“The world’s most popular line of portable music and video players has some chinks in its armor. Or, more to the point, some scratches on its screen and some pretty deadly dents on its cover,” Chris Seper writes for The Cleveland Plain Dealer. “Apple’s elegant iPods, lauded for their simplicity, come with a pretty specific list of glitches and annoyances. There’s an entrenched battery in some models that’s difficult to replace. Owners often fret about dents and scratches that can do in their device and violate the warranty. Thousands of holiday shoppers have already scooped up iPods. But gift-givers may want to include directions to a ‘Genius Bar,’ the technical-support station in all Apple retail stores.”
“Most shoppers haven’t even heard of iPod’s competitors but are drawn in by a vibrant ad campaign or hundreds of rave reviews,” Seper writes. “Some iPod owners complain of having to regularly reset their device because it freezes. Owners of early models of the iPod Nano griped that it scratched too easily, although Apple says the device is made of the same substances as its larger cousin, the iPod. There is one killer problem: A handful of customers who brought dented iPods into Legacy Village’s Genius Bar learned that the damage rendered it unusable and, sometimes, violated their warranty.”
Seper writes, ‘Pod supporters say naiveté may be the device’s biggest enemy. Many new iPod users are unfamiliar with digital music, said Marv Leventhal, president of the Northeast Ohio Apple Corps, a Strongsville Apple club. ‘If there is a learning curve, it’s from learning to transfer music from CDs and get them on an iPod or use the iTunes software,’ Leventhal said. He has two iPods – a 30-gigabyte model and an iPod Nano – and hasn’t had any trouble. ‘Apple basically takes technology and makes it both cool and easier to use,’ he said.”
Full article here.
A handful of “dented” iPods in Cleveland. Okay, Apple should fix that minor glitch, of course. Who dropped that box during shipping?! The “screen scratching” issue is a canard. Rub a few brain cells together, get a nice iPod case, and protect your valuable electronics. Should Apple somehow make iPods indestructible? Some say they already pretty much have done so. Ars Technica couldn’t stop an iPod nano from playing by driving a car over it… twice. The battery issue is another canard. Learn how to maximize the lifespan and battery life of your iPod, iPod nano or iPod shuffle here.
Naiveté certainly is one of iPod’s biggest enemy, as are “writers” with certain agendas, but it definitely hasn’t hurt sales. And what’s the point of Seper’s piece, exactly? To doom the good people of Cleveland (Cleveland rocks!) to also-ran devices that work with also-ran online music outifts that may or may not be operating by next Christmas? To fill some space in Cleveland’s local paper? Is Serpent’s email inbox a little too empty lately? We can fix that one for him. Take this article for what it is: a made-up collection of myths, a handful of issues overblown by hyperbole, and outright FUD (Fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) is a sales or marketing strategy of disseminating negative, but vague or inaccurate information about a competitor’s product). There’s a reason that “hundreds of rave reviews” have been penned about Apple’s iPod+iTunes+iTunes Music Store.
To reach Chris Seper, Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter:
cseper@plaind.com
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Related articles:
Thurrott: Apple’s ‘stunning’ iPod lineup fits every need and budget – December 07, 2005
Apple’s new video-capable iPod’s resplendent screen bright, sharp, and colors really pop – December 05, 2005
TV Critic: Apple iPod video strikingly bright, crisp, very fluid; TV will have to reorient itself – October 27, 2005
Thurrott: Apple iPod ‘the new standard by which all are measured – highly recommended’ – October 26, 2005
Chicago Tribune: Apple’s new iPod is a showstopper – October 26, 2005
PC Magazine review gives Apple’s new video-capable iPod 5 out of 5 stars – October 21, 2005
CBS News: New iPod shows ‘Apple will continue to dominate portable digital media player market’ – October 21, 2005
USA Today: Apple’s new iPod + video: world’s foremost portable music players have gotten only better – October 20, 2005
Comprehensive review of Apple’s iPod 5G with Video – October 20, 2005
Ars Technica reviews Apple’s new video-capable iPod – October 20, 2005
NY Times Pogue: ‘watching video on new iPod’s 2.5-inch screen is completely immersive’ – October 19, 2005
Watching episode of ABC’s ‘Lost’ on 2.5-inch iPod screen surprisingly compelling – October 13, 2005
Using QuickTime Pro to create videos for playback in new Apple iPods – October 13, 2005
Apple unveils new 5th generation iPod, now plays music, photos, and video – October 12, 2005
Hey Triumph,
That would be idiot spelled with the o and i reversed. Thanks for pointing that one out Webster!
