Bet you most could have been easily fixed too...

Of course, I am posting this from an iPod... :p

It would seem Andrew is having problems primarily with the HD based iPods. Obviously they are more convenient for their extended storage capabilities, but how about trying one that's flash-based (like a 16 gig iPod touch)? If the 10 gig was decent enough, then the 16 should be just fine...

You'd think after the... 2nd iPod he'd move on to a different brand?

At this point, if you haven't given up on them, you probably never will. He's smart not to respond, frankly. There's no incentive for him to respond - he's got $1,500 worth of proof that you'll keep coming back.

It just works*

Just buy another brand. My mp3 Sony is 3 years old and my iRiver (bulky, but 20Gb) is 4, but working flawlessly. And this after being dropped several times.

This is kinda tragicomical. I mean, if Andrew isn't going to switch brands, he should at least switch to a flash-based iPod, since hard disk failure seems to be his undoing.

On the other hand, I still have a 3rd gen iPod from 2003 (the kind with the backlit buttons above the non-click-wheel) that's still jamming away despite the moderate abuse I put it through.

Sure, it doesn't play video or hold 80GB of music, but 10 GB is just about right for me.

Get a Zune, or something else. Don't keep giving apple money.

And with that said, back to my iPod that still works >:)

....and here I thought ipods were only supposed to work around a year anyway, right...? No...?

I'm pretty sure that ipods are designed to eventually stop functioning. I don't know anyone who uses one that is more than 2 years old. When they break, the new shiny ipod is out and you are so eager to upgrade that you use your broken one as an excuse and go ahead and get the new one.

dear andrew,
thank you for supporting apple and I hope you will continue purchasing our products. I decided to upgrade to the leather sport seats for my new Porsche. thanks again.

Steve

Am I the only one that sees a problem with this? Clearly you have no luck with iPods and probably should have given up long ago. I'm sorry, but the letter just seems so pointless.

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me [i]five times?[/i] Seek help.

I personally think that these mp3 players are disposable. IMO, I'd say average/expected lifespan is 1.5 years.

I've owned a third gen iPod 10GB and that was basically my first mp3 player, it broke in a year and a few months. So I went and got a Zen MicroPhoto 8GB and that broke in 2 years and a few days. Now I'm using a SanDisk Sansa 8GB flash based player and I have had it for 1+ month. The iPod and ZMP both died due to one to many drops.

awhile back i heard about the building for some oil corporation. The building had a history of the people working in it getting cancer. All sorts of investigations were launched, but no explanation could be found. A statistician got involved and said that it is just randomness at work.
that's the thing though, you just dont want to be working at the cancer building

hey so a suggestion, why not get the apple extended warranty? it seems so obvious and when you do have this type of issue, why not go to the genius bar at an apple store? maybe he doesn't have one near him, but even still, after $1500 i would feel it worth it to figure out why my ipods were consistantly dying and have gone to one no matter how far away it were! especially if he travels often im sure he comes upon an apple store in his travels

i mean, if you five coins simultaneously, they probably won't come up all heads or all tails, but if a thousand people do it, its bound to occur somewhere. my point is that this guy just happens to be stuck with lots of bad ipods where others have good experiences with their ipod.

@hazeljemi: You don't know me, but mine's been working for 4.5 years.

What's this guy doing to his stuff that every ipod he's ever owned breaks?

Two Words: Sandisk Sansa.

I hate to say it, but this is where buying from a brick and mortar store like Best Buy might be more convenient. You have the benefit of doing an in-store exchange for at least 14 days after the date of purchase.

He never said if he tried to sync his friends library onto his (broken) iPod. I'd like to see how that would turn out.

Two Words: Planned Obsolescence. The iPods are not designed to last more than 3 years max... thus to keep you buying, spending, and being a good consumer.

@hazeljemi: I must be incredibly lucky, in that case; I know a lot of people whose ipods stopped working within a few years, but I've had my ipod mini, 6gb, since it first came out (nearly 3 years now), and I've had no problems. The battery did die out, but i replaced it with a kit, on my own, for about $15, and it otherwise works perfectly. I must be an exception to the rule, I guess.

Andrew must have magnets for hands! That is crazy!

@warf0x0r: I'd suggest that too, but Zune doesn't play nice with Macs. Call me crazy, but I have a feeling Andrew's running a Mac. Just a hunch.

