I don’t like the way this is going…the most recent posts on this blog about Apple technology have been negative, but I feel obligated to discuss the problems I am having. I am on my second iPod Classic 160 and the second one is plagued with problems as well. My first one would not update and would not sync. I thought I had a bad device, but I am faced with the same problem with the replacement (though it currently still syncs with issues). I am thinking it is something in my library, but what? I have 140GB of content, so how do I identify a problem file? In addition, while this one still syncs, it is losing its sync database frequently and tries to sync songs it already has. Also, in addition to telling it that it should not sync podcasts, it is syncing them all. They don’t show up in the Podcast section, but if I search for “TWiT”, the 3 most recent episodes are on the iPod. I think there is something buggy with the Classic’s software, but I can’t update as all attempts to update or restore all fail. My other iPods (Video 80, G2 Nano 8GB, G1 Nano 4GB, Gen 3 iPod, and Gen 1 Shuffle) and iPhone sync to this computer with no problems as does my Apple TV. The fault lies somewhere with the Classic it would seem.
On the other end of the spectrum, I updated both my Nokia N95 and N800 last night without a hitch. Both updates introduced better performance and new features. My N95 now has a Sling Player and it is a killer feature. I watched High Fidelity in bed last night streaming over wireless and the video quality was pretty damn good.
I really hope we see a series of updates from Apple in January that improve performance on these devices and fix the bugs in Leopard. At this point, I’d take a month of stability and performance updates over some new hardware announcement at MacWorld.