There you go, Bryan, a free headline for you. Did you get it?

Anyway…

Settle in. This is longwinded.

I have a work colleague who seems to be caught within an alternate universe in which every iPod owner, including his daughter, has experienced major issues with their iPod.

Faulty batteries. Faulty drives. Faulty this, faulty that. Apparently, every kid at his daughter’s school who bought an iPod mini has had it fail on them.

I don’t entirely doubt him, but seeing how he is now on a personal crusade against Apple (fuelled by a warranty dispute), I have to wonder to what extent his anti-Appleness is fuelled by rage, which tends to obscure the truth.

Be that as it may, if only half of what he reports is true, it’s disturbing. What’s more, a point he made today rang very true. He said that each time he’s gone to the Apple reseller from whom he bought his daughter’s iPod mini,  that there is always someone else there reporting a problem with their iPod.

I’ve seen this myself. However, I’m certain many of those iPod owners are having user-related issues (“Like, I have to use iTunes? Oh!”) but, even so, the number of people with some kind of issue with their iPod who I either personally know or have been told about amounts to a disturbing level of product failure.

With iPod sales having reached 14 million units, I have to wonder if there is an approaching critical mass of dissatisfied users sufficient to be counter-productive to Apple’s now-unveiled plans for world domination.

Right now, I can think of half a dozen people who would never buy a Mac because of their experience with an iPod. They may well influence another half a dozen potential Mac buyers, and so on.

Halo? More like a crown of thorns.

Thoughts?

I had a Dell DJ prior to my ipod. The HD died a week after the year warranty expired. My wife had an old flash based Creative player and it supposedly supported wma and mp3 but the wma support was horrible. I used to listen to my mp3’s on my PocketPc but kept running into problems where the windows drm would occasionally insist I didn’t have a license for a track until I re-downloaded the track onto the pocket pc.

By comparison, I love the ipod’s simplicity and the fact it “just works.” Granted we haven’t had my ipod or my wife’s nano long enough to know what the reliability will be.

You can go to any consumer electronics store and find people with complaints. Go to Frys and look at their return line. Naturally at an Apple reseller you’ll see people returning ipods rather than Dell Dj’s or whatever.

It’s possible that what you’re seeing is simple the fact that Apple has a critical mass of iPod owners.  Get enough of the buggers out there, and some of them will be bad.

If Apple does have an actual problem with problems…errr…hopefully that makes sense…then it will indeed become a nightmare for the company.

As it is, however, momentum is clearly in Apple’s favor.

This topic brings this article to mind (MacUser UK. You may need to register).

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/macuser/columns/81238/shutdown-grand-designs.html

The gist here is that with sheer state of the art industrial design that there is a danger that a lot of careless users will give the product a rough time.

Now I am not an iPod owner/user -I am not into the craze and spend most of spare time with books-  but I will make this observation.  In a generation of consumers where youngsters have a lot of disposable income or spoilt (make your own judgement) many users of the iPod are kids. As we all know kids have an adept ability to treat stuff with a certain amount of casual disrespect, so I think that we should not be at all surprised that there are a lot of mishaps in the iPod world.  The anecdote of the first post illustrates this. There was a time when technology cost a lot and this was respected with an understanding that the products were delicate and expensive.  Yes there can be mishaps and heartbreak when things go wrong but is this just the risk we take with all this technology?

Yes, iGrouch, an interesting perspective. I remember my dad having a hi-fi system that I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere near. It was too expensive to risk in my hands.

I also wonder if because of the cost of buying an iPod combined with its reputation, it isn’t held to a higher expectation. I suppose that sounds kind of obvious so let me put it this way - if a parent were to spend half as much on a similar device, would they be more willing to treat it as a disposable item once it gives up?

[quote author=“Bryan”]It’s possible that what you’re seeing is simple the fact that Apple has a critical mass of iPod owners.  Get enough of the buggers out there, and some of them will be bad.

If Apple does have an actual problem with problems…errr…hopefully that makes sense…then it will indeed become a nightmare for the company.

As it is, however, momentum is clearly in Apple’s favor.

And let’s not forget the incidence of failure in Wintel machines but somehow that hegemony still stands up. 

