Can an iPod take a beating from biking?

By Steve Alexander, Star Tribune

Last update: May 30, 2006 - 4:50 PM

Q Less than a year ago, my 14-year-old daughter purchased an iPod with a 20-gigabyte hard disk drive from the Southdale Apple store. It was apparently ruined because of the jarring motion of her taking it bike riding, and it was replaced under warranty.

My problem is that I feel that my daughter was ripped off. When she purchased her iPod, she was not warned that it was not a rugged piece of equipment. They sold her belt clip-ons! They knew how she was going to use it and said nothing. Mike Meirovitz at the Apple store told me he couldn't take his iPod out jogging because the jarring motion ruined his, too.

I want Apple to give my daughter a free extended warranty, since the existing warranty expires in June. I wrote a letter to Apple, but they referred me to their telephone customer service and I hung up after 20 minutes on hold.

What can I do?

SUSAN THEISSEN, CHANHASSEN

A Apple makes two kinds of iPods, a higher-capacity one that stores music on a rapidly spinning hard disk drive and lower-capacity models, using flash memory chips with no moving parts, such as the popular iPod Shuffle and iPod Nano.

Apple has not said that consumers need to refrain from any type of activity with either kind of iPod. But hard disk drives are more fragile than flash memory chips.

"There is a problem with the disk-drive iPod if you run, because running jars the iPod when your foot hits the ground," said Phil Leigh, a digital music industry analyst with Inside Digital Media in Tampa, Fla. "However, Apple has never said officially that there's a problem." It's even embracing running in a new deal with Nike -- for a flash-based player (see Gadgets, on this page).

An Apple corporate spokesman didn't return a phone call, but Apple's website says a hard-drive iPod is more likely to be affected by movement than one using flash memory. To be safe, Apple suggests letting the hard drive temporarily store up to 25 minutes of music in a computer-chip-based buffer memory. For details, see docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93318.

Meirovitz, a salesman at Apple's Southdale store, disputes your version of the conversation. "It is not true that jarring motion ruined my two-year-old 10-gigabyte iPod, which is a hard disk drive model," Meirovitz said. "It works just fine, and I bike with it."

Added Duke Zurek, Apple's Minnesota market manager, "If customers ask about vibration, we discuss the 25-minute buffer memory. We do not caution customers against jogging or biking." Zurek added he's willing to discuss the problem with your daughter's iPod if you'll call him at the Southdale store.

Steve Alexander covers technology for the Star Tribune. E-mail your technology questions to