iPod Hell

I spent a few hours over the past two nights in iPod Hell.

The other night, Judith decided she wanted to be able to run apps on her first-generation iPod Touch.  To do so she needed to upgrade the firmware since it was still on v1.x.  So, we hooked it up to her MacBook, went to the App Store in iTunes, and bought the v3.1.3 firmware upgrade for $4.95.

ITunes downloaded and installed the firmware but something went awry, and it bricked the iPod.  The iPod would apparently boot and was able to sync, but the display never reached the Home screen.  Also, it was unresponsive to pressing either the Home or power buttons.  I had Judith leave the iPod on overnight in the hopes that draining it, then connecting it to her Mac might allow it to boot.  No dice.

I then tried a factory reset and restore, with it connected to Judith's Mac.  Again, no difference.

Finally, I connected it to my Wind Netbook and did a factory reset and restore, which got me to the Home screen after it wiped and restored the v3.1.3 firmware.  Judith was then able to connect it to her Mac and resync all her music to it.  She was also able to download and install a bunch of free apps (games mostly) to the iPod.

Yesterday we let Amanda spend her birthday loot on her own 8 GB iPod Touch.  Aside from a game and music player, I'll rip some of her DVDs using Handbrake so she can bring it with her on long rides in the car instead of her POS portable DVD player.  I told J. to go ahead and connect it to her Mac but she wound up putting a bunch of her music on it, instead of Amanda's.  {sigh}  So, I factory reset it and will connect it to Amanda's MacBook Pro (my old machine) so that in the future playlists won't get mixed up.

What a PITA.