Sure Cleveland has it’s issues, Ohio in general has big problems, but so do many other cities. They’ve been struck hard by the loss of steel manufacturing because our government chooses to take its operations outside the US to Mexico and China.
It is one of the most diverse states in the country. I’ll guarantee our next Governor will be a democrat as well as tyhe states vote for our next President.
BTW, what the F–K is “de” and “keed?” Oh…I get it, you must travel on the “little bus” across town because you can’t speak like the Big Dogs!
Thanks for the love though, I’ll check your show out the next time you’re in town using one of our fine porta-potties!
I tell ya what I den’t know whet ye talking about we melletheads muved out of C-Town a whiles back we know leeve down in Fort Lauderdale, the redneck capital of the United States. Trailer parks everywhere and when the huuuurrricanes come we go flyyyyiiinnnngggg.
Welcome back, Triumph!!
Have missed you on these posts.
Keep de poop up!
Hey, dreamingPHX:
Don’t mess with Triumph. You don’t want him to poop on you. If you want to see him go to the iTunes music store, click on my show and buy the two episodes featuring him.
He keeds.
How many papers are currently published in Pittsburgh? One, after going many years without even having a paper.
How many papers are currently published in Ft. Lauderdale? One
How many papers are currently published in Ft. Miami? One
How many papers are currently published in Charlotte? One
How many papers are currently published in Austin? One
By the way, we may have only one actual daily paper published in Cleveland, but the two weekly papers (Scene and The Free Times) are arguably two of the best weeklies in the nation…well maybe not so much with Scene.
Cleveland is not a boring town…the only idiots that think it is boring is the ones that go there for business stay in a hotel somewhere in Beachwood (eastern suburb) don’t go anywhere but to the hotel restaurant/bar/loser lounge and then claim there is nothing to do there. Stay downtown at the Hyatt on the Old Arcade right next to East 4th…go to the House of Blues (Cleveland is only one of a very select cities with a House of Blues.), Pickwick and Frolic, Jacobs Field, Flannery’s, The Q or The Boneyard and then we’ll talk.
Finally, hammer, I feel sorry for you that you hang out in places that are frequented by rednecks or mulletheads, maybe you should go to places like The Mercury Lounge (a great lounge in the Warehouse District) instead; never have I run into rednecks there. Anyways, running into rednecks or mulletheads can be a pain no matter where you live and I assure you, Cleveland does not have the market cornered on them. I can tell you that I have run into them in the following places: New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Charlotte, Fort Lauderdale and Seattle. Of course, I’m Hispanic, so maybe they hear my accent and it makes them more inclined to show themselves.
Feel sorry for me? pff whatever. Just pointing out there are mulletheads everywhere around me. They are all too busy fixing the neon under their cars to worry about viruses or platform choice.
Besides I dont live in Cleveland so your reco’s don’t mean anything to me. I dont get up there but once every couple years.
What was the topic. Oh yeah FUD… just Mac FUD.
Anon E. Mouse:
Dude, relax, move to Michigan.
Not to pick nits, Midwest, but if you graduated from Berkeley, I’d at least expect you to be able to spell the name properly. Or did you go to Berkley Business College in Madrid???
