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iTunes for Windows Breaking Older iPods
evil_liam asks: "In our office we've been running an older 5gb iPod with both Macs and PC's (using Xplay), but when we installed iTunes for the PC the iPod stopped working. Songs and playlists transfer over fine, and you can see them and play them in iTunes, but you can't listen to them on the iPod, itself. It shows the song details and so forth, but skips through the tracks, playing 0 seconds of each one until it finishes. This only applies to tracks added since iTunes was installed. No amount of reformatting, or rolling back firmware seems to work. When I called Apple, they stated that they simply don't support the use of the older Mac iPods on PC's and are not responsible, even though they admit that it was their own software that caused this. We're not alone, see this thread at Apple.
I'm not quite suggesting that this was deliberate, but they are aware of it and don't seem to care." Does anyone have ideas on possible fixes for the afflicted iPods?
Question 7: I have both a Mac and a PC. Will my iPod work on both?
Answer: No, not at the same time. iPod is configured for either Mac or PC. You can use the iPod Software Updater utility to restore iPod to work with a Mac or a PC (depending on which version of the utility you use). See technical document 60983, "iPod: How to Restore" for more information.
Note: Using the iPod for Mac on a PC, or using the iPod for Windows on a Mac, is not supported by Apple.
Question 8: Can I use an iPod formatted for Mac on a PC, or an iPod formatted for Windows on a Mac?
Answer: It is not possible to use an iPod formatted for Mac with Windows. This is because Windows does not support the HFS Plus file system and therefore will not see the drive.
You can convert an iPod formatted for Windows into an iPod for Mac by using the iPod for Mac Software Updater on the Apple website. Note that once it is reformatted, it will only work with Macs. You need Mac OS 9.2 or Mac OS X 10.1 or later to reformat an iPod for Windows into an iPod for Mac.
Note: Using the iPod for Mac on a PC, or using the iPod for Windows on a Mac, is not supported by Apple.
After all this is a MAC ipod on a WINDOWS machine. They never intended this particular ipod to be used on a windows machine. So why should they support the use of it? Yes subsequent ipods are designed to be for windows, but the one in question was not. Therefore, I do not see what anyone can expect of them. It would be nice if this mac designed product worked with their later newer windows designed product, but I do not see them under any obligation to do so.
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Also in the linked discussion board, it seems like multiple problems are being reported as a single problem. For example, one guy reverted to old iPod software and still had problems. Another guy has problems only with music downloaded from iTunes. Another guy only has problems with CDs he ripped.
Every consumer device has issues and flaming mad customers. The real question is, is the problem widespread. The other question is, why has Cliff posted three "an Apple consumer is having a problem" articles in the last couple of days (the first two seemed to be pretty damn stupid and non-widespread to me).
Call tech support again. I've always found them quite helpful (at least the AppleCare ones) when i've had hardware issues. Or take it to an Apple Store, heard good things about them ebing willing to bend over backwards to help out.
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reformat your ipod from Mac to PC...
I had this problem with my Windows-formatted iPod after trying to mount it, exactly once, on a Mac. The cure is to restore it. It doesn't seem you do any permanent damage this way.
I ran into similar problems. I've also got an older 5gig Mac iPod that I was using with Xplay. After I suffered through the win2k bug which replaced core system files and forced me to do a win2k repair install, I got iTunes up and running well. After a short while though, when I plugged my iTunes into another machine and said 'yes' to the 'resync to this machine instead of the existing profile', it suddenly stopped working at all. I could bring up the iPod and use it as a drive, but no matter what I tried, iTunes would no longer recognize it. When I tried the latest windows flasher, it wouldn't see it either. What finally worked was to bring it to a PC that had never seen any iPods or iTunes before, and using that to flash the iPod back to factory defaults. That finally worked and when I brought it back to my original machine it suddenly saw it and initialized it without a hitch. I've been holding off on getting a new iPod for exactly the reason that Apple only cares about the first sale. Once they have your money you're dirt to them until the next time they want to sell the big ticket item. Luckily mine will keep going for a while longer now.
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Bug Apple
Very little at Apple actually happens without a report in this "RadarWeb" bug tracking system of theirs. Think about it- this is how actual engineers have actual tasks/problems assigned to them, except maybe when Steve says "make it so".
Of course, as you're perfectly aware, you broke your Macintosh-only iPod while trying to use it on a PC, something you were rather clearly warned against doing when you bought the device. Did you complain to Sony because your Betamax tape player was screwed up by a VHS tape, too?
So why are you complaining about it on Slashdot, anyway ?
I'm willing to bet you could fix the problem by installing the most recent iPod firmware update, if you were willing to try that and weren't just trolling.
iPod's *are* just 1394 disks with firmware. You can plug it in and it looks just like a firewire harddrive. The iTunesDB file that the iPod uses to index files is proprietory, but is very simple and has been reverse-engineered by several programs (gnupod, ephpod, gtkpod, myPod, guipod, xplay, etc). The iPod OS gets the actual song information from ID3 tags. This is one major reason I bought the thing --- it has nearly perfect Linux support and no DRM.
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I've had similar problems with a first gen iPod, and the same problem with multiple firewire drives, all related to the fact that Windows gays up firewire drives. All would every now and then have a "Delayed Write Failed" error pop up occasionally, then the drives would disappear as far as Windows was concerned. Turning off write caching in Device Manager has no effect.
I will say that I'm still using the same firewire chassis, only now with 7200 RPM instead of 5400 RPM drives, and haven't had the problem since. The iPod has a rather slow hard drive too, which could explain the similar issues.
Regardless, I'm inclined to believe Windows just has a shitty VFS or Firewire subsystem...
About the only thing that can be laid on Apple's feet is that iTunes should refuse to attempt to connect to the iPod in question. Nothing reported suggests that the iPod doesn't still work with the Mac, which is all it was sold to do. In fact it specifically says do NOT use it with Windows. XPlay is an unsupported hack, so as far as Apple is concerned the iPod in question never worked with Windows, so the fact that it still doesn't now really isn't an issue.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
Regardless of what Apple may have claimed since day one, generally getting something "for PC" or "For Mac" only meant which drivers it included. If you could connect it to the same type of port and run it driverless, you could use it on either. Ethernet-connected "Apple-only" PCL6 printer? Yeah, right, whatever, smoke s'more, Jobs.
Does anyone remember buying pre-formatted 3.5" floppy disks? They would say "for Mac" or "for Windows" on the box, right? Again, poor driver support, right?
The iPod is a drive... it's formatted in the file system appropriate to the machine it's used on. Has nothing to do with the drivers or ports. Sure, there's some software for the PC that will let you use your HFS+ formatted, first-generation iPod with it... iTunes isn't of this variety.
Even the newest iPods have to be formatted for Windows before they are used under Windows. But the included software does that for you now.
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Not quite true. An ISO-9660 CD-ROM works everywhere, and doesn't support much of anything. Add the Joilet extensions, and you've got a CD-ROM that supports the Microsoft metadata and long filenames, works everywhere, and looks funny on non-Joilet systems. Add the RockRidge extensions, and it'll support UNIX metadata and long filenames, work everywhere, and look funny on non-RockRidge systems. Make it an ISO/HFS hybrid, and it'll support Macintosh metadata and long filenames, and it won't even look particularly funny elsewhere. I don't know if it's possible to make a RockRidge/Joilet/HFS/ISO disc, but if it is, you'd have a CD-ROM that works everywhere, and will look funny everywhere.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
It's more of a "It wasn't designed for Windows use to begin with" thing than a "MS sucks" thing.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.