morose code

Apple has a strange support policy for the iPod. Basically, it's under warranty for a year, but you only get free phone support for half that time. Since the first Apple store in Canada opened up over the weekend, it seemed like a good time to take my broken iPod over and see if they could diagnose the problem.

Apple has a distinction between their stores, dividing them between the smaller almost strip mall stores, and the larger two storied caverns dubbed flagships that seem to be everywhere else in the world. Supposedly they've been trying to get such a store into the Eaton Centre. Yorkdale is one of the smaller ones. It looks like it belongs in an Ikea catalog: it's all white and glass and beech wood, filled with all white computers and iPods. Very nice.

The whole store was pretty busy. I wandered over to a PowerBook and reserved a spot at the Genius Bar, which was manned by only two Genius'. While I waited for my turn, I read Ram's blog for a bit, checked out the new iMacs and chatted with Murray, the guy in line after me.

When my name was called, I sat down and explained the problem. My genius, Hal, asked me if I had used the iPod onboard diagnostic tool to check things out. I confessed that I hadn't, and he showed me how to use it: reset and immediately hold down select and back. From there he checked things out and after a while told he couldn't find anything wrong. Hal asked me if I'd mind restoring it again and loading some tunes on it. I'd tried loading some songs on it earlier that day and had to reset and restore, so I wasn't afraid of losing anything. While it was restoring, I asked him if chaining the iPod through my FireWire music drive might be part of the problem and he said it might. Of course, since my iBook is old and has a tiny hard drive storing my music on the 2 gigs I have left isn't exactly an option.

After restoring the dreaded exclamation folder icon immediately appeared and Hal told me this meant that the drive was fubar'd. We went back to the Bar and, after some difficulties find my iPod in their system, ordered a replacement drive. Sadly I wasn't lucky enough to get upgraded to an iPod photo, but it will be nice to have it working again in a couple of days.