Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Leaping Gnome · Mar 12, 2003, 11:30 AM

Hey guys, I search in Apple's knowledge base but did not find either of these issues.

I have a 20gb iPod that is a little over a month old, using it on Windows with the latest update installed. I have noticed a few times that when using it the battery indicator will just be blank, showing no charge at all, but the iPod will continue to play for hours. This does not happen all the time and sometimes it will show blank, I stop it because I'm going to a meeting or something so it goes to sleep and then when I start it back up again it shows the charge correctly.

The other issue I've had is sometimes when selecting a song, it skips the song I select and jumps to the next song in the list. I have had this happen where I am looking at a list of songs, I pick one out of the list and click the middle 'select' button, I see the name of the song I selected come up on the screen like it is about to play and then it immediately skips to the next song. I know I'm not just accidentally hitting the scroll wheel and going to the next song because I see the name of the first one pop-up. I'm also fairly certain that the next song button is not accidentally being pressed, I am not hittng it and my case does not touch that button. When my girlfriend has used my iPod she has noticed it as well. It is not isolated to one particular song or album.

Any ideas on these two problems? Do other people experience this as well? I had an old 5gb that did not have either of these issues. Thanks!

atomium · Mar 12, 2003, 12:28 PM

"Bug" Number 1:

Normally, the battery meter is reading the iPod's power draw while the music is playing from the RAM. This is a slow drain, and the battery shows more life.

If you just so happen to look at the meter when it is spinning the hard drive to load up the next 20 minutes of music, the battery is under a higher load. The indicator shows less remaining battery power. When the drive stops spinning, indicator shows more battery remaining.

The battery meter displays how much is left by figuring the amount of charge that remains, divided by the load it is under at that exact point in time. It's much like the way a Powerbook's battery-time-remaining indicator displays much shorter life if you are watching a DVD at full brightness, as opposed to dimming the monitor and typing in TextEdit. It estimates how long it can keep going at that level of power consumption.

As for bug number 2, I'm not sure what's causing that. Are you using the remote? Maybe a stuck >>| button?

-atomium

G-mac · Mar 12, 2003, 03:14 PM

Thanks for the battery info. I noticed the strange battery behavior (decrease, then increase) for a while. Nice to know why!

Gene Jockey · Mar 12, 2003, 06:11 PM

Originally posted by Leaping Gnome:
<snip>

The other issue I've had is sometimes when selecting a song, it skips the song I select and jumps to the next song in the list. I have had this happen where I am looking at a list of songs, I pick one out of the list and click the middle 'select' button, I see the name of the song I selected come up on the screen like it is about to play and then it immediately skips to the next song. I know I'm not just accidentally hitting the scroll wheel and going to the next song because I see the name of the first one pop-up. I'm also fairly certain that the next song button is not accidentally being pressed, I am not hittng it and my case does not touch that button. When my girlfriend has used my iPod she has noticed it as well. It is not isolated to one particular song or album.

Any ideas on these two problems? Do other people experience this as well? I had an old 5gb that did not have either of these issues. Thanks!

Known issue. Mine does it (Rev A, 5 GB) too. I read over on Apple's boards about it a while ago. Supposedly it'll get fixed by a firmware update someday. Until then just curse at it and hit the back button.

--Josh

mark9939 · Mar 12, 2003, 08:30 PM

This happens to my 5GB iPod, too. It may be annoying at times, but until 1.2.2 (maybe?) we'll have to live with it.

Leaping Gnome · Mar 13, 2003, 01:55 PM

Thanks for the replies! As far as the battery issue, that definitely makes sense, I will have to keep an eye on it and see if when I notice it the hard drive is loading songs.

For the song skip problem, not I do not use the remote. Sounds like some of you guys have had it happen as well, let's hope Apple fixes it soon.

icruise · Mar 14, 2003, 09:47 AM

I've had the song skip problem as well. It's tricky since it can often seem like it might have been my fault (accidentally moving the wheel when selecting the song to play or whatever) but I have definitely caught it happening when I didn't do anything.

theyetti · Nov 6, 2004, 07:45 AM

hello i beleive i may have found a temporary solution to this problem. although mine seems to be a bit more extreme then others. my ipod skips 2-3 tracks at a time and i can not listen to them no mater what. and songs will cut out prematurely, like between 5-10 seconds. well this solution seems to work for me every time. yet it require's you have you mac/pc near you and useable to fix it.
1. have you ipod plugged in.
2. update your list.
3. switch the ipod to manual sort. instead of auto.
4. eject ipod and go. or let charge.

now this has worked all th etimes if tried it but does happen again after a while and then i just do this process. hope it helps you. let me know if it doesn't

i forgot to mention i have a 4G 40GB ipod.

michaelb · Nov 6, 2004, 11:46 PM

I'd always thought songs that skipped were badly encoded. Perhaps the iPod MP3 decoder is less tolerant of MP3 encoding errors?

The only times I've had anything skip was for things I've, er, downloaded. I've never seen anything skip that I've encoded myself in iTunes, and that includes things as short as 2 minute songs from CDs, to 2 hour DVD commentaries, up to 26 hour audiobooks.