Forums > Help! > MP3/IPOD woes

I will try my best not to make this rant about the evil corporation of Apple so lets not make it into one so here goes.

Basically my Ipod is fully screwed after only having it since July last year, I sent it back to Apple adn they decided that the problem with my ipod was caused by 'accidental damage, misuse/ abuse' and therefore it is not covered under their guarantee so they sent it back to me, still broken. I dont really knwo how this is possible, true I've had it for 6 months but its not like it's beend ropped, or at least not anymore than how things accidently drop, and certainly not sufficient to warrant it breaking about 7 months, however there isnt really anything i can do, they say I broke it, I say I didnt, in the end they were the ones who the 'thorough' diagnostic. My word against theirs so I dont really think I have any kind of case for argument, or do I?

But anyway secondly assuming I cannot get them to sort it which is looking the case I need a new MP3 player, do I trust Apple again, this is my second Ipod in the last 3 years, if I got a new one and it broke would they do the same again, I dont think I can trust a new Ipod. But that brings me to my next issue.

The third problem is I have about 2500 songs on my Ipod (and therefore music library on my computer) the majority of which are the format of either MPEG-4 or M4A, I think M4A and MPEG 4 are Apple's own format and so if I went with a different brand I'm assuming I couldnt add my old music library and therefore loosing the majority of my songs which I really really don't want. Or am I wrong?

So my question is does anyone know of ways to either convert the formats or any MP3players out there despite apple that support the format? So I dont have to go back to the evil guys and get another Ipod

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind

Give a man a fish and he'll eat 4 a day hit a man with a brick and you can have all his fish and his wife

"Will's to pretty for prison" - Simian

 Written by: coleman

its been made blindingly obvious that apple's replacement service beats creative's.



You what?

because Sym needed to do four more clicks? Has his finger recovered? Will he ever play the piano again?

My warranty covers accidental damage. Beat that appleboy

"Switching between different kinds of chuu chuu sometimes gives this "urgh wtf?" effect because it's giving people the phi phenomenon."

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

"Switching between different kinds of chuu chuu sometimes gives this "urgh wtf?" effect because it's giving people the phi phenomenon."

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

fair enough, but forgive me if i slightly doubt your impartiality in this test

"Switching between different kinds of chuu chuu sometimes gives this "urgh wtf?" effect because it's giving people the phi phenomenon."

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

 Written by: simian



 Written by: coleman

its been made blindingly obvious that apple's replacement service beats creative's.





You what?



because Sym needed to do four more clicks? Has his finger recovered? Will he ever play the piano again?



My warranty covers accidental damage. Beat that appleboy





monkey, your selective reading skills are in full force today!



but, to answer your beautifully loaded question, yes i reckon that the apple replacement service is better.



not because it needed four less clicks to get a solution as you rightly pointed out, nor even because creative required an email conversation spanning 23 hours to answer a direct question, nor even that creative's eventual battery replacement 'solution' was to suggest that sym buy their latest player at full price (by the way, do you always make so many omissions and misrepresentations in your "retorts"? ) but rather because apple actually have a dead battery replacement programme in place whereas creative do not.



we have established that some creative players' batteries can be replaced with a third party battery as is the case with ipods.



the only differentiation is that apple offer a replacement service when the battery dies (standard pricing for replacement of any ipod model with a dead battery and clear, easily accessable information on their policy that relates directly to the problem) whereas creative just offer to sell you a new player at full price



you can keep ignoring the facts if you want but even if you do have your earphones on, eyes shut and are singing "i don't like apple, la, la, la", they won't stop being the facts.





beat a warranty against accidental damage?



i don't need to!



i've had my ipod for over three years, and its never needed maintenance.



what good would a warranty against accidental damage have done me...?





cole. x



whatever, my nan could have your nan any day!

"i see you at 'dis cafe.
i come to 'dis cafe quite a lot myself.
they do porridge."
- tim westwood

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

I dunno what you losers are jibber-jabbering about iPods are ace!


Non-Https Image Link

Hoppers are angels who lift us to our feet when our wings have trouble remembering how to fly.

"i see you at 'dis cafe.
i come to 'dis cafe quite a lot myself.
they do porridge."
- tim westwood

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

well, i'd pm you my details, but i reckon my Zen Micro would have an unfair advantage with it's replaceable battery and all.



Cole-

"i've had my ipod for over three years, and its never needed maintenance. what good would a warranty against accidental damage have done me...?"



Are you suggesting that because you've had no problems ipods are infallible? otherwise, that's not really a valid argument, is it?



