The apple web site and board are little to no help, so I am throwing this out to the dopers, maybe you guys can help. I just got a new ipod (40g with a touch wheel if that makes a difference), and I was listening to it on the way to dinner tonight. When I got to the restaurant I didn’t want to leave it in the car, so I hit pause, clicked on the hold button, and dropped it into my pocket. After I walked back out to my car and went to plug it back in, but found that the hold switch had locked leaving the ipod frozen. I tryed resetting it (pressing menu and play/pause) but it won’t go. Itunes isn’t recognizing it, so I can’t back up my files (making me really loath to send it to apple as all they will do is give me a new one and I will have to spend three days loading it again.) Is there anything I can do, and does anyone know why this happened? Please help! ANY info is welcome and apreciated.
I have an iPod and have had to reset it once or twice. I believe that I had to hit the center button and menu in order to reset it. Did you do that and just mistype in your post?
no id pressed the play/pause button. The little troubleshooting guid they sent me said that the play/pause button and menu were the ones to press. That said, after reading your post I tried pressing the center button and the menu button and the thing reset. :smack: So I guess I won’t be going to apple for any more of my troubleshooting needs. (or at least I will not stop there) Does the ipod do this a lot? (I have had mine about a week).
I’ve had a third gen iPod for almost a year now and have had to reset it less than a dozen times. Nothing has gone wrong since I updated the firmware though.
I have a third-generation iPod that requires me to MOVE MY THUMB in order to go to the menu or advance tracks. It also requires several motions and clicks in order to turn on Shuffle, which is not something I do, even if I read in the New York Times that iPods have a quirky personality all their own when it comes to shuffle. (Apparently they play embarrassing tracks in public situations, and they play upbeat tracks when the listener is sad, and vice versa. I think the article was somehow Apple-supported.) It’s reliable, though, and I’ve only needed to reset it once.
Dog80: The battery is not removable, and Apple has a considerable amount of information on its website to allay fears that its capacity will be depleted quickly. The lithium-polymer battery is supposedly good for ‘more than 500’ charge cycles (and hey, ‘more than 500’ could mean 600,000, couldn’t it?). But lithium-polymer batteries lose substantial amounts of their capacity over time through oxidation, especially if they are stored at full capacity (or empty) or in hot conditions.
NAF: With the new click wheel that doesn’t require you to move that trusty thumb of yours, do you find that it’s easy to click the buttons accidentally? (Though, even if that and the shuffle feature isn’t enough, Apple insists that 4G iPods have secret, unannounced features that will make owners of obsolete iPods upgrade, even if they aren’t able to.)
If Apple bribed anyone at the Times, I hope they got their money back. I think that was the stupidest article I have ever read. I might have thought it was somewhat amusing and clever . . . if it had appeared in a high school newspaper . . . and if it had been written by a bright high school student with a modicum of wit and creativity, rather than the talentless hack who cranked out the NY Times article. It had approximately one interesting thing to say (that the fact that you can carry thousands of songs in your pocket on one device means that you put songs in the mix that you might otherwise not bother to carry with you) and the rest was mindless drivel.
And just so my post is something more than Monday-morning grumpiness about the decline of Western Civilization: I have had a 3G for three months that I have never had to reset, but thanks to this thread, at least I know how . . .
Well, given that Apple is rather aggressively marketing the fourth-generation iPod as vastly more powerful and convenient than the obsolete third-generation, and that one of the two really new features is that it has shuffle on the main menu instead of under Settings, I wouldn’t be surprised if they got someone to write an article. The 3G’s touch-wheel-and-buttons is really quite convenient enough, and I can’t see myself spending another $400 just to not have to move my thumb or to have to move my thumb slighly less to turn on shuffle. The increased battery life might be worth, oh, $50. Apple really likes to aggressively market a lot of other dubious features, like trading playlists.
What would be really useful is a song display on the remote, like higher-end minidisc players have. With several thousand songs in a dozen or so playlists, four buttons is not an effective way to navigate, and I usually end up having to dig out the iPod to change songs.
Oh, and has anyone noticed that the clip on the remote is designed for women’s shirts and men’s jackets? With all the careful design they put into their products, you’d think they’d have a unisex remote. =)
I don’t have any problems with accidentaly hitting buttons. In fact I think the interface on the ipod itself is great. I am not wild about itunes but that is a different story.
Sleepy, if you have only the software that comes with ipod you can’t upload from your ipod to your pc. (supposedly it is a piracy protection thing) But there is some thrid party software that allows you go from ipod to pc. After this whole debacle I am seriously considering buying some of said software so I can make backups of my ipod files.
I was searching over at ipodlounge.com, and found a way. You connect your iPod to your PC, go into it using Windows Explorer, then hit Tools, Folder Options, View, Show Hidden Folders.
When you search your iPod in Explorer, you’ll find a bunch of folders labelled F00 to F49. All your songs should be in there. You can Copy and Paste to your PC at will.
NAF1138, I’m not sure what gen your iPod is, but do you have the lock switch on (on the 3rd gen iPod, the lock switch is on the of the iPod just to the right of the earphone plug)?