this is speaking from experience. I was part of the first group buy for the Vaistech ipod adapter for my prius and since i had it installed, i've been using my ipod as my music source on my commutes. I commute to school everyday(hour round trip) so my music is important, helps kill the time. Since i dun really use my ipod with the headphones much, i started leaving it in my car, saves the hassle of having to unplug, plug it in etc. I know you're not supposed to leave electronics in extreme temperatures, but my ipod seemed absoutely fine so it developed into a habit. Yesterday, when I wanted to listen to my music on my way home from school, my ipod stopped responding. it was bout 70 degrees outside and it was in my car for bout 6 hours. I take it home, try and reset it to no avail. It's really dead on me. . . . I'm not looking for any sympathy, I kno i shouldn't have kept leaving in there. I just want you guys to know, it may not seem like a big deal, but do NOT leave your ipod in your car unless u want a dead ipod on you. I've been leaving it in my car for no more than 4 months when it died yesterday. My question now is, my 1 year warranty just expired, seems rather expensive to repair my ipod via apple. I'm thinking it'd be cheaper to just buy another one. what do you guys think?
:lol: :lol: :lol: Good luck. (I'm laughing because the same thing happened to me with all my credt cards the day before I was leaving on an international business trip.) Here's why... The iPod is disk based and, as I recall, the operating program is read from a protected area on the same disk as the music. Magnetic recording has an interesting characteristic. If you heat the medium to a high enough temperature the magnetism erases. Heat is the enemy of recorded magnetic media. The Curie Point, or the point where magnetic particles start lose their magnetism, is about 140 degrees F. At this point, tapes will begin to erase themselves. Disk and other medium Curie Points will be higher. Reaching the Curie Point can easily happen in a closed car. Keep your camcorders, tapes and credit cards in as cool a place as possible. Usually, if you put the stuff you want to protect under the seat or probably in the hatchback storage area it will be okay.
Find a web site with instructions on how to replace the battery. Take the iPod apart and remove the battery. Leave it out for an hour or so, put it back in, and see if it will reset. I've heard of this fixing apparently dead iPods. But if mehrenst is right and your disk has gone south, this may not help. flareak: Extremes of temperature probably aren't good for flash media either. And it will definitely reduce battery life.
Check the Apple support site for details. If the disk drive is functional, you might be able to format the disk drive and do an iPod update. This will put your iPod in the same state as when it was new. You should then be able to reload the music from iTunes.
Did you buy it with a credit card? If so check to see it has an extended warranty provision. FWIW I was just talking to AmEx since I had bought an ipod and an Apple extended warranty for my daughter. I just confirmed AmEx will extend the warranty a year if I just buy the ipod and no extended warranty (I already knew this), and if I buy the extended Apple warranty the AmEx warranty doesn't start till the ipod warranty and Apple extended warranty ends. That means I will still have full coverage for all of the third year.
Have you taken it to the Apple Store and spoken to a Mac Genius? If they can't fix it, talk about the poor battery life of your iPod. I believe there is a special deal to replace iPods with dead batteries.
<rant> I've grown out of my Mac-hating phase (and, in fact, quite like them these days), but this will FOREVER stick in my craw. The total arrogance of calling your tech support people "Geniuses" bugs the heck out of me. </rant> I think it's $99, but that's only if the battery is the problem. As other people have commented here, this really sounds a lot more like a hard drive problem (or, perhaps, the other internal electronics). I like the suggestion of jfschultz; if the disk has just been erased, you might be able to "re-install" the software with the iPod updater.
It all depends on the Mac Genius. My headphone remote port was dead and the Mac Genius quoted a very high price to have the iPod replace. He then asked me a leading question about the Battery life of my iPod. Since it was battery life he was able to replace it for much less then a repair.
I have to admit, my (very limited) experience with the tech support people both over the phone and in the Apple store has been excellent. You never know what will happen in there if you go and ask about it. But, I'd try to fix it with the earlier suggestions in this thread before you spend any money on it.
well, i typically left my ipod in the area under the stereo . . . I unplug the adapter and close the door to that space and no one can really see it in there. i'm gonna see if the battery reset will work. thanx
i leave my ipod in the car all the time and have had to reset it a few times but that was most likely from being too cold. a few times i was unable to reset it and had to leave it at room temperature overnight before it would reset. but have only had it for the cool weather, guess will have to revisit this issue when it starts to warm up although i originally installed it when it was fairly warm as i was in the first purchase group. not sure when i got it but positive that i went thru a few very warm days.
I expect you are probably not going to keep your's there any more, but for any others who might, when the sun shines just right, that "black" door becomes completely see through, showing off your prized posssesions to anyone who peeks in the window.
i guess lining that see-thru door may have to be considered. but the difficulty in stealing the Prius in the first place i would think would deter anyone anyway...if only unbreakable glass was an option
The curie point depends on the magnetic surface composition, but for drives and magneto-optical media, it's about 200c (or about 400f). No hard drive will ever achieve this temp inside a car, unless the car is on fire Dave
Before you start spending money, try hard-resetting the iPod (do a search and you'll find out how.) Hopefully this will get it working. Then update with the latest firmware and load your music again.
I agree with you on M-O media because you really have to get the media hot to get the magnetic domains to the point where they can be "flipped". However, experience with some video storage systems that had marginal cooling has taught me that the curie point on an HDD isn't that much over what tape would be. If car interior temperaturs can erase the magnetic strip on a credit card with it's low data rate and deep penetration into the magnetic surface then getting a magnetic HDD to erase based on temps isn't outside of the realm of possibility.
I only remove my ipod from my car when I want to update songs or when I take the car to be serviced. No problems with the ipod dying so far although I did notice after removing it for my 20000mi service that the lcd screen appeared dim...like the contrast level had dropped. Not sure how this is being caused but it seems like somehow the lcd is being damaged, maybe by current spikes? I've turned down the contrast nearly all the way to see if this might have any effect on preserving the life of the lcd screen.
I routinely leave my ipod in the center console with no issues at all. I have it resting on the movable shelf, connected to power and the remote, which I leave dangling out the side of the lid. I don't like operating stuff when I'm driving, so I leave the ipod on shuffle and use the remote to fast forward past songs I don't feel like hearing. It's very easy to flip the remote back into the console to remove any clues about my ipod's residency.