@swalve: That was my next thought - does he have some sort of crazy seizure that he doesn't know about and he's banging his iPod against hand surfaces unbeknownst to him? Does he go on space shuttle missions frequently? Does he live next to a magnetic force-emitting rock? There's gotta be more to the story, right?

I had an ipod a few years ago. It died 1 month out of warranty. They refused to do anything for me... I will NEVER EVER buy applie products again. They dont live up to the hype, and they don't stand behind their products. You are pretty stupid to keep forking over money for products that continually disappoint.

@visualbowler: Never mind the extended warranty - of the five iPods Andrew mentions, 3 were still under warranty when they failed, and the remaining two probably would've been covered too had he been persistent enough with pressing the issue! I had the HD fail after a year and a bit on my old iPod Photo, and a simple call to Apple and a quick chat with the manager was enough to get me a new iPod for the cost of shipping. The email fails to note if Andrew attempted to make a warranty claim on any of them, but had he attempted to and been rejected I feel it probably would have been noted. To not make a warranty claim on a defective piece of hardware while it's still under warranty is just plain stupidity/laziness.

Hard drive based MP3 players are really quite a bad idea if you move a lot while using them. Stabilizing an HD is not an easy thing to do, and it takes very little to break them (though some manufacturers are better than others - as has been noted). You're not buying a hammer - it's a sensitive piece of equipment that you jostle about in your pocket while a bunch of small discs spin at 7200RPMs inside the casing, and eventually something is going to go wrong and those discs will get damaged. Might I suggest, Andrew, that you invest in a flash based MP3 player in the future?

I really don't want to go there, but there I shall leap:

While Andrew's luck is unfortunate and annoyingly expensive, isn't it more than just remotely possible that such consistency indicates there's a pattern of something happening on the user's end?

You may now shriek at me for blaming the consumer.

You'd have to be a die-hard (i.e. idiotic) Mac fan to buy that many iPods. If I have something die on me within a year of buying it, I am done with that brand.

I've had my 20 GB iPod for about three years. It's been physically ok, but it gets corrupted and requires a rebuild every few months. When it dies I'll be buying an 80 GB Zune.

Dear Andrew,

We appreciate your loyalty to Apple products and we are confident that Apple will address the issues you have brought up. Please don't give up on Apple. And please continue to buy more Apple products while your previous and existing issues are being investigated.

Sincerely,
Apple Shareholders

;-)

Just a wild guess here; But either this guy has the worst luck with Apple products in general. Or he doesn't realize that hard drives are semi-fragile and get be damaged from abuse/neglect. I'm still not sure how his Shuffle died. That's probably the most trouble-free ipod. Also, I don't get this part..

Stuck in another country with hours of train rides ahead of me

Just speculating here.. but maybe he's in a country with high humidity and it's causing the ipods to malfunction?

More details are needed on this story.

I can only speak from personal experience....

I have owned an ipod mini for years now.... I use it in my vehicle mostly..... and I have had no issues with it at all. And it still has its original battery.

I wonder how many times this guy has dropped his ipods while they were operating..... because you can damage the ipod's harddrive that way. I have only dropped mine once (a four foot drop on concrete with no protective cover on the ipod) ... of course it was not in use (harddrive spinning) when it happened. I continue to use this ipod (mini) to this day.

I bought my wife an iPod Shuffle two Christmases ago ... and it is still going strong. But it's stories like this that make me glad that I have opted to go with "non-mainstream" MP3 players (sold by RCA, Lexar, etc.) that rely on a modest amount of built-in memory and allow the use of SD memory cards to expand that memory. I can keep as many SD memory cards as I want filled with music, sorted how I like it. They are INEXPENSIVE, reliable, and available just about anywhere. Plus, I have quite a number of SD memory cards lying around for use with my digital cameras ... so I always have memory resources around.

I currently use an RCA MP3 player that I paid all of $12 for two Christmases ago ... and it's still going strong. My wife and I just purchased a Lexar MP3 player (yep! that uses SD memory cards!) as a Christmas present for her brother ... and got it for just a little over $12 on Amazon.com. Add to that a 1 GB SD memory card we found for just under $10 ... and he now has a portable music solution (playing over 10 hours of music) for under $25!

Solution- Get a Zune, it will last so much longer for you. If you have a Mac (you said you were a Mac purchaser for all of your life), then get a pc or run parallels, it's that good of a PMP, good enough to switch your OS.

Ah, Apple's finest fanboi's can always be counted on buying more of the same crap because Apple is good!

