The iPod Nano Nightmare
Wednesday was Bonnie’s birthday, and I figured that the only thing that could possibly make look her more trendy when she’s hanging out in coffee shops during her time off from her alternative journalism internship was an iPod. She has a TON of music (at least 90% legally acquired, too), but I didn’t quite have the moolah to swing for a full 60gb. Fortunately I think the new Nano’s are pretty damn sexy, so I decided I would get her one of the impossibly small black 4gb models. I also got “Honeyguns” laser engraved on the back; one of the latest in my ever-changing arsenal of pet names for her.
I figured I was probably pushing the timing a little bit by ordering just a week and a half before her birthday, and I was right. It didn’t show up til Friday morning: two days after her birthday. Unfortunately I was in a job interview when the it arrived, so we had to kill time til 3:30PM to go down and pick the package up from Fedex ourselves. I signed for the package (much smaller than I had imagined) and as soon as we got out the doors she ripped it out of my hands and started tearing it apart to get to the goods inside. She got juuuust enough of the top flap off to glance inside and see the Apple logo and the word “iPod” on the packaging and started screaming and jumping around. I was so pumped, because she had been kinda bummed out over how anticlimactic her birthday was this year and the iPod genuinely made her happy. We got back in the car, finished taking it out of the packaging and she was playing around with it between giggling and kissing me and I couldn’t be more happy.
Since she was going back to Ft. Collins the next day and she didn’t have her computer here, I figured I could throw about 4gbs of my music onto it so she had something to listen to until she could get back to her MP3 collection.
This is where all the trouble began.
See, I respect my computer, so I refuse to install any ridiculous, bloated software like iTunes onto it. I think Apple makes some great hardware (if a little expensive), and while their software is generally pleasing to the eye, I’m not a huge fan. Of course, I knew of the Winamp plugin that was released several months ago, which set iPod users free from the web of DRM bullshit Apple builds into iPod/iTunes functionality. Since I have zero iPod experience, I set about figuring out how to install and configure the plugin to begin transferring stuff over.
She had been playing with the iPod enough in the car that the battery was nearly dead, and the Nano charges ONLY through the USB cable. I plugged it into my computer to let it begin charging, and after some fidgeting, the iPod showed up as a drive on my system. Well, I didn’t know about the setting in the Winamp plugin that lets you FORMAT the iPod so the plugin can properly read it, and I was having trouble getting Winamp to “see” the iPod like Windows did. I downloaded Apple’s iPod utility, which lets you upgrade firmware or format/restore the iPod, and halfway through a software upgrade, a balloon popped up in XP telling me a USB device had been disconnected. I looked down, and a folder with an exclamation point appeared on the iPod, along with a URL to Apple’s tech support page. I was worried, but I nearly threw up when the iPod shut off and wouldn’t come back on. I figured the battery had completely died, but plugging it into the USB cable did nothing. I have had trouble with the grounding on a couple of the USB ports on my computer, and I feared the worst: That I had just static-discharged Bonnie’s shiny new Nano into non-existence. I tried everything, including plugging the cable into 2 other computers (even my only Mac: a little G3 iMac) all the while damning just about everything on the planet, including Apple’s documentation. I guess in the spirit of keeping their hardware simple and non-intimidating, they don’t believe in instruction manuals. Nothing in the box told me about the error message I had seen, or what to do when the system isn’t responding at all.
Bonnie was visibly crushed, but I was already several minutes late for work by this point, and I knew a guy at work who has sworn allegiance to Apple, and has a couple iPods. I figured he could help me out. On my job’s network of nearly 500 Windows 2000 machines, there sits one Mac. I’m not sure why it’s there, but I had the guy plug Bonnie’s Nano into one of the USB ports there. Nothing. He says “Man, I wonder if your USB ports were grounded right”, confirming my fear that I had fried the delicate flash memory inside. After several people in cubicles around me ooh’d and ahh’d over the Nano, I put it back in the box, planning on calling Apple in the morning to have it picked up and replaced.
After work, I went out to a Halloween party of sorts (ugh…another blog altogether) and returned home with Bonnie before telling her what I thought was wrong. I guess it was the look on her face that made me decide to try to figure the problem out one more time, and headed over to Apple’s site to dig up some Nano support information (which I didn’t have time for before work). A couple troubleshooting steps in, there was a step for non-responding iPods, for which the solution is apparently to hold the Menu and Select buttons for 10 seconds. Don’t ask me why or how the system shuts completely off in case of a serious error, responding only to this magical code, but I have NEVER felt so relieved as I did when an error code popped up on the iPod’s screen. I flashed the software back onto it, and the Apple logo appeared, before the full color, backlit language selection menu. Not sure how to express my joy, I wooped. And excitedly woke Bonnie up from her nap to show her the screen was back on.
Shortly afterwards, I found the Winamp option to format the iPod correctly, and I dumped about 3.5gbs of music onto it, plugged the earphones in, and checked out a couple songs. Incredible! I want an iPod so bad now. I really wish the could fit more memory into the Nano’s form factor, but that’s wishful thinking for at least the next couple years.
Anyway, Bonnie got a sweet birthday present, and a sweet birthday scare, and she can now fit in comfortably with all the art-fags at her favorite downtown coffee shops.
November 2nd, 2005 at 4:16 pm
I love happy endings! ^_^