Dead nano (after 20 minutes of use)

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kj - 04 Sep 2006 20:57 GMT

I bought a Nano at the same time I bought my MacBook a few months
ago. My first Mac, and my first Nano.

From my experience, I rack my brains trying to fathom how it is
*possible* that Apple has a reputation for the quality of its
hardware. How can it be??? My MacBook has untold hardware problems,
including falling into a deep sleep for not reason (requiring
rebooting the machine to wake it up), and it periodically decides
that the external drive I have connected to it is unreadable (again,
everything goes back to "peachy" if I reboot the damn thing).

Enter the Nano. With all the problems I have had with the "Mother
Ship" I delayed using the Nano until now (HUGE mistake, I know,
but I guess I was still under the illusion that I have bought a
piece of quality hardware).

I plugged it to my laptop, charged it for about 3 hours, put a few
songs into it, unplugged it, and listened to a few songs. Everything
fine... An hour or so later I decided to add a few more songs to
it. FAT CHANCE! At this point I found my Nano to be as dead as
a doornail. Plugged or unplugged. Nothing could wake it up.

Is there a trick? An incantation? Any recourse at this point?
Or do I just have to chalk the lost $200 to experience?

I repeat: how can Apple's reputation possibly be? Am I to conclude
that I happened to have bought to few bum pieces of equipment they
sold? (Actually, judging by posts I've found online, I know that
a lot of people have similar problems with their MacBooks as I have
with mine, so, at least on that score I'm not alone.) Yes, the
Nano is slick-looking, and Apple engineers seem to have put a lot
of effort into making the set up of the equipment appear relatively
effortless. Maybe this impresses people so much that their
appreciation drowns stories like mine. But who cares if the
equipment looks beautiful and the set-up is simple, if the hardware
dies almost instantly?

kj

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bearclaw@cruller.invalid - 04 Sep 2006 23:24 GMT

> I bought a Nano at the same time I bought my MacBook a few months
> ago. My first Mac, and my first Nano.
[quoted text clipped - 34 lines]
>
> kj

You are right, it is all crap. I will tell you what: I will buy the
Apple crap from you for $200, free and clear. Hey, that is $200 just for
your trouble. You can put it toward a Dell or HP or something.

I will even pay for shipping, if you include all the Apple packaging and
documentation. Let me know.

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Garner Miller - 04 Sep 2006 23:50 GMT

I can't help with your MacBook, but you might try simply resetting the
Nano:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61705

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kj - 05 Sep 2006 00:48 GMT

>I can't help with your MacBook, but you might try simply resetting the
>Nano:

>http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61705

Thanks, I'll try that.

kj

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Wayne C. Morris - 05 Sep 2006 17:56 GMT

> I repeat: how can Apple's reputation possibly be? Am I to conclude
> that I happened to have bought to few bum pieces of equipment they
> sold?

Apple has a reputation for quality because millions of customers have
bought Apple products that worked, and worked well.

But even the best company will produce a few duds. Absolute perfection is
an unattainable goal. No matter how good they are, a small percentage of
their products will fail soon after purchase. The odds of buying two
different products at about the same time and having both of them fail is
even less likely, but it'll still happen to a very tiny percentage of
customers.

That's why companies have warranties -- so the few customers unlucky enough
to get a defective product can get one that works. If the products were
100% perfect, warranties wouldn't be needed.

It's human nature to assume that your own experiences are typical. If you
happen to be the one-in-a-million customer who was unlucky enough to buy
two defective Apple products on the same day, it's hard to believe that a
million other customers who bought the same products have had no problems.

It's also human nature to remain silent when the product works as expected.
We generally don't speak up unless we have a complaint or are really
surprised by how well it works. So web searches for customer opinions will
often turn up more complaints than positive comments, even though most
customers are happy with the product.

I bought my first Mac in 1987. It died within the first week, a victim of
a defective hard disk. But it was quickly replaced, and after that it
worked well for many years, as has every Apple product I've bought since
then. If I had judged Apple by that first Mac, I would have thought their
quality very poor; but in the long term I've found their quality to be very
good, especially when compared to the many PCs that I've dealt with at work.

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Jeffrey Goldberg - 05 Sep 2006 18:00 GMT

> My MacBook has untold hardware problems,
> including falling into a deep sleep for not reason (requiring
> rebooting the machine to wake it up), and it periodically decides
> that the external drive I have connected to it is unreadable (again,
> everything goes back to "peachy" if I reboot the damn thing).

Have you run the hardware diagnostics that came on the main installation
disk with your machine?

Boot from the dvd (hold down the letter "c" when you power up) and give
that a try. Also is your machine still under warranty.

I think that you will find that the most frequent complaint about Apple
computers is power management.

You might find that resetting the Power Management Unit might be the
cure. I don't know how to do this on a MacBook (the incantation differs
from machine to machine), but you should be able to find instructions on
the Apple website.

Good luck with this.

-j

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Clever Monkey - 11 Sep 2006 15:13 GMT

> I bought a Nano at the same time I bought my MacBook a few months
> ago. My first Mac, and my first Nano.
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
> that the external drive I have connected to it is unreadable (again,
> everything goes back to "peachy" if I reboot the damn thing).

Lookup "Estimate Mean Time Between Failures". It is an imperfect world,
and things break (even new things). I don't recall seeing "will always
work for everyone, always, forever" in the fine print on the invoice
when I bought my Mac.

I'll hazard a guess that, by and large, you might be a outlier in
regards to your specific experiences.

Of course, you are buying some of the first generation MacBooks before
letting them shake out the bugs, and might be an outlier pointing at an
endemic problem. It's happened before.

Thanks for that. You early adopters make is easier for the rest of us ;)

Otherwise, consider yourself an exception to the rule.

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Mac Forum / General / Hardware / September 2006

Dead nano (after 20 minutes of use)