My iPod and its resurrection from the dead

JISHOU, HUNAN — Riddle me this, Steve Jobs. Why is my dead iPod Shuffle once again working properly, after two years of sitting unused in a desk drawer?

Two years ago this fall, my iPod stopped holding a charge. I would charge it up, even overnight, and within minutes of using it would go dead again. Finally, I chucked it into a desk drawer and bought a new music player in disgust.

Well, that drawer had turned into a junk pile, so yesterday I had some spare time and decided to clean it out.

Before tossing stuff out, I like to see if it really is fubar’d. My deceased Palm Treo 680 is now even deader than before, if that’s possible. The phone ignores the charger entirely – not even a lit LED to show it’s connected. Then, I tried charging the iPod, once from the USB connection and once from the AC charger. I got the same result: the iPod acted liked it was fully charged already.

WTF?

So, I fired up iTunes, and loaded some music onto the Shuffle. And guess what? The danged thing has been playing music through my speakers since yesterday morning — not continuously, but the way it’s supposed to.

I know I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but what gives here? Does my bottom desk drawer have magical restorative powers? And if it does, why couldn’t it also revive my Treo? (No loss there, really.) Or does leaving your iPod alone for two years in the dark make it lonely and desperate for your attention?



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November 28th, 2010 | Tags: , , , , | Category: Random rants | 4 comments

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Goodbye, iPod Shuffle; it was fun while it lasted

JISHOU, HUNAN — I said goodbye to my iPod Shuffle today. I ditched it for a Chinese-made iPod lookalike, the Meizu Media Card.

It’s on the right here. Click on the image to get a better view. Meizu Media Card

The battery on the real iPod, a first-gen 512 MB Shuffle, became incontinent and just couldn’t seem to hold a charge much longer than a few hours. I’d charge it up at night, and by morning the little fella was flat as a pancake. No lights, no music, nada.

So, two freshmen (YangQiu-Harry and GaoXing-Happy) helped me rejoin the iPod generation. We visited a shop downtown where Harry had bought his mp4 player. I didn’t want a player with video capabilities; my eyes want a larger screen. So we checked out the mp3 players.

I settled on a 2G unit by Meizu. It’s about the same size as a Nano, but without the trademark Apple touchwheel. Cost (with wall charger and gel cover): ¥399 or about $58. (Harry talked the sales staff to throw in the charger and cover for free.)

The Media Card does all I want it to, so I’m pleased. I had my Chinese language course on the iPod, so once it went south, I was again attached to my laptop to study Chinese. Not so much fun, or convenient.

Out of the box, the Meizu is plug-and-play with Windows, but I use Ubuntu. It took a bit of poking around the toobs to figure out why Ubuntu was not detecting the Meizu, even though it should.



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October 10th, 2008 | Tags: , , , , | Category: China, General stuff | 5 comments

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