??? What’s this crap about Cleveland being the only major city with one paper? My understanding is that most cities are in this (crappy) situation. Some cities’ “two papers” both have the same owner, so they don’t count.
dreamingPHX: “Thanks for the love though, I’ll check your show out the next time you’re in town using one of our fine porta-potties!”
Actually, I’ve never used your porta-potties. When I mentioned my plane and dumping of de toilet refuse, what I meant was that we don’t actually land there — we dump it from 30,000 feet right onto de West Side Market. That way it blends right in with all de crappy food sold there.
Hey, come onnnnnn — it’s a joke. But okay, okaaaaaay, dreamingPHX, you win. I give up. You’re right. Cleveland rules. It’s a hotbed of action and prosperity. De buses run on time. De hookers are beautiful and disease-free. City Hall is completely honest.
Yes, you have de best city in de entire country . . .
FOR ME TO POOP ONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Kevin Koepnick,
I reviewed some of the responses in the Apple Forums. The problem seems to have been caused by iTunes 6. The resolution that worked for me was to rerun one of the old updates, specifically 2005-06-26. Go to Applications/Utilities/iTunes Software Updates/ and run that version. Hopefully Apple will have a resolution to this problem soon!
JvW
Triumph, thanks haha.. that was perfect!
Oh and to someone above… the free-times was bought out by scene. And its not just Cleveland that is a shithole, but the whole state. Wasnt Jerry Springer the mayor of Cincy? Dont they regularly have KKK/Nazi marches in Toledo (and the accompaning riots) Dont people keep their kids in cages in Ohio (I swear I read that somewhere)
And dont even get me started on the political corruption in ohio. You have a by FAR majority democrat demographic, but for some strange reason, almost entirely republican representation.. hmmmm.. how does that work?
Cleveland sucks, Ohio sucks. It just does, get over it. Thankfully its a big world, and you’re a short drive from NY or Canada if you ever aspire to a better life.
>MDN wrote: Naiveté certainly is one of iPod’s biggest enemy, as are “writers” with certain agendas
That’s some funny s**t… especially from MDN. You have got to be joking to say this of other “writers” and not of yourselves!
The average MDN commentary goes like this:
“Apple products are awesome. Any writer with something critical to say about Apple is an idiot. Please click this link to the Apple store so we can make some money. Oh and Windows sucks. Windows users are idiots to. And again, please click that link.”
>MDN wrote: Naiveté certainly is one of iPod’s biggest enemy, as are “writers” with certain agendas
That’s some funny s**t… especially from MDN. You have got to be joking to say this of other “writers” and not of yourselves!
The average MDN commentary goes like this:
“Apple products are awesome. Any writer with something critical to say about Apple is an idiot. Please click this link to the Apple store so we can make some money. Oh and Windows sucks. Windows users are idiots to. And again, please click that link.”
>MDN wrote: Naiveté certainly is one of iPod’s biggest enemy, as are “writers” with certain agendas
That’s some funny s**t… especially from MDN. You have got to be joking to say this of other “writers” and not of yourselves!
The average MDN commentary goes like this:
“Apple products are awesome. Any writer with something critical to say about Apple is an idiot. Please click this link to the Apple store so we can make some money. Oh and Windows sucks. Windows users are idiots to. And again, please click that link.”
>MDN wrote: Naiveté certainly is one of iPod’s biggest enemy, as are “writers” with certain agendas
That’s some funny s**t… especially from MDN. You have got to be joking to say this of other “writers” and not of yourselves!
The average MDN commentary goes like this:
“Apple products are awesome. Any writer with something critical to say about Apple is an idiot. Please click this link to the Apple store so we can make some money. Oh and Windows sucks. Windows users are idiots to. And again, please click that link.”
Sadly, this kind of FUD is having an effect – I personally have come across 7 idiots already who did not buy an iPod, cause they heard “they were defective” (although one of them went for an iPod shuffle instead!!).
