After three and a half years, my 15-Gb third generation iPod is still going strong, but I imagine the battery probably can’t last too much longer. I always said that once this unit died I would upgrade to a higher-capacity iPod. Unfortunately, in the meantime, Apple has eliminated firewire connectivity in iPods, and the newer models sync by USB 2. My problem is that my home computer is a six-year-old G4 iMac with only firewire and USB 1. Am I right in thinking that you can sync a fifth generation iPod using USB 1, it’s just very slow?
My experience was that the iPod would hang up and either I would force quit iTunes or my system would crash. We first noticed this when my husband bought a Shuffle. He got by by syncing it with the kid’s iMac. When I got an iPod video to replace my dead 3rd gen, I could not sync it, even with just leaving it alone; somewhere about 5 or 10 gigs in it would crash iTunes. We ended up buying a USB-2 card for my G4. It’s a Belkin, and we sometimes have the waking from sleep issue if anything is attached to it when the computer sleeps. I miss the Firewire interface; it was faster than the USB-2.
I have an almost 7-year old 400-MHz PowerPC G4 Mac. (I’m typing on it right now!)
My wife lost her 15-GB third generation iPod a few months ago, and I just bought her a new 30-GB fifth generation video iPod this last Valentine’s Day. Also, my son got a new 2-GB iPod nano for Christmas.
I upgraded my operating system to OS X 10.4.8 (from 10.2.8) so that I could upgrade iTunes to Version 7 so that it would work with the new iPods.
I was completely floored by Apple discontinuing Firewire for the new iPods. Worse, I didn’t figure this out until after my wife’s iPod arrived, and didn’t come with a Firewire cable. It’s their own standard, for crying out loud! It was great being able to back up my computer to my third generation iPod prior to upgrading the OS. I backed up about 15 GB of files in less than 30 minutes.
Anyway, both of the new iPods work fine over our old USB 1.1 connection, just slow as hell. No hangups or problems, though.
I am a little ticked that my wife’s new 30-GB iPod is basically useless as a backup storage device until we get a new computer (or a USB 2.0 card).
Ignore this message, it was incorrect.
Thanks! So based on the experience of two users, there’s a 50% chance it will work and a 50% chance it won’t. Doesn’t surprise me. I’d gladly spring for a USB-2 card, but that’s not an option on the iMac–no slot.
My experience is that USB 1.1 (albeit on the PC) is going to cause you a lot of problems, but you may be able to get it to work. This will often manifest in odd ways (iPod database corruption, missing music, unreliability, iPod freezes) over time.
This thread may help:
Um, I’m relatively confident that you can use the 3G’s cable, plug it into your 5G iPod and sync over Firewire that way.
I don’t have my iPod or the cable on me, but I swear that in a pinch one time I used my 4G Firewire cable to sync my 5G iPod.
The apple web site seems to indicate otherwise.
Hm… maybe I just used that cable to charge my iPod come to think of it.
I could have sworn I used it to sync, but I’ve been wrong once or twice before. Ignore my previous comment.