 Written by: cole

apple have published easily accessable information that clearly states the procedure that customers with an ipod and dead battery should follow to get their product replaced.



they have also standardised the pricing for this service across all model types.



there is absolutely no suggestion of a standard policy for creative on this issue:



you had to actively persue the information until they made an offer, specific to you and the particular player you own.





So when and why did they do all this, exactly?

Was it part of a massive damage limitation exercise against media coverage of (amongst other issues) their lack of battery replacement services?



Why yes it was! Good old Apple, eh?

"Switching between different kinds of chuu chuu sometimes gives this "urgh wtf?" effect because it's giving people the phi phenomenon."

 Written by: Sym


Maybe I should get someone with a creative player to give me all the info about it so I can get a true quote, or maybe the creative owners should try.



I tried just now, using the broken player hotline printed on a card that was in the packaging for my creative zen extra.

When I told them about the battery not charging properly, they said not to worry, then hung up.
Ten minutes later, a van arrived at my house. Three women wearing jumpsuits that barely covered their perfect hourglass figures jumped out, ran up the drive, and when I opened the door, proceded to give me 4 replacement players, some really cool headphones and a cheese toastie. They then sat me down, massaged my feet and spoon-fed me ice cream.
Then, as suddenly as they'd arrived, they ran off, leapt back into the van and were away, driving down the road in a cloud of tire smoke.

Now, I don't own an iPod, but apple's customer service has to do pretty damned well to beat that

But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

and why have creative not done the same?



because their players are immune to the problem because they have special new li-ion batteries that have a much longer life span?



nah



is it possibly because they have too small a market share for it to have become problem comparable to the size of apple's?



why yes it is!



and did they once make players with replacable batteries and then switch to non-replacable ones once they saw the direction apple had taken?



why yes, they did!



besides, the reason why the apple battery service was implemented is irrelevant - the service offered by apple for dead batteries is better than than the service currently offered by creative.





and on the other issue, no that's not what i was suggesting - i was attempting to ignore moving the debate forwards onto another issue until we had reached a conclusion on the current issue:



you attempted to negate my statement by incorrectly claiming that the level of service offered by creative was equal to apple's and then tried to shift the focus of the argument away from the battery issue and towards a completely different one.



we were not comparing warranties so i corrected your comparison of the services that sym received from each manufaturer and dismissed your attempt to move the argument to a separate issue with the relating of my personal experience.









cole. x



damn you and your unbeatable arguments bovril monkey!

"i see you at 'dis cafe.
i come to 'dis cafe quite a lot myself.
they do porridge."
- tim westwood

Bov

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

 Written by: cole

and did they once make players with replacable batteries and then switch to non-replacable ones once they saw the direction apple had taken?



nope My micro is newer than the Touch. But the new Zen Visions have non-replaceables too (i think).

Not sure what the pattern is there, or why Apple or Creative use non-replaceables at all

"Switching between different kinds of chuu chuu sometimes gives this "urgh wtf?" effect because it's giving people the phi phenomenon."

i can tell you why, it's called planned obsolesence, it is a well known ploy in product design industry to keep you buying new products... where 18 months is actually considered a reasonable lifespan for any product, because by that time, three much more powerful models will have come out and you're supposed to be aching for the new version anyway... See it could be considered that apple made a fatal business error in the throwaway age by actually making a product people seem to want to keep, but they have successfully turned that right around, by making profit out of flogging replacement batteries - which because they fit inly ipod, they make sure that the batteries make profit for apple... it's kind of a similar strategy to some car manufacturers now, who manage to box in the entire engine so that there is no access except for authorised dealerships, so they can charge you a lot of money for any repair and prevent potential profit being raked off by other garages... and that relates all the way back to Will's orignal post about the file format for itunes not working on other players... hmmm... clever strategy actually, itunes is free and bundled with macromedia shockwave plugins, so they rope you in with that, rip all your cds to .m4a so you have to buy an ipod to play them and then when the battery dies, you have to either buy one of their replacement batteries, or a new ipod.... (not a specific apple criticism, creative also have their wiley ways i'm sure, apples is just a little more transparent...)

replaceable batteries are one of my mp3 player requirements actually, because 15 hours playtime may sound like a lot, but they still die at inconvienient moments on long journeys, so i'd actually quite like a spare battery... it's rather annoying that most of them aren't

Aurinko freedom agreement reached 10th Sept 2006

if it makes no sense that's because it's NOn-sense.

