1 post tagged “apple store”
My 60G black iPod, Onyx started behaving strangely earlier this week. It was sluggish to respond to button clicks, everything was displaying the same (broken) image for it's album art, and it was no longer being recognized by iTunes on eaither of my two XP machines. What's more, XP no longer saw it as an iPod when it was connected. It just saw an unformatted mass storage device.
I went through the troubleshooting steps outlined on the apple website. I even wiped it out and did a fresh software restore. (and in so doing - wiped out some things I had purchased in the ITMS, but hadn't backed up yet. *grumble*)
Still no joy neither of my machines could see my iPod - what's more, when I checked the status on my iPod, I had 0 songs and 0 pictures, but only 3GB os space left.
Resigned to the fact that my 3 month and 12 day old iPod was beyond my abilty to restore, I took it to the Apple Store in the mall near where I work on my lunch break today. Being a saturday afternoon just a few weeks before most schools start up, the place was packed (both the mall and the Apple Store.)
...
"Uh-oh..." I think as I headed for the Genius bar, "this is going to suck." I'm instructed to sign in to the concierge system to get an appointment, (yep - this is going to suck...) and am surprised to see an appointment available at 1:00. "Only a 15min wait - that's not so bad..."
I space around the store for a few minutes, and soon find myself infront of a 30 inch CinemaDisplay connected to a brand new MacPro desktop machine. I take a picture of myself in photoboth and send it to my gmail account.
(Hey, moron who was using the computer before me to check your email... yeah - you... for the love of god, don't leave yourself logged in to your .mac email account when you leave. I could have learned all sorts of interesting things about you that you probably wish I didn't. You're lucky I'm not a malicious person. All I did was log your account off for you. You'r welcome. Try to be more careful next time.)
Just then, my name comes up and I'm called over to the Genius Bar. I explain my problem and the steps I have already taken to my Genius. "Okay, sounds like the software restore didn't take, let me take a look..." I hand over my troubled device, and he connects it to the MacBook on the desk.
"That's odd, the mac recognizes it - but isn't mounting it correctly..." He futzes around with it a bit more as I wait. I assume that he's re-applying the software restore. "Okay - iTunes sees it now. Let me test it in Windows." He turns around and connects it to another MacBook. (You gotta love those new intel based machines...) "Wierd - iTunes doesn't see it here, but it works on OS X."
He grins at me. "Well, you've got a couple of choices. I can sell you a new Mac so you can connect this iPod to it, or I can just replace it for you."
"As much as I like that first option, I don't have the room in my budget." I reply.
"Okay - replacement iPod it is." He says, "hang on just a sec."
He prints up a return form for me to sign and ducks down to a cabinet to pull out a brand new iPod. I sign the form, and he registeres the new serial number to my AppleCare extended warranty, (Yay) noting that it is a replacement device.
I'm all set to go with my shiny new (scratch free!) black iPod, and I even have enough time to swing by Grain D'or to grab a sandwich on my way back out to my car.
...
I'm back in the office (with a couple of minutes to spare) and Onyx, (Well, Onyx the second, but we'll just call her Onyx.) is happily synching with iTunes as I write this. I won't have any music until I get home, but at least I'll be able to listen to some podcasts on the way. I figure I only lost about $40 worth of content from ITMS, and I'll be much more diligent about backing up those music purchases in the future.
