I would like to give you a short version of what I think happens to an Apple computer or other device once it is deemed dead. I'm an ol' skool motorcycle mechanic from way back. My initial instinct is to fix something rather than replace it. Despite the detriment to my love for early adoption, fixing something that's broken gives me more satisfaction than anything else. I'm a fix-it type by heart. When something is broken, I'll push everything aside to get whats not working, working.
Despite this, I still have a fail bit of stuff that is broken and still lingers in my house, my office, my car, my backpack and so on. But once in awhile my efforts pay off and it's usually in a decent way.
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One of the things I never adopted from Apple was their halo product.... the iPod. I once had cash (at a time I didn't) and decided I was going to join the masses and purchase one shiny 3G iPod. But hanging around the Apple store for about 30 minutes yielded no result. In fact I didn't even see a sales guy in there. If it wasn't for the drooled over iPod being behind glass then I'd have run off with it and my pocket money.
But I left the shop, still rich and still iPod-less. I went through life for years to follow without an iPod. Slowly all my friends eventually got iPods and I was pretty much left out as the only person on this planet without one. Then one day my heart broke. The 3G iPod had been discontinued and replaced with the 4G. The row of buttons at the top that lit up that lovely, contrasting orangish-red were gone. Replaced with a multi-function clickwheel.
The iPod I wanted was gone.
Years went by and still no iPod. I still wanted a music player and the non-Apple ones were getting good, some better. Until two Christmas's ago I bought a great MP3 player for my wife. It's a brilliant little device comfortably sitting in the shadow of Apple's iPod like all other MP3 players. And since then I have contemplated bying one for myself only to never do it.
Still iPod-less and still music-less when I go for walks, etc. I still wanted an iPod. I'd look at my suppliers who happen to sell Apple gear and see that there were always iPods in stock. Taunting me to buy one. I never did. Though my Niece has gone through three of them. One for every Christmas. She has lost one, the other stolen and now she has a Touch which I'm sure will end up in someone else's hands and not mine. I always convince her that she should just get over the part where it gets stolen or lost and just give it to me. Madly, she's the type of person that would just go "okay" and hand it over.
But no, I wouldn't do that. So I remain sans iPod.
But, yesterday while in the office I'm speaking to my good friend Ray who's an Apple techie across the lounge area between our offices. He has had a bucket load (4) dead iPods sitting on top of his G5 for a while now, and yesterday while chatting with him discovered they weren't there any more. He showed me that he had "moved" them.... basically ready for the tip. When I said I'd like to have a play with them. While I rescued customers computers and waited for the software to finish its thing. I'd have a crack at getting these iPods back to life. I really wanted to just get one working. It was the coveted 3G iPod I longed for all these years, eclipsed by today's standard of iPod, but a thing of beauty and something I always wanted. So I had to have it, much like my G4 Cube.
Ray being such a giving person said "if you fix them they're yours." and naturally I went ahead with attempting to fix something that was broken. While cavorting with tiny hard disk drives and impregnable cases. I eventually came to an end. 4 iPods fully operational.
How I did it I won't go into but each iPod worked, except the 40GB model with a massively dead battery. While it worked fine while plugged in, died the instant you unplugged it, even after a good day's worth of charging.
The 3G model came up well and I already had a case picked out for it. The 4G Colour Clickwheel came up really good too. And they all worked on their own accord with battery power (Note: this is being tested today after a 24 hour charge). Though last night something happened. The beloved 3G broke down and no longer wanted to hang around. Ray said he'd be interested to see how long they last. Try and try with all the tricks I learnt over the last 24 hours I could not resurrect the dead iPod. Why to do? Well, I thought of an idea, not an original idea mind you. This is an idea I have used on many Apple devices to bring them back to life. While not original and certainly not the same as before. I guess you can call it some sort of Frankenstein's Monster. I put Linux on the 3G iPod and within 2 minutes I was putting music on it to test out.
The beauty with doing this was that now the iPod didn't need iTunes to transfer music to and from. What this means is that it can plug into any system with any platform or operating system and be able to get music or take music off it. It's basically operating as an external hard drive which happens to play music too. Not only does this offer me greater flexibility in my network of multi-platform PC's in the house and office. It allows me to go to a friends place and not have to worry that he doesn't have iTunes.
Don't get me wrong. I use iTunes as my main music player. I love it. But it wasn't fun transferring music to the iPod because I run an iTunes music server at home and the office. The iTunes music doesn't sit on the local machines, duplicated to each computer in the place. No, the server has the music files and the DAAP service (as Apple have dubbed it) runs on the server, sharing my music to all who run iTunes or any other music player that supports DAAP on the network.
Sadly, you can't drag and drop your music from it to the iPod. It just doesn't work. So the way around it would have been to either download some third party software that allows you to add music to an iPod by dragging and dropping files off the server or we added all the music to my computer, thus into iTunes music library, creating a duplicate which is exactly what I wanted to avoid when I set up the DAAP server in the first place.
So, Linux went on the iPod for a few reasons, bringing it back to life, allowing easier access to music and transfers and also trying something new. But mainly to bring it back to life.
Out of the four iPods, the others being a U2 iPod which I never liked and the 40GB which had a dead as nails battery, Ray said to me to take my pick since I fixed them and so I took the 3G and the Clickwheel Colour iPod keeping the U2 and the dead 40GB with him which he has no use for anyway.
Currently the 3G is running Linux and the 4G is running the standard iTunes stuff. I'm going to keep that one standard since it works and I can leave it alone now.
The negative side to all of this free iPodery that I have been accelerated into, going from owning no iPods to two is that now I have to buy myself a Firewire cable (the USB ones don't work on the older models that originally came with a firewire cable), and I'll probably go and get myself a universal Dock so I can plug it in by the stereo maybe and listen to my tunes that way. I might have got two free iPods, but I'll be spending nearly $100 on accessories, some of which are necessary so I can charge the devices and transfer music on to them.
Putting Linux on them has made me chuckle. There's a reason for this. A couple of months ago a customers Mac died. He tried everything to get OS X back on there and I tried everything else. In the end I used a live boot Linux CD which worked immediately and installed and continues to work now. The client has gone and bought a new Mac now. He decided to throw the old one out, which I kept and in happily running Linux. I tried putting OS X on it again just to see what happens and the same thing as before. It just refuses to install.
A friend's Powerbook died a couple of years ago. I tried everything to get it working for him. It was a lemon, and on its last legs, so it was futile. I put Linux on there and BOOM! It stops complaining and continues to work to this day with an uptime of more than 30 days.
And now, this 3G iPod. Dead. Wouldn't do as it was told in Apple land. But install Linux on it and BOOM! It works.
I have a number of suspicions here.
- Linux is better?
- Apple has put a chip in their devices that dies after a couple of years, forcing you to buy a new one?
- As great as Apple products are, OS X isn't as good as we'd think it?
I don't know. Don't read too much into it. I love Apple and it's products, but something isn't right, how a faulty product that is destined for the bin can be resurrected by simply installing another operating system over it? Is that right? Maybe it isn't, and that's the point.
Cheerio
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