While much of the iPod praise has been saved for its glossy cousins – either of the compact nano or the touchscreentastic Touch flavours – the iPod Classic is nonetheless making its own waves among consumers. Unfortunately, many of these waves are down to an issue with the PMP’s latest firmware update, which has seen some users left with a Classic that refuses to play music and instead drives itself into a fiery state with constant hard-drive thrashing.
The problem appears to be in the 1.0.2 update Apple released early this month, supposedly designed to increase the speed with which menus on the device load. Instead, many users discovered that their devices would demand to be restarted and then become unresponsive, their Mac or PC unable to find the connection and the PMP left spinning its hard-drive until the iPod is shut down. Others find the device randomly power-cycles.
So far Apple has been decidedly reticent in offering suggestions to solve the issue. There’s a five-step “fix” that support staff offer, but supposedly its success-rate is low; the 1.0.1 firmware is unable from official channels. Instead, just as with the iPhone bricking situation, it’s been left to the hack & mod community to deal with the fallout, with DIY instructions to delete the 1.0.2 update and force an iPod restore. This, of course, wipes the hard-drive.
Has anybody experienced this problem with their iPod Classic? Anybody had good help from Apple support, or been given a like-for-like replacement at their local Apple Store? Let us know in the comments.
Well, I got my 160GB classic at the beginning of Oct. I upgraded to firmware 1.02 about a week later. Sure enough, as soon as I did this, I got skipping, songs would start to play and then skip to the next track automatically. Soon, the hard drive acted up and I just could not transfer ANYTHING over from iTunes to the device. I took it to the Apple store and they gave me a like for like replacement. While my hard drive has been working fine now with the 1.02, I am still getting skipping in some songs. No rhyme or reason to it either because I owned the 5.5 80GB before this and the songs ALL played fine. Why won’t Apple just admit they screwed up, fix it, and then give us all free replacements?
Damn it apple! :[
My 80GB iPod Classic has been working perfectly since the end of 2007, but has recently started freezing, being unresponsive when I press buttons or run my finger round the wheel and making a continuous buzzing noise. Also, iTunes no longer detects it as an iPod. I ejected it from the computer about 15 minutes ago and it’s stuck on the start-up screen (the grey one with the Apple logo) making the annoying buzzing sound.