As anyone who knows me well can heartily testify, I have a very low tolerance for inconsistent and/or unreliable technology. When some gadget or appliance I regulary use decides to malfunction, my first response is generally to punish it for letting me down, as opposed to simply addressing the problem in a mature way. As our lives become increasingly reliant on a host of electronic doodads like laptops, cell phones, palm pilots, digital cameras, TiVo and blackberries, I'm finding the pressing need to curtail my rage against the machines and to adopt a less Luddite-like approach. While I've made significant strides in this pursuit, I'm still flummoxed by the odd techno-quandary.
One such problem has reared its head in recent weeks, and it concerns a gizmo I use -- ill-advisedly -- on an almost daily basis. Around the time of the birth of my daughter, Charlotte, in early 2004, I decided to splurge and spring for the then-newfangled iPod with a whopping 40 gb of space, purportedly enough to house 10,000 Songs. While that might seem excessive to the layperson, I should point out that I own somewhere in the range of 2,500 compact discs. Please do not intrepret this comment as a boast. If anything, it's become an embarassing burden, and I'm actually trying to sell off, donate to charity and even put into storage large swathes of my CDs (see an earlier, needlessly histrionic accounting of my collecting problem here). In any case, rightly assuming that I wouldn't be able to play music with voluminous abandon in the apartment upon the arrival of our first born, I thought that an iPod would be the perfect solution. I could rip'n'burn all my essential discs to iTunes and essentially carry most of my otherwise unweildy music collection with me as I traversed the city, given that my listening time would now be relegated to trips outside the apartment.
It all worked swimmingly for a while. But in keeping with advancing technology's penchant for designed obsolescence, my fleetingly-trusty iPod started to cough and wheeze like an asthmatic octagenarian after a while, unable to keep up with both the music load (I've maxed out the song limit, I'm sad to say, invariably with music I'll never actually get around to listening to, but God forbid I don't have it on my iPod just in case) and the seemingly ceaseless flow of "software updates" that Apple would constantly lob at it.
Quite recently, my computer has started to reject certain iTunes updates. I've downloaded iTunes 5.0.1 onto my iMac (OS X), but now when I launch my beleagured iPod, a smarmy little box pops up that reads...
You will not be able to copy songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store to the iPod "Alex's iPod" because your iPod software is too old. Go to http://www.apple.com/ipod to get the latest iPod software update
Being that I've bought no less than 206 songs off of iTunes (`cos, y'know, evidently buying CD's isn't enough for me), that's kind've a substantial problem (i.e. is it so much to ask to be able to hear the tunes I've purchased?) I've been to the page they direct me to, but the only option is to download iTunes 5.0.1..... which I've already done and installed.
I've tried everything. I posted my problem on the all-purpose ILX boards, and some very nice, tech-savvy folks suggested that I download yet another iPod updater, which I did. I downloaded it, installed it and re-booted and guess what....no dice. The problem continues. In the wake of that, someone suggested that I petition the geeks at purportedly super-knowledgable iLounge. Popular consensus seems to suggest "restoring and resynching," so I'm gonna give that a try. But if anyone has any brighter ideas, please e-mail me before I take a hammer to it.
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