Funnily enough, they did not have a clue what the “defect” was – 4 of these insisted that the iPods “crashed” frequently – presumably putting their own Windoze experience together with the word “defective”…
It is suddenly clear what the purpose of the “scratch” campaign is…
Hey Hammer-
you say you live in Cleveland in one post and in another you say you don’t…..well which is it????!!
I don’t give a crap about the stupid clevo flame, keep to the facts, and I think that includes where you live, if you choose to disclose it here, than don’t contradict yourself…LIAR, in case you forgot, your own words below…
“…..i LIVE HERE so it’s not like I’m throwing stones from afar…..”
“……I dont live in Cleveland so your reco’s don’t mean anything to me…..”
Some points…
1) Not everyone who is registered Democrat always votes for Democrats. People do consciously choose when they vote, guys.
2) A few shocking news items do not indicate that an entire city or state is bad. The news items could be fictious (remember the hurricane Katrina stories?), exaggerated, or incidental. Human nature is the same everywhere, so even if all the stories are true, it’s that bad everywhere. Like “those things just don’t happen” in your town? Dream on.
3) People who think that the Midwest is “flyover country” are bigots, plain and simple. No more needs be said.
4) If you’re going to throw around FUD about voting corruption, oh my geez! People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones! A few examples of Democrat corruption: Hillary’s senate election campaign, Presidential election 2000 (Milwaukee “smokes for votes”, St. Louis polls kept open, Florida), Washington state governor’s race, Texas redistricting fight, and on and on and on…
OK, now that we’ve got all this Cleveland BS out of the way, I feel better. Nice to see how a little article can spark such emotions!
About the post at hand, yes this guy it quite biased in his writing. It is too bad there is ONLY one newspaper to represent Cleveland (unless you count the Sun Times or ABJ).
When you look at the raw numbers of units sold, you’ve got to expect a few problems here or there. Doesn’t matter if it’s a Geo or Lexus. Plus, some people are harder on their electronics than others. Most (not all) of these people probably abuse these things just to try and get a new one.
Apple probably should engage in more quality assurance checks from accidental drops or scratches from placing them in your pockets filled with change. It’s just like anything else though, you need to maintain and protect your car to keep it running for many years, same goes with taking care of your computer or iPod.
These reports won’t discourage me from upgrading and continuing to purchase Apple products. I’ve personally never had any issues with my Apple products. Maybe I’m one of the lucky ones, but I would continue to recommend their products over any other.
Anon E. Mouse.
I have another city to add to the list that Dispelling Cleveland FUD posted.
Houston is in the top 5 major cities in America and has only one paper. Yes there are foreign language papers and tabloids published weekly, and a few specialty papers (mostly industry stuff) published daily, but only one major mainstream daily in what I think was the 4th largest city in America last I checked.
Pretty much the same thing happened here. The Chronicle bought the Post and then shut it down so that it became the only game in town. Now it spouts all kinds of nonsense with no other paper to challenge it.
You may hate where you live, but Cleveland isn’t the only city where this happens.
I’ve never been to Cleveland.
Poster:
I do know something about the redistricting fight in Texas. Basically the way we do it here is every ten years the new census data is used to re-draw the congressional districts in Texas. The state legislature is responsible for coming up with the plan. The party in power has always pretty much done what they could to maximize their numbers in Washington.
That is until the latest round when Republicans held power. It should be noted that State-wide, Democrats are an endangered species in elected office (they hadn’t held the majority in the Texas House or Senate in some time, yet when all of this started they had a sizable majority of Texas’ congressional delegation, since the precincts were drawn when they were still in power). All of a sudden the Democrats who had done everything their way for years (with obvious gerrymandering in some places) started screaming about fairness and equity. They went so far as to run and hide in New Mexico and Oklahoma (or Arkansas, I forget) rather than do the people’s business.
