R.I.P my i.P.o.d.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So, me and Mrs Seriousart are off to do some errands this afternoon. “Oh, wait”, I say, “let me grab my iPod since we’ll be driving a good bit. Give us something to listen to”.

And then something horrible happened.
But first, a little back story:

See, ever since my wife gave me the iPod, I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time importing my CDs and collected CDs of mp3s, painstakingly making sure all the tracks were listed correctly,with correct info, album artwork, etc.

I’d say I’ve probably put in at least 40 hours over the last 2 months just doing this. Pain in the ass but I took solace in the 6000 songs and roughly 13 1/2 days of non-repeating music I could enjoy at work, jogging, at the gym, etc.

Back to my original story: I play the first song: It’s OK. I forward the shuffle to the next tune. It doesn’t start. Weird. Now it’s moved on to the next song and the next, still no sound. What’s going on? I power-down the pod. Start it up again. Or should I say- I tried to start it up again. “Maybe the battery’s dead”, my wife suggests. I don’t think so, but I plug in the car adapter thingy, just in case. The light goes on, signaling it’s charging, but the iPod still shows no signs of life.

We happen to be in the ballpark of the new Apple store, so we pull over to get some impromptu tech advice. I’ve read through some stuff over to ipodlounge.com on fancy hidden moves you can do to reset the iPod. Figure there was some sort of reboot magic they can work.

10 minutes later I talk to a “Mac Genius”. (I’m not being sarcastic, that’s their actual title. )
He plugs it in. Looks at it.
“It’s dead”.
What do you mean? I say.
“It’s dead.” He repeats. “I can get you a new one”.
Can I get the songs off it?
“No.”
Jesus… Does this happen often?
“No. We suggest that people do not use the iPod as their main backup for songs”.
Well, it’s not. I have the original CDs for most of it, it’s just a pretty huge chore to import 100s of them.
“I see. We suggest that people do not use the iPod as their main backup for songs”.
Well, I’m not gonna use all the memory in my laptop for songs, that’s a big reason I got the frickin iPod in the first place.
Genius guy breaks from his script, lowers his voice a little bit. “Yeah, I know…”

So upside is Apple’s customer service: I got a new iPod within 15 minutes of walking in, no questions asked, no receipt.
Downside, of course, is that I have to go back and import all… those… songs… again.

And this time I’m gonna back up all my songs on DVDs as I go, unlike the first time when I naively thought I’d do it when I was all done. (I was 95% of the way there, damn it.)

:eek: :smack:

2

Wow, that sucks.

Yay on the decent customer service, that’s always a pleasant surprise, but what a huge PITA for you.

3

Well, are you using itunes?

Unless you’ve actively deleted the audio files from your hard drive, they’re still in there, in the Music Library, and it shoudl be a simple matter to reload the iPod once it’s fixed or replaced.

If you did delete them, I humbly suggest that you just buy an additional big hard drive for your media files (and then just back the drive up on DVDs) so that this can’t happen again.

We got a big 250 GB outboard firewire drive and it works great. And backing up entire sections of the drive in one fell swoop is really simple, in case the HD craps out.

4

Bolding mine.

The iPod doesn’t show the album artwork, does it? So why do you care about that?

5

The iPod photo does show the album artwork.

6

While I don’t have an iPod photo, I play it daily through itunes at work & home which does display the artwork. It’s just another bell and whistle, but it’s something cool that I obsessively started doing.

And now will obsessively re-do. :frowning:

As to having it backed up to my hard drive, I’m afraid I deleted 90% of them out of necessity. I’ve got a 60gb drive that’s filling up quick. Eventually I intend to buy a Maxtor 300 gb hard drive to compensate. Sadly, I’ll have to wait on that purchase due to some other, more pressing financial matters to pass- such as the 2000 bucks we found out we owe the IRS…
:mad:

7

Wow. I’m jealous.

8

I’m sorry to hear it and all, but I must ask, what happened to the old iPod…?

9

I read somewhere that they get refurbished and are used for warranty replacements. This is apparently why it takes a couple of weeks longer to get one serviced if you had the laser engraving done by special order. The ipod you get back from Apple isn’t the one you sent in for repair otherwise. I guess it helps them provide quick turnaround. I had no idea that they will replace one at the store. :cool:

10

I don’t have an iPod, but I know firsthand the perils of keeping all your files in one place. I lost a bunch of MP3s when my hard drive crashed. Then I got an external HD and kept all my MP3s on there…and then the external drive crashed. Now I use a mix of CD and HD backups, and all is well…so far.