Comments on: How many iPods are iLemons?

A Wall Street Journal article questions the iPod's reliability.

[lpisme]

Why do iPods sell so much?

It's always dumbfounded me that iPods sell so well when they are plagued with so many problems. Freezing, crashes, etc etc and on top of that, the hardware is so scratch/crack/fingerprint prone. If the Zune did that people would be trashing MS to no end, but it seems to be okay if Apple does it.
That begs the question; why do iPods sell so much?
Is it only because of ease of use / "good" design (which is debatable).

[HigherFidelity]

1) Marketing, 2) Ease of Use

iPods sell so well primarily because of marketing-- you can hardly go anywhere
without seeing at least one iPod ad. Furthermore, whether people want to admit
it or not, iPods are extremely easy to use. Granted they do have plenty of faults,
but as this article points out, people have to understand that they can't use their
hard-drive based iPods as their daily workout player and expect it to last as long
as it would otherwise... that's what the shuffle and nano is for. Just my two
cents.

[mattjumbo]

The iPod isn't "plagued" With Anything

The traditional iPod is hard-disk based. But (Apple bears some blame for their
marketing) people use them as if they were cell phones.

So, surprise surprise, they fail. Like I said, Apple deseves some blame for
marketing the (hard disk) iPod as a exercise tool, but the build quality on iPods
is very, very good for the most part.

I've had every iteration and have yet to have on fail on me.

[podtwinz]

Born to Die

On Saturday, my iPod crashed. Monday morning on my way to work, I heard this story on NPR about how electronics are now being manufactured to last only long enough for the manufacture to mass produce an upgrade so that you will be forced to replace the product instead of repairing it (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6575446). No kidding, lots of manufacturers aren't even making replacement parts anymore so they can tell you they can't repair your product. At any rate... after two visits to my local Genius Bar this week, today (Wednesday) I learned that my 18 month old iPod Photo is on it's last leg. Diagnosis: the early stages of hard drive failure. Prognosis: she could last another week, she could last 6 months. Recommended treatment: no exposure to cold weather, no strenuous physical activity (no jogging, but walking is okay) - no kidding. My biggest complaint is for the several hundred dollars that I paid for this iPod in early 2005 I just expect it to last more than a year and a half. I may just be jaded by the fact that a month ago I had to replace a Toshiba A75 laptop that I bought around the same time as my iPod because the motherboard was fried due to ill-conceived placement of the fans on the bottom of the machine instead of around the sides. Plunking down thousands of dollars every year - my addiction to electronics is getting to be quite an expensive habit...

[capsteve]

planned obsolescence

you are of course referring to a term known as "planned obsolescence", which has been has been around since the 20's or 30's... it's actually a catch-22... most products are designed and manufactured to be cost effective, both for the manufacturing process as well as for the consumer. if a product was designed and built to withstand obsolesence, it would be very expensive to manufacture and purchase... 18 months isn't too terrible for a harddrive failure(most drive fail in to 2-5 years). the cost to replace the harddrive in you ipod is easy and you should be able to extend the life of your ipod another 3 years...

[capsteve]

statistics will probably show...

that the ipod is not only a more reliable product compared to similar products, it probably has a longer lifespan and higher level of use, i.e. ipods are less likely to find themselves buried in the junk drawer.

i'm sure there are quite a few people out there who have had boner ipods that stopped working for one reason or another, but statistically if you were to compare the number of ipods which have failed due to operator error(dropping on floor, getting wet, etc) versus ipod failures due to manufacturing problems, i think the numbers would speak very highly for a well built product that does it's job well.

i've been using one sort of music/mp3 player since the introduction of the rio back in the mid 90's, and i think the ipod has been one of the best players i've used. not only is it one of the best known platforms, it has staying power that other players do not have. how many of you have an mp3 player that is no longer manufactured or supported? even the first ipod has some sort of support(knowledge base) available thru apple... i wonder how well supported other brand offer to end users 5 years after product introduction
?

[lugoi]

washed shuffle

My daughter put her shuffle (1stgen) through the wash and dry cycles in the laundry. The thing kept on working for about two more months and then died. Apple replaced it under warranty no questions asked. I will not let her borrow my 5G, though.

[Wild Eep]

[INVALID ARGUMENT]

(sarcasm) Oh, wow, that's really worrysome, 2 noted people froze their ipods,
and how, oh, that's interesting, no one ever said how. (end sarcasm) These
iPods are obviously abused. No Hard-drive mp3 player will forever resist
being vigourously shaken by jogging, and all you people complaining about
their frozen ipods, like whoever it was with the broken ipod photo, what
absurd ways did you abuse your ipod before writing about its supposedly
unprevoked death.
This is an unnecessary and pointless article, and does not make a valid or
even convincing argument against iPods and Apple.

[podtwinz]

not abused

i do a lot less with my ipod than what you see in the commercials with people breakdancing while wearing them. never said i went jogging with it, just providing the mac genius's example of what not to do. mostly, i listen to it in the car and around the house where it sits securely in my back pocket while i wash the dishes.

if this is considered to be prohibitively vigorous activity then i'm even less convinced that it's worth the hassle. what do they expect us to do? carry the thing around on pillows with trumpets announcing it's presence so that no one will disturb it? c'mon - all we want is a reliable product.

[ThisUser]

iLies

I bought a refurbished 40 GB iPod Photo (before they started calling them iPod with color screens). I have been through 3 of them. The story my local Apple Store tells me is that if I have any music that has been downloaded via a P2P file sharing program (i.e. Limewire, etc) then that music could have generational errors introduced by the amount of copying involved in P2P systems. Correct me if I'm wrong, but an MP3 is a digital file, meaning I can copy it as many times as I want (even millions of times) and the file will be copied completely and without error. Generational errors are only introduced by uncompressing and recompressing the file such as writing it to an audio CD and then ripping it back to my harddrive several times. So basically, I think Apple (or their employees at my Apple Store) was lying to me. Is this a common practice from Apple?

[SkimanRick]

Common practice to lie?

Is it a common practice for Apple to lie to you? Unfortunately it's just a common practice among IT companies. Welcome to the pain.

[PhillyBoy919]

Seems that the newer iPods are having issues

One of my close friends and also a co-worker have recently purchased black 30Gb iPods. Both of them had the same problem, it would lock up fairly often to the point where you'd have to reset it just to get it working. I told each of them to attempt a restore using the iTunes software and that if it happened again, try another restore. The one I restored myself and the other (my tech-saavy coworker) did it himself. In both cases it failed to repair the issue and both had to be sent back to Apple.

About a week after being sent, the iPods came back and both had been replaced rather than repaired. My co-worker's iPod now works perfectly, but my friend's is having the same exact problem she did before. I confirmed by looking at the Serial # that it is indeed a new iPod from the one she sent in.

So what this means is that 2 of those 3 30Gb iPods failed. I think they have a problem because I have been hearing this a LOT recently.

It is worth noting that I have a 60Gb 5G iPod and have never had a problem. My father recently bought the 80Gb version and also had no problems. I don;t consider the iPod an unreliable device whatsoever, but Apple may have a large problem with the newly manufactured 30Gb variant.

[PhillyBoy919]

More likely just a clueless sales person

I think you just happened to talk to an idiot. He probably heard some technical reason that an iPod could crash due to a file incompatibility or corruption or something else, didn't truly understand what was being discussed, then tried and miserably failed to regurgitate that reason. More often than not I've found Apple store employees to be more knowledgeable than the folks at most retail outlets.

[snake961]

HD Click of Death

I had a Rio Karma 20Gb unit that got the "click of death" with limited use. It was my second Karma, the first the screen died within two weeks. After the 2nd Karma, I bought an iPod, and have been generally happy since then.

As for the Rio Karma my solution was to do the "table slam" to the unit, and it worked. But I don't expect a long life.

So the problems aren't isolated to iPods themselves. Drop it, shake it, spill beer on it, sit on it - you're going to have problems. I've been generally happy with my (3) ipods, and the one time I had to go to the Genius Bar for service on my niece's 30Gb, they swapped it out at no charge.

[TheGame21]

Awaiting 7th iPod

My fiancee just sent back her 6th ipod to have the sad face icon on it and is now awaiting her 7th. She doesn't even carry it around places in her bag. It just sits on her desk. This time it froze in the middle of a song and when we rebooted it, she got the oh-so-familiar message. Yet I got my ipod when she got her first one (Christmas 2004) and mine is still going strong, even though I carry mine with me everywhere. Just goes to show the unpredicatability of Apple products.

[mateo60]

I'm on iPod number 6 right now.

Which model does she have?

I'm convinced that there is a defect in the 3G 40gb clickwheel models. I'm on number 6 right now. It started to mess up yesterday. Nothing major yet, but I know it'll happen soon.

Thank God for Apple Care. They're wonderful at quickly sending a replacement. However, the money that they've spent shipping iPods back and forth via overnight shipping, is more than the retail cost of a brand new iPod.

[bonzai90210]

4 iPods, 1 problem

I've had 4 iPods: a 2G 30GB, a 60 GB iPod Photo, a 60 GB iPod video, and a 2 GB
nano. The only one I've had any problems with was the 2G. After about a year
and a half it developed a battery problem, but since I had Apple Care the Apple
store verified the problem and gave me a new one. Given the abuse my iPods
take when I jog, travel, and use them in my car, I think they're surprisingly
reliable.

I don't see how anybody can go through 6 or 7 of them as some people are
reporting.

[SkimanRick]

iPod issues? Pfft! iTunes SW is my issue!

I feel like I should knock on wood after reading all the iPod horror stories, but I haven't had any big problems with my 20GB iPod...yet. However, iTunes and trying to get somebody at Apple to actually give a d*** about it has been so aggravating that it takes self control beyond belief not to punch that iPod right through my computer screen!! They force you to upgrade to a new release KNOWING that there are issues, bugs, etc with the SW, yet you can't get Apple to do anything except ask for more money. I upgraded to v7.0 and went through enormous issues spending a week to resolve them and get things almost back in order. Then they release 7.02 that supposedly fixes some of those problems. I'm in the IT industry and most SW companies provide upgrades that don't require a complete uninstall and reinstall of the new version. There's an upgrade procedure that is much quicker and easier than downloading the entire application and installing. Apple apparently hasn't hired SW engineers capable of such majic. Because of the inevitable issues I'm sure I'll encounter yet AGAIN with upgrading the iTunes SW, I've decided to just leave it. I can hear my music right now even though there are some things that aren't right, and some of the information on my iPod is humorously incorrect. But it does play. I can't tolerate the painfully slow speed of uploading music to it since upgrading to iTunes 7, but I can play what's on it and it's nearly full anyway. All I do is change the lineup in the playlists and it almost seems like new music sometimes. I used to chear for Apple's success with the iPod. Now I pray for another company with more a customer centric business model to knock them off!

[crybabyelitist]

I've gone through 5 iPods!!!

I am one of the unfortunate 5% I guess. I recieved a 60 GB iPod photo, only to have the first die 6 months in. The next lasted about 6 months, the third 2 weeks, and the fourth about 4 months before they finally sent me a brand new 80 GB video. I am satisified with the customer service, but each one suffered from the same freezing and constant need of a restart. I still love the design the best, and as long as I have the extended warranty, I'm fine.

[syclick]

This is why I bought my iPod at Costco

If you're going to get an iPod, it's best to get it at someplace that has an excellent return policy. I bought mine at Costco and can return it at any time if I have problems.

[PrettyRagdoll]

Creative is the way

And that's why I have a Creative Zen Sleek. It has everything I want from an mp3 player. It can hold 20 G's, has a radio, and a voice recorder. I mean honestly, what do I need to see pictures for?

[sshin1515]

2 ipods + 1 that was returned. Hence, all 3 ipods

I purchased ipod mini last year, went bad & got it replaced under warranty. Purchased 30gb video in Jan '06, went bad (hardware issue & won't turn on) & returned to Best Buy for replacement. Replacement unit went bad (same hardware problem) 6 months later. This time, Best Buy wouldn't take it back, so mail it to Apple service center for repair (had to pay $35). Wk later, it was returned, but repair had been declined. It said I mishandled it. Got furious & drove down to Apple store to complain. Technician said someone had opened ipod & started to accuse me for tempering. Told him I know nothing about repair & Apple serv ctr had opened my ipod (If you need a repair, take it to Apple store & save $ 35). Called serv ctr for detail info & to plead my case. I'm in mid thirties w/ a professional career, knows nothing about ipod repairs & if it goes bad, I just buy a new one. Waited 30 more mins. to speak to a Manager. She found out diagnostic test had been performed, which means ipod was not opened when arrived (they do not performed this test if it's been tempered). She later apologized & send me an replacement unit. I'm now waiting to see how long this unit will last. If Itune had been compatible (spent $300+ for downloads), I would change to MP3 player in a heart beat. Then again, this is how Apple makes money. Just look at their stock prices.

[jasohara]

Too many posts here ...

... that agree with the article's premise. That leads me to believe those who have had iPod failures are anxious to vent. While those of us WITHOUT problems - a vast majority I assume - go their merry way. I also know that, human nature being what it is, a vast majority (but not all certainly) of users with problems did something to contribute to those problems. Nothing can be idiot-proof, because idiots are so damn ingenious.

For me - FIVE - count 'em FIVE iPods going strong among me and my 2 kids. One mini, one shuffle, one 1G 2 gig Nano and two 5G 30 gig videos. Not a single problem. I'm about to buy my daughter a 2G 8 gig Nano. That will make 6. I anticipate no problems.

[nicci404]

I had to replace battery too

I got a Nano and it lasted about 5 months then the battery gave out. They replaced it for free and so far it has been working smoothly. I really hope it doesn't die again. I also have a Creative mp3 player that has lasted me 3 yrs! I like Creative cause it is a lot smaller and has strong durability.