Last I heard their lawsuit was thrown out and the plan was going through, that is part of the reason Ronnie is so mad at Tom.
Still, more than one paper should be present in any city or town. Differing points of view should be presented and let people choose which paper they prefer. At least that’s how I feel.
~M
Heh. I worked at the Legacy Village Apple store in Cleveland since they opened until I moved to Florida… the staff at the Bar there would replace dented ipods all the time. It was the ones that looked like they stopped a bullet that we turned away. To write this article as if just pulling the iPod out of the box is all it takes to crush the case… heh. There’s a total brain drain in Cleveland right now, and it looks like it nailed at the Plain Dealer first.
To: lol
Yes, Scene bought the Free Times a few years ago, then had to quickly sell it because they were found to be in a monopoly situation…so…mind your facts before you dispute mine.
I’ll re-state what I said: anyone who thinks Cleveland is a dump has never really put any kind of effort to explore the city and what it has to offer – Warehouse District, East 4th, West Side Market, University Circe, Playhouse Square, Gateway District, Ohio City, Tremont and the North Harbor. They simply show up in Cleveland once every two or three years hang out with their loser co-workers in some suburb of the city, eat at Chili’s or Applebee’s, have a drink on the hotel bar and then talk about how boring their visit to Cleveland was. Well, duh, fly into Miami, but stay in a hotel in Miramar and hang out only in that area and then let me know how exciting you think Miami is.
Anyway, I agree with Poster regarding those that think of the Midwest as flyover land – they must be bigots themselves. And to those of you talking about the brain drain in Cleveland/Ohio/Midwest are you part of the problem or working towards the solution? Yeah, I’ll stop working at the Apple store in Legacy Village and instead work in the store at the Boca Raton Town Center and then I’ll tell all my friends that Cleveland has a brain drain and that is why I left.
Give me a break! That isn’t brain drain, that is shifting of $7/hour jobs. How come, with all its problems, does Ohio still has a better average salary than Florida when most of the exodus of Ohioans is to Florida? Because like I said this is not really a brain drain for Ohio its more like a brain-dead gain for the sunbelt states.
I tell you of all the places I have lived/visited Cleveland to me offers the most at the most reasonable cost. I acknowledge that it (and Ohio) have their serious problems and some incredible amount of time and effort should be put in to address those issues, but anyone who thinks their city is that much better off than Cleveland should pay closer attention to what goes on in their city and you’ll realize that you aren’t that much better off and in some cases you are much worst off. For example, Fort Lauderdale, yeah everyone thinks its paradise…then why was the city millions over budget last year? Austin, many claim it is one of the coolest cities in the nation…then how come unfinished buildings in downtown sit as eyesore for years?
I’m the Marv Leventhal, president of the Northeast Ohio Apple Corps, that is quoted in the article. I was told when I was interviewed about the iPod that it was for an article that was to appear about “iPod Culture.” I was very suprised at the tone of the final article.
I’m not exactly sure what the point of the article was. He did at least quote me correctly, albeit sometimes a little out of context. I had nothing but good things to say about the iPod and how easy it is to use, but the quotes he used were his choice (not that thery were all that bad). I almost felt that my comments were the only positive comments about the iPod. But alas, he made it sound like I was the sole lucky on in the entire universe that has had two iPods that have worked, and continue to work, just fine.
As for all this bashing of Cleveland, it does upset me a bit. Please don’t judge a whole city by one newspaper article. I like to think that Mac people are better than that.
Just curios if anyone got responses from this “journalist” for that right wing yellow rag.
Here’s his response to my email to him basically asking him who’s paying his mortgage, i.e. where’s he getting his payola from, Creative, M$ or Hoo?
“…For better (or worse), only The Plain Dealer paid me for that story. If it was truly a hit-piece, why would I quote people saying they love the iPod?
Here’s hoping you find a RhinoSkin iPod Video Aluminum Hard Case in your Christmas stocking.
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