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?

Comments

But I thought Apple wanted people to switch?

[oliverk]

Of the 8 posts on apple's site, most of them seem to think that Apple has done this intentionally. Let's be clear--Apple has NOTHING to gain by pissing off the Windows user base. Their entire strategy hinges on positive experience with Apple products that encourages people to switch and have that experience with every interaction. I would be surprised if the actual interactions with Apple have been all that negative (yes...I'm saying that some people may be aggrevated and exaggerating). My interactions with Apple (as a Mac user) have always been reasonably positive, whether this be for sales, technical support or developer relations.

It's silly to think they're trying to sabatoge the Windows base. And if some phone rep blew it...well, that's clearly a problem but I just don't see this as anything more than one person's screw up.

Re:Perhaps you should have read the manual or the

[kaan]

Using the iPod for Mac on a PC, or using the iPod for Windows on a Mac, is not supported by Apple

This point needs to be emphasid a lot, because it is the key issue here. As far as I know, Apple has had this policy for all iPods since day one. So who's to blame, Apple for saying "use a Mac iPod on a Mac, and use a PC iPod on a PC", or the user who didn't listen and did what he wanted? Yes, it stinks that some people used to do this without problems, and now they're not so lucky. But the bottom line is that nobody should ever have used a Mac iPod on a PC in the first place.

Re:Will be fixed..

[Drakonian]

You're joking me. The guy trying to use the iPod in an unsupported manner. The original 5GB iPod works perfectly with Windows iTunes when formatted as a Windows iPod. I should know, I have one and am using it this way. Is GM crapping on their customers because they don't provide support for you filling a gasoline car with diesel?

Re:I have a fix

[rhombic]

I very much doubt that any version of iTunes for windows will "break" a Windows version of the ipod. These older ipods were labeled as mac-only, and a third party wrote a software fix to get them to talk to each other.

Apple built the hardware, labeled it as mac only. You hooked it up to a PC using somebody else's software. Why exactly should apple provide any support whatsoever to this problem? That's why companies provide specifications-- if your hardware doesn't meet specs, don't come running to them. Your PC doesn't meet the spec of being a Mac, so why complain?