[dws]

I had a fascinating, if disturbing, experience today. I'd read many reports on the web about the iPod, so I went to my local Apple Store to see the device in person; preparing to be overwhelmed with the Appleness of it all and convinced that I should pre-order. Well, my experience at the Mall of America (Bloomington, MN) was less than stellar.

Upon asking to see the holy grail of MP3 players, it appeared from a back room; the tech person delighted to show off Apple's newest show piece. The iPod is as wonderful as everyone who's seen and touched it have reported. No need to go into details.

I was most interested in seeing the iPod in Targeted Disk Mode; wondering whether the interface with OS X and iTunes 2 was troublesome (it's not supposed to be) or if there were any hidden annoyances. Unfortunately, we never got that far. The iPod froze solid while the tech was scrolling through playlists - never to be active again (at least, not while I was there)! The two-key reset function didn't work. If you hooked it up to a computer, nothing happened. By this time, a small crowd had developed. There was some disagreement over whether or not the reset function had ever worked with this particular iPod. I was constantly reminded that the iPod I was looking at was a prototype...

It turns out that some tech-minded employee at the Apple Store had solved the freezing problem by removing the iPod's back and performing some kind of tinkering with its innards (one guy thought that the tech had simply disconnected and then reconnected the battery, though this guru tech could not be found). It is entirely possible that said tinkering damaged the iPod in some way, so this should be kept in mind when considering this story/issue. Obviously, nobody should ever have to take an iPod apart.

I find it unlikely that the iPod being shown at the Mall of America Apple Store would be significantly different than the ones given to journalists or the ones everyone will be buying in a couple of weeks.

Is there some kind of fatal flaw in the iPod's design that leads to unrecoverable freezes? Is the device so fragile that a few days of hard use will break it (leaving aside the issue of this particular iPod being tinkered with)? Will it turn out that a certain, hopefully small, percentage of iPods will have to be sent back to Apple for replacement?

I heartily wish that, once this particular iPod began having repetitive unrecoverable freezes, it had been put aside and never shown to the public again. It is extremely bad public relations to show a defective device to people you are trying to encourage to buy the thing! This experience has convinced me to not pre-order an iPod. In fact, I will wait until thousands have been sold; just to make sure that this possible fatal flaw does not exist. I'm a devoted Mac enthusiast, but not so much that I'm willing to deal with much inconvenience. After all, one of the things that makes us all enjoy the Mac so much is how effortless everything is. When it becomes difficult, then I tend to pause for reflection.

Let us all hope that this whole thing was nothing more than some idiot in a back room doing things to an iPod that shouldn't have been done, because if this fatal flaw does exist, then the media will savage Apple mercilessly.

[GK]

Interesting story. I'm ready to buy a iPod, however, what made me suspicious was that the iPod has a warranty of only three months, whereas most other competitors have a longer warranty (please correct me if I'm wrong). I'll definitively go to the Apple Store to check it out myself ( OF Course I already could have done that if the promised Cambridge Store had opened already , but NO, still no news on when I can finally BUY some Apple stuff there )

Thanks for passing that info.

[tobster]

Do you know if he tried the included reset trick?

Tobs

[Capacola]

5 to 10 seconds ...by that time I could of transfered a whole CD!


[ 10-30-2001: Message edited by: Capacola ]

[Tristrami]

By the way, "public relations" is earned editorial content in the news media. A negative story in a newspaper or on a teleivsion would be "bad public relations." Showing customers broken merchandise is merely poor salesmanship. Thank you.

A Publicist.

[ 10-30-2001: Message edited by: Tristrami ]

iPod - the only overpriced, underfeatured, copycat mp3 player THAT CRASHES AND FREEZES!

Apple - the leader in technology ineptitude!

Originally posted by <wiggles>:
<STRONG>iPod - the only overpriced, underfeatured, copycat mp3 player THAT CRASHES AND FREEZES!

