving it in there for hours wasn’t changing anything. :rolleyes: On Monday, a replacement Shuffle arrived in the mail with instructions to return the faulty one in the enclosed envelope, and advice that he would only be charged a replacement fee if the Shuffle turned out to be functional. He sent it back, but was never charged anything.
There was no step of the process that I could fault. Response to the complaint was rapid, the replacement was supplied before the original was sent back so there was no lengthy iPodless waiting period and there was no fee charged for wasting their time. I’m now a big fan of Apple customer service.
At least when I opened the box, the instructions told me to open the back of my player, install the enclosed re-chargeable (15 hour per charge) battery, and charge it up.
If the battery should ever die completely, I simply get a new one and install it.
The concept of installing batteries into small electrically powered apparatus is not particularly new.
The concept of NOT being able to install a battery is new. So how’s that working out for you guys?
The very fist mp3 player I bought did not have a replacable battery, neither do any of my palm pilots or pocket PCs. As I said there are upsids and downsides. Usually I would have to buy a seperate set of rechargable batteries, which take a long time to charge, do not hold as much power and can be their own PITA. I’ve had 2 MP3 players that used AAAs, and on both I lost the battery cover within 4 month, meaning that the battery would pop out at the most annoying times, and after 4 months of use I would have to carry 4 extra batteries to get 5 hours of use out of it or buy new batteries.
iTunes is the biggest reason I bought an iPod, because I like many other dopers enjoy audiobooks, long lectures, and foreign language courses, and all those require some way of keeping track of one’s position in a file. My Rio could do this in a fashion, with a bookmark feature, but it wasn’t as good because you couldn’t name the bookmarks, so you were constantly guessing what was what. the Ipod does this completely seamelssly. I listen to audiobook, I get bored, I stop it, I listen to some headbanging music, I go back to the audiobook and start right where I left off. Which other 1 gig flash based player allows you to do this? Not to mention managing playlists. I admit that I never buy music off it or use the update feature though.
And there is NOTHING good on the radio here. NOTHING. I use to have a car that had a radio, it was useless!
By using the right software you can download radio programs from the BBC and convert them to mp3’s which I presume you could listen to on your iPod. I listen to the BBCs “Listen to radio shows you’ve missed” frequently on my PDA. The BBC even do some radio shows as podcasts. If you want the details email me. If enough people want I can go post the steps you need to go through to do it.
Actually, you came in late to the story. * Creative * just got a patent approved on something called Zen which is apparently a menu-based way of traversing music. (Another travesty of our patent-granting system, I suspect.) Anyway, seeing as they have been losing money bigtime, they decided to compete the old-fashioned way and get an injunction against Apple for patent infringement which would stop iPods from being sold. At this point, Apple counter-sued.
Net result is likely that both companies will spend a metric buttload of money on lawyers and not much will change.
HAHAHA! They have you now. This is Apple’s iTunes strategy in a nutshell. This is one reason I will never buy an iPod.
The second reason is… I bought my daughter an iPod mini last June for her birthday. We just got it replaced for the 2nd time. There customer service is great, but a $200 + piece of electronics should last longer than 6 months. I bought an Archos Jukebox second hand about 3 years ago. It’s still going strong.
The 3rd reason is I just don’t like the iTunes software as a player.