Apple's market share has raised a few points, that is true but mainly because the same sheeple are out buying new products to fix their broken 1 to 2 year old products.

Sounds like user error to me...

I have a original ipod, an ipod mini and an ipod 5 gig. All get heavy use, all have been dropped many times, left out in the cold, left in extreme summertime car hear.

All of them still work just fine, the ipod mini battery still lasts more then 3 hours and the ipod 5g still pass's the 10 hour mark. Each ipod is used almost daily by me or someone in my family.

There is no way by freak chance this guy has gone through so many ipods...im sorry this story just stinks of bull****. He is doing something wrong.

@chouchou: I had the 1st gen Sony 20 GB player, and it was spectacular. All my iDud owning friends even had to admit the sound quality was far and away superior. Unfortunately, my dumb ass spilled a beer on it and the buttons eventually glued into place.

Zune has grown on me a lot, especially with the upgrades that came out with the new model.

Maybe its time for um, another brand of mp3 player?

DING DING DING DING DING! We have a winner! Close commenting after that one.

A bunch of us got 60GB "iPod + HP" 's from a client as a thank you present. One died in 4 months, refusing to power up ever again. Another held out for 9 or so months, before the headphone jack stopped working. Mine died in about a year later after a day of grinding noises. I don't think they were meant to last forever, but I have yet to see one go beyond a year or two before needing to be replaced.

Not saying Apple makes a crappy product, just saying adjust your expectations on an iPods lifecycle before you sink $1500 dollars into six of them.

Um, I would tend to think user error after so many of the same kinds of problems.

I have a 60GB iPod photo...four years old, never even done a hard reset. My wife's 30GB iPod video still works great after over two years of use. My sister's 3G iPod? Still going strong after five years.

I have to think that at this point, you either have extraordinarily bad luck or you're doing something wrong. Having worked with Executive Relations at Apple (before Steve came back, about ten years ago) I know they very carefully look at all your previous technical cases before doing anything...and that if there's a shadow of a doubt that Apple might be in the wrong, they just replace stuff to make customers happy.

Obviously, there's something else going on here.

I have to agree with the others asking why he didn't do warranty claims on some of the ipods as a bunch of them were in warranty. You can't bitch so much if you don't give them a chance to fix the issue.

At this point though one must wonder what the consumer is doing to these and how well he is treating them.

@Petrarch1603: We had an office chair whose occupant always got fired within three months. No real rhyme or reason behind it, no way to prove cause an effect, but it was ALWAYS fun to swap out the chair at someones desk with it.

I agree with everyone who pointed out that this is a case of planned obselesence. I'm on my fourth or fifth iPod and each of them died somewhere between a year and 15 months, tops. I'm not hurling them up against the wall or anything, but I
use iPods for several hours each day.

I really like the way iPods work, and like Andrew, by the time my crrent pod dies I'm usually jonesing for whatever feature the latest one has, so I
graze like a good little sheep into the Apple store to get the latest.

Do I feel ripped off? I honestly don't. I use these devices constantly and recognize that they last a little over a year. I've checked out other mp3 players and I just like iPods a lot better.

Having said all that, I do think that given their lifespan, they should be somewhat cheaper.

Andrew, thank you, my apple stock soared while you repeatedly proved your lack of intelligence

Buy the cheapest DAP you can get away with. Use it until it breaks or you loose it. Then buy a new one.

$50 X 10 is still way cheaper than what you spent.

Don't waste your $ on warranties or Apples. These are throw-away items not meant to last very long.

I should probably add: what are you doing to your hard disk-based iPods that causes them to fail?

@dougm: The only premature failures I've seen on iPods have been from people who don't take care of their purchases. Leaving their iPods on the dashboard/hot car during summer, dropping them, leaving them in the rain...no player is indestructible, but as you can tell from my post above, the iPods I have experience with are pretty damned sturdy, including my mom's U2 iPod - four years and going strong.

@LisaLives: Thank you.

There's a word for people like Andrew.....masochist.

Dear god!!! My iPod broke and now I'm being denied my fundamental human right of having my entire music collection everywhere I go!!! Won't somebody think of the children!!!!!

Buy a Zune.

How many transistor radios can $1500 buy? Do they sell those anymore?

That's dedication.

Two pieces of advice for Andrew. First, as has been said, buy another brand MP3 player. Second, buy a degaussing machine for your hands.

You know what some people consider to be a definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Sheesh. Get a Creative or Sansa already!