Apple - the leader in technology ineptitude!</STRONG>

I take back what I posted before, I was just upset at not having my own iPod. I'm actually looking forward to mid-November and I think the iPod rocks!!!!

I'm sorry. That last post was imature and low. I don't mean it. I just can't help myself sometimes. Please ignore me.

[Leaping Gnome]

Ahhh, the joys of unregistered users.

[CyberGreg]

Ahhh, the joys of unregistered users.

Begs the question are we better off allowing idiotic UR's aka &lt;wiggles&gt; comments or do they just bring down the board as a whole?

I think the latter.

[Leaping Gnome]

Well the problem with the 'wiggles' user is that since it is unregistered, multiple people are using it, thus the arguments with himself up above. I'm thinking about just going ahead and registering the account myself to hopefully cut down on the trolling.

Originally posted by Leaping Gnome:
<STRONG>Well the problem with the 'wiggles' user is that since it is unregistered, multiple people are using it, thus the arguments with himself up above. I'm thinking about just going ahead and registering the account myself to hopefully cut down on the trolling.</STRONG>

He'll just use another name. He's kind of like a monkey with a big bowl of feces and a virginal white wall. Let's watch him for a while and write a thesis about his antics.

Originally posted by &lt;wiggles&gt;:
<STRONG>I'm sorry. That last post was imature and low. I don't mean it. I just can't help myself sometimes. Please ignore me.</STRONG>

Wait a minute! I DID mean that post: I think the iPod is cool. Macs Rule!

[Màlum]

[If it wasn't a prototype or preseries model, then why didn't Apple introduce it on the market immediately?
It's very clear that the introduction was forced in order to take away some M$ glamour.
Unfortunately pre series models can have problems, but at the same time they need to show them at bigger resaler points

I'm pretty convinced I wont have these problems when my iPods arrive.

[GK]

How about just blocking the IP address that he uses ?

[KeyLimePi]

By the way, "public relations" is earned editorial content in the news media. A negative story in a newspaper or on a teleivsion would be "bad public relations." Showing customers broken merchandise is merely poor salesmanship. Thank you.

Um...actually you're referring to 'publicity,' or what most PR people call 'media relations.' It's really only a small part of everything that makes up 'public relations.'


...steps down from his soapbox.

[Tristrami]

*ahem*

Publicity is the result of effective public relations (or PR or media relations....all terms are interchangeable, and in truth, most of my fellow PR professionals just call it "work"). It is the result. The correction I was making had to do with the entire process of earning such a result, which is so very much more than just the appearance of said article, poistive or negative.

...gives soapbox back

[KeyLimePi]

Okay, this is so not the place for this debate, but yes I'm an APR and yes I do the whole PRSA thing so I would really argue with the statement that "publicity is the result of effective public relations." That may be true if you're a publicist, but in a lot of cases 'effective' public relations is essentially invisible.

I know you've heard this old apologue in its various incarnations:

"If the circus is coming to town and you put up a sign, that's advertising. If you hang the sign on an elephant and parade it down mainstreet that's marketing. If the elephant crashes into City Hall that's publicity, and if you can get the mayor to laugh about it, that's public relations."

Obviously this was written by a PR guy. PR is such an ambigious field. It differs from position to position and I really hate PR people who try to make it into more than it is. It ain't laser surgery.

Anyway, differences aside, I whole-heartedly agree with your distinction between 'good PR' and 'bad salesmanship.'

[guerro]

*ahem*

Okay, to get back on topic. I don't believe you can make a judgement based on one iPod being "broken" or whatever was wrong with it. If Apple has only one iPod that goes "bad" then that will be damn good failure rate.
Look, lets be realistic. There are going to be defective iPods, this is true. But dont make a snap decision based on your single experience. I think 90 days is standard warranty for items such as this.

[Todd Madson]

I find it odd that one persons experience automatically becomes
law elsewhere. I suspect this prototype had problems - it's
early software and I'd expect such things.

The other beautiful thing is that software updates for iPod can
be downloaded via your computer to the device itself.