Perhaps it is a case of the KIND of consumers that are returning these things or having problems with them. If it is a lot of kids, then sure I doubt they’d hold up. I remember how I beat on nearly everything I had when I was in my teens. I know my Star Wars figures took a beating
Then again I also was not allowed to wander around with a very small piece of electronic equipment that cost over $200. Hell, at 35, I barely trust myself with my iPod. I could barely keep my $20 Walkman knockoff in decent shape. Frankly I think the formula of Expensive Electronics + Tween or Teenager =  a recipe for disaster.

Post-holiday iPod "tech support"

I have found myself being bombarded with friends who recieved iPods for Christmas (or Hanukkah or whatever)asking me for help getting their “broken” iPods working.  Some have LITERALLY cursed at it and swore that “this thing is getting [expletive deleted] returned.”  For most, this is their first and only time encountering an iPod, much less an Apple branded product.  Here’s the kicker.  Of the iPods I have “fixed”, not ONE was actually broken.  I have found that many of my Windows-using friends were having a hard time because they were making it more complicated than it had to be.  Yes, the iPod and iTunes was TOO simple for them and it seemed that “there has to be more to it that this”, so they added in their own “complications” out of habit.  I had one trying his darndest to install Norton on it to keep viruses off the hard disk on his new iPod.  Simply put, I believe that many iPod problems are the classic ID10T errors I used to come across when I was a tech.  Admittedly, MY OWN iPod experience started off shaky (got one with a bad HD out of the box), but almost 2 years later, I am a very happy owner of a 3G 40 GB that just won’t die (and give me a reason to ge a new iPod with video).

That’s largely what I expect is happening, in addition to some percentage of failed devices.

I had a social conversation with a team leader at a Mac reseller and he was saying that the majority of returns are from Windows users. He hastened to add Windows users were disproportionately represented.

Many of them just didn’t understand the iTunes/iPod thing.

I was reminded of the recent Reliability and Service survey of PC World’s readers (MP3 player section) .  It kinda confirms my perception of Apple’s products—typically high-quality, well-built, certainly eye-catching, but a little short of having super-high reliability (like Honda and Toyota are known for in the auto world).  In other words, Apple seems very much like BMW.   

40+ million iPods hanging with the trend of an average 14% problem rate and 7% severe problem rate, extrapolating from the PC World survey, does make for lots of problem ‘Pods.  Ah, the trials and tribulations of being at the top. 

I’ve heard stories of some having big issues with iPods, multipe return to base, though often it can pay off, and Apple may just give you a new one.

My brothers 4th gen. iPod died and he ended up with a new, higher capacity replacement. (and   allegedly ended up with two iPods)

I’ve posted before about my brothers friend. She bought an iPod mini to take with her on holiday. She apparently couldn’t work out how to put music on it (she’s a PC user) So, she left it for about a year (so it was nice and dead) before giving it to my brother, (then me) to put music on.  It took quite a lot of resetting to make it appear on the Mac, but after resetting the software it wanted to be plugged into an AC adapter. I tried two different ones, neither made any difference.  I think she’s taken it to the London Apple store now, though I’ve not heard about it since.

Personally, my original first generation iPod has had no problems. Well, it’s battery is well passed its best, but that’s about it.

Though, I didn’t enjoy my experience dealing with Apple when I had multiple problems with my old TiBook. (I had Apple Care)

When the paint starting falling off the first time, they replaced the case. The second time, they’d change their minds and said it was no longer covered.

The hard disc died, so I returned it, but they’d not let me have it back because the case had developed ‘cracks’ at the corners.  They said they couldn’t put the hard disc in it until the case was replaced, but, they’d not pay for it. They pretty much made out that I’d done it.  I assured them it had not been dropped and it was a designe flaw, they weren’t having it.  I could either have it back with no replaced hard disc, or cough up.

The whole thing was made worse by having a call centre outside the UK, though, as the problem was esculated, I ended up talking to someone within the British isles *gasp*.

I was reasonable at first, but then, I did get irrate. I had no choice but to pay for a replacement case, then they replaced the hard disc under the Apple Care. (the hinges cracked eventually and I’ve since sold it on)

So, it’s good and bad news.