Great moments in technology

My iPod fried on Sunday. I suppose for $300 it would have been wishful thinking to expect it to last more than six months. I was walking and it just stopped. Sorry, don't feel like playing any more. Oh, you want to forward to the next song? Give me a few minutes, while I do nothing, then I'll start cycling through songs without playing them. Back to the menu? Sorry, I'm busy.

Now it won't even turn on. Well, that's not precisely true, it will display the monochromatic Apple logo for a few seconds, followed by a folder icon with an exclamation point. Then it shuts off. Of course, nowhere in the documentation does it explain what this folder and punctuation means or what I'm to do about it. Hey! Get the Penske file!

Dutifully, I went to the Apple website and the "Support" tab. One troubling trend with all companies (especially companies that sell gadgetry) nowadays is their penchant for burying or not releasing phone numbers on their websites. Please, wade through several screens of us trying to sell you more products before we tell you how to go about getting a product under warranty fixed. No, don't call us. Do. Not. Call. I discovered that the iPod has "free" phone support for something ridiculous like 30 days from purchase. Up to six months (which I just BARELY fell within), you get to send it away for repair; from six to twelve months you can still send it away, but you get to pay $30 (yes, thirty!) for shipping and handling. Thirty skins to ship a 5 ounce piece of plastic and metal. What do they do if you want to get it fixed after a year, threaten legal action?

So now I await the packaging they will send for me to return my defective piece of crap iPod. Perhaps they'll fix it. Perhaps they'll replace it. But once it dies for good I am unlikely to replace it with another Apple product.