Magnets?

Recently I received an iPod Touch case and really liked it. It was a leather portfolio case; to be precise, it was Griffin's Elan Convertible. It was creative, well-fit, and came with a screen protector and a nice cloth. However, after about a week of using it, my iPod would regularly crash or close out of whatever I was doing and return to the main menu. Although there is no way to prove this, I think it may be caused by the fact that the case has magnets in it. You may be thinking, "You immature narcissist, magnets don't do anything to solid-state drives, such as the one the iPod Touch sports." However, there are more components to an iPod touch than flash memory. Its possible that one of these components were affected by the case's mgnets. Secondly, I'm not the only person who's experienced these problems; just look at the MacRumor's forum dedicated solely to the topic. There have been many counts of similar errors, and several were from the exact same case as mine.

So, I wrote an email to Griffin's customer support, telling them my problem and pointing them to the forum. They responded (in a remarkably short time... well done Griffin) that I was not the first person to bring them this issue. They said that since they could not replicate the issue at their facilities, they assume that it is an issue with specific iPod Touches. Other responses say that some cases may have had stronger magnets than others.

My response from Griffin is as follows:

We have also heard the reports of this happening, but have never been able to reproduce the issue with any of the cases customers have sent us. The conclusion seems to be that problem will only occur with specific iPod Touch's. Because this happens with your iPod Touch, a replacement Elan Convertible would probably encounter the same issue. Your case does have a one year warranty, however, and if you would like, we would be more than happy to exchange your case for any iPod Touch case we make.

My iPod has crashed less after taking it out of the case, but it still crashes from time to time. I think I'm going to see if I can get in contact with someone from Apple to see what they say about this... And if worse comes to worst, I may be in for a new iPod Touch (thank God its still under warranty).

RadioTracker

I have been wowed. I just made a rather hefty music library comprised of new artists who fit my tastes, and all for free. A simple program called "RadioTracker" recorded my interests, favorite artists, and favorite songs and, using internet radio stations, downloaded music that fit my tastes. In addition, it was recently awarded one of MaximumPC's Softy Awards for being so amazing. You can have RadioTracker look for specific songs to download, or you can have it search for general artists or genres. Its great, easy, and best yet, legal. You can get all this music for free (after purchasing RadioTracker for $40). For those who don't like spending money, it also has a nice demo that you can check out. Don't take my word for it, try it out yourself at radiotracker.com.


Now, I get to rant. I made the mistake of setting the music type to "Alternative" and then accidentally leaving it on overnight. I'm a big fan of alternative music, don't get me wrong, but some of the more... violent songs aren't my thing (i.e. deathmetal). So, upon waking up the next day, I checked my computer and found that I had about 45 MB of disk space left and that I had just smashed 14 gigs of music (a good 8 of which were deathmetal) on my laptop. So, although this software is great, BE CAREFUL with it. Another thing that gets annoying is the fact that you will sometimes get station identification audio at the end of a song. I was abruptly jerked out of a Red Hot Chili Peppers song by some guy screaming about his radio station. Just be careful of that.