Quarter Life Crisis

The world according to Sven-S. Porst

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Spongebob

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Of course my neverending history of Apple defects continues. The latest victim (and I think I didn't even mention that my MacBook's 6 month old top case broke again while the machine kept overheating in summer...) was the first generation iPod shuffle which I bought last year. I still think that it's an excellent design and it did its job rather well -- until it stopped working. Well, in fact it still works at this stage as an oversized overly expensive USB stick, but it refuses to play music now.

If I read its blinkenlights correctly that is because the battery doesn't charge - despite the device blinking and heating up slightly when connected to the USB port. The battery was perfectly good before it stopped recharging, so here's another mark on the shitty quality scorecard:

first generation iPod Shuffle

Because I like the idea of the first generation iPod shuffle so much, I tried getting another one. And eventually I found one on eBay which I could get for less than €20 (what an outrageous price for two year old used plastic toy with a tiny capacity!) and it does the job - let's hope for more than just a few months. Less agony and boredom at the gym!

first generation iPod shuffle

What's a bit of a nuisance now is the naming drama. Of course every nameable toy needs a name. Hence my first iPod Shuffle was named 'Spongebob' and I quite like that name! To keep it around I thus re-named the broken iPod Shuffle to 'Bernd das Brot' (another rectangular bit of kiddy-television) and the new one remains Spongebob. Whew!

Anyway, in case you have use for a non-working first generation iPod shuffle called 'Bernd das Brot', send me the postage needed to get it to you and it's yours...

October 8, 2008, 0:18

Tagged as ebay, ipod, ipod shuffle.

Comments

Comment by Ernie: User icon

Have you tried the shuffle reset utility. I thought my 512 shuffle died on my also. Wouldn’t play music for anything. Resetting it in iTunes didn’t work either. The utility brought it back from the dead.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1293

Worth a shot if you haven’t tried it yet.

October 8, 2008, 16:23

Comment by ssp: User icon

@Ernie:
I tried (without success) the iPod Reset Utility which is supposed to be the successor of the tool you link to. Besides, the problem I had is different from the one described on Apple’s page (no blinking at all and pressing the battery button while the iPod is charging gives the red light which makes the think the battery is the problem). Do you think this old tool could make a difference anyway?

October 8, 2008, 19:02

Comment by ernie: User icon

Oops on the link.

Didn’t realize I linked to the old one.

I say worth a shot for the few minutes it would take. But probably wouldn’t do much if the new one didn’t fix it.

October 8, 2008, 23:26

Comment by Carl: User icon

What’s the postage cost to Hawaii? I don’t have a USB stick with 512MB, and it might be nice to have one.

October 12, 2008, 10:31

Comment by ssp: User icon

The ‘World’ rate for this size/weight seems to be €4.

October 12, 2008, 13:17

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