Apple ... you are dead to me

Had an interesting day today.

But let me back up a bit.

One year ago in February, I decided to part with a large sum of my birthday money and dive into the world of the iPod. This was no small decision. I do not part with large sums of money easily.

After much thought, discussion, and pondering over whether or not this was a good choice, a necessary choice, I decided to go for it. I dropped 160 of my dollars and 8 of my cents on a little silver piece of (possibly) metal that looked very fragile when I thought of my four boys!!

I wasn't necessarily a quick learner, but I became very fond of my little ipod and all the amazing things it could do. It was a far cry from the Sony Walkman tape player people used to wear around when I was a kid. This thing rocked!!

I loaded my favorite tunes, loaded the boys' favorite tunes, loaded addition and multiplication raps so the boys could practice their math facts. It was even educational!!

We all came to love and appreciate the ipod.

Fast forward to the present.

Scott and I went to New York in May for his dad's retirement and I was so looking forward to uninterrupted time with my ipod. Flights, long trips in the car, running...my ipod was going to be there for me.

But, would you believe that the day before we were to leave, my ipod started struggling?? It sputtered and then it died!! And would not revive!!

All my hopes and dreams of enjoying my ipod on my trip - GONE - just like that!!

My good friend, Emily, was possibly more appalled than I was and offered to take it to the Apple store while I was gone. She did and they said it was so tired, it just needed to be charged for a long while. (Just for the record, we listened to it a lot in the car and the car charger was always charging it when we weren't listening to it. So, I should have known it wouldn't be that simple.)

She brought it home, charged it, and it lasted for about an hour! Then, the battery was dead!!

I fiddled with it and it would work for a little while before it died. We could listen to a few tunes in the car, but usually by the time we got back in the car, it was dead!!

Now, today, Emily and I made the trek once again to Southlake to the Apple store. With these gas prices, that's nothing to sneeze at. We had an appointment and "Don" drew our card and got to help us!

Don plugged it in and immediately said it was "corrupted." Interesting word choice, I thought. However, Don felt optimistic that he could just restore it and all would be well with the ipod again. He would have to erase everything on it though.

The thought of erasing everything and starting all over again made me a little nervous, but what choice did I have? In theory, the songs are in my iTunes, right??

So, he erased and tried to restore.

After a couple of minutes, he calmly hands me my ipod and says something along the lines of - Sorry, it won't restore. I can fix it for about 80 more of your hard earned dollars, or I can give you 10% off of a new ipod!!

We're like - So, that's it??

He's like - Yep!! Pretty much! You shoulda gotten the warranty!!

Just for the record, Don has an ipod out in his truck that's like 10 years old (have ipods been around that long??) and it's never given him a day of trouble!! He wasn't really interested in giving it to me though!

So, long story even longer, I'm done with my ipod!! A couple hundred dollars for a year's worth of musical enjoyment just isn't a price I can pay at this point in my life!!

However, for Emily, the Queen of all things Apple, the fight is not over!! She has already emailed several people in the Apple family, all the way up to the CEO!! I'll keep you posted!!