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

OK well
I will soon be able to weigh into this with all sorts of techy comments, on the spot customer service research and *oh bloody hell whats the point of making a state of the art recording studio the size of a ciarette lighter when the battery dies every 20 minutes* comments about my new Sony MZ-RHI *swans about*. (Took about 5 international digital communication systems just to buy the thing!) And which I have not bought for it's iPlayMusic capacity, but for clear n crispy field recording.
So if yu chaps are going to carry on like this the whole way through PLAY, EJC and all, you just may end up on a community radio program on the other side of the world....
Hmmm.. *Geekwars* A catchy title for a doco dontcha think?

.....Can't juggle balls but I sure as hell can juggle details....

 Written by: Sym



Holographic memory might be great for the next gen storage...



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_memory






How futuristic is that!! Finally like those 60's films when folks are sliding big chunks of glass into computers....see they had it right all along Now I can wear my silver trousers and lead the fasion revolution....



*planned obsolesance*

Oh yeah forgot about that, thus they both suck!!



Cole you're right about the customer service on the battery issue. Apple changed a very deliberate money grabbing policy into something far more customer friendly. Benefiting their existing base of customers and making great swathes into keeping customers loyal for more reasons than just seliing something pretty.



Creative and apple share the same issue, it may be affecting a greater volume of ipods due to build quality of the battery (the only thing that differentiates the various ion-lithium battery's life span) or just beacuse of the greater number of ipods sold.



Creative should update their service program with more battery/battery replacement info, but perhaps, as it doesn't seem to affect creatives product as greatly (or maybe after a longer average time scale which may improve the value in the sale price sol customers don't mind as much) it doesn't rank on their top end of their priority lists, so they've focused more energies on the problems they've had ensuring the greater volume of queries are dealt with efficiently and accurately.



Gabe....don't worry, soon you'll be just like us...mwahahaaa!!

Let's relight this forum

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

hmmm.. suing over patents is hip, everybody's doing it...

it costs so much to make a patent though, that if you're going to spend that amount of money, you'd have to do something about enforcing it when you have the chance, i guess. Last august is rather recent though, seems a bit suspicious... lets just say that maybe a keen observer spotted a patenting opportunity that might have been missed by t'other players..... :insert conspiracy gremlin:

Aurinko freedom agreement reached 10th Sept 2006

if it makes no sense that's because it's NOn-sense.

even if there is only one way to do something logical like a decent playlist interface whoever did it first still did it first, that's the point of patent rights isn't it

But yes IMO it is a bit silly really, like someone is gonna say "hey I hear Xplayers playlist function is every so slightly better than Yplayers playlist function so Im gonna buy that one"

It's just a case of little boys trying to see who the biggest in the playground will be next year.

I'm gonna go patent the wheel and then sue the car companies.....

Let's relight this forum

 Written by:

"To obtain the patent for a wheel would require a false claim, which is a very serious matter and would certainly invalidate the patent as well as amounting to a misrepresentation on the part of the applicant and unprofessional conduct by any professional advisor,"



sorry dunc

anthrax.... it infects, then spreads..... fast

Dammit anthrax I was just confirming the purchase of my new island

Let's relight this forum

"PLAY island"

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

 Written by: Spanner

...loving my Creative Zen MicroPhoto more ...



which is, incidentally, one of the newer Creative players, and has a fully replaceable battery.

Which i reckon amounts to "a superior battery replacement service". But you shouldn't listen to me, cos i've got my fingers in my ears and an irrational hatred of apples...

"Switching between different kinds of chuu chuu sometimes gives this "urgh wtf?" effect because it's giving people the phi phenomenon."

 Written by: Dunc


even if there is only one way to do something logical like a decent playlist interface whoever did it first still did it first, that's the point of patent rights isn't it



yeah that's the point... who knows if that's the way it works though, you do really need a lot of money to apply for a patent in the first place, i think it's about �10,000 ish, but unfortunately i didn't have that lying around when i invented the perfect playlist.

oh anyway, i read today that creative actually filed the patent in 2001, but it only got approved in 2005... makes them seem less dodgy at least

Aurinko freedom agreement reached 10th Sept 2006

if it makes no sense that's because it's NOn-sense.

 Written by: NOn

i read today that creative actually filed the patent in 2001, but it only got approved in 2005... makes them seem less dodgy at least



But the iPod was first out in 2001....

I don't know what difference that makes, but still worth saying...

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

i don't know what difference it makes either, depends when the creative was out, also depends on how many years design and development went before that on each player...

my point was, that it being filed in 2001, ever so slightly undermines my corporate conspiracy theory outlined in an earlier post. N.B. in case anyone's wondering that wasn't a statement with any truth or fact behind it, a merely crap (and jokey) attempt at stirring up the anti-capitalists...

Aurinko freedom agreement reached 10th Sept 2006

if it makes no sense that's because it's NOn-sense.