Tuesday, August 25, 2009

JOYOUS

OMYGOSH. Do I have a tale for you. Please read the post I was going to share today - I had it all written and saved to draft to go up this afternoon:
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Houston, we have an iProblem.

Guess whose iPod has decided to stop playing audio? Yes, that’s right. Last Sunday, the iPod decided it had lived a good life (and four years in the Mac world is a good life, I guess). So Rod the iPod’s functionality is now restricted to that of a paperweight. It will play when I hook it up to my computer via USB port on the bottom, but nothing from the ear phone jack and oddly, nothing via the same USB jack in my at-home speaker dock. It will only play with my computer.

And by computer, I mean my WORK computer, because in case you are new around here, my home computer died around this time last year. See the pattern? Computer, Car, Chi, iPod… why do bad things happen to good appliances? Except the car – surely that thing is rotting in hell.

Anyway, Ben at Apple outlined the three R’s for me: Replace with a refurbished 5th generation for $130; Recycle and get 10% off a new iPod; but not Repair, because it wouldn’t be cost-efficient and frankly, he didn’t want to talk about it. I can’t help but wonder how much they looked into the problem to see if it was fixable or if they just said, “nope, this is definitely not working” and moved on. Either way, I still don’t have an iPod. I have seen this coming down the road so it is time to do something.

Here’s my big complaint – of the thousands of songs on Rod the Pod, probably 90% of them are stuck on the dead computer’s hard drive, which is recoverable (at least that’s what Best Lie told me) but what good is a hard drive without a computer? I have to either have a new computer to transfer that data to, or replace the motherboard on that one so it will power up again, giving me access to songs, pictures and more.

Curses. Anyone got a spare motherboard lying around?

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And here is the post I want to share today:

APPLE IS REPLACING MY IPOD FOR FREE!
APPLE IS REPLACING MY IPOD FOR FREE!
APPLE IS REPLACING MY IPOD FOR FREEEEEEEEEEE!


I am beside myself with glee (obviously!) Here's how I did it.

1. Leave work. Decide to call Ben at Apple and tell him to authorize the $130 swap.
2. Realize there is a 9 in the number therefore the call will have to wait until tomorrrow (today) at work.
3. Come to work. Pick up phone to call Ben at Apple. Get put on hold. Three times.
4. Start Googling around while I am on hold to see if I should have tried to fix this myself. Read about someone opening their iPod and soldering some pieces back together.
5. Find this thread. Follow the instructions.
6. Try not to wet my pants and do a happy dance when I realize IT WORKED. You know what Apple? It IS your fault, not mine. I didn't drop Rod. I didn't take him for a swim. I hardly ever even leave him in the car alone lest he get stolen. It's not my fault your product crapped out.

I guess enough people complained about the same problem that they realized they had to fix it. Yay! New iPod!

However, it still leaves me without most of the songs I ever listened to on it. But at least I can take my $130 I was going to spend to replace the iPod and put it towards fixing the computer. And I'm getting a new phone, too, RIGHT MOM, so I can put the money I was going to spend towards that purchase to a computer as well! Small victories, people. God bless Apple and God bless internet message boards.

1 comment:

  1. google "senuti" (aka itunes in reverse) to get the songs OFF your ipod and ON your computer. I've done it a few times and it sounds like it should work

    ReplyDelete

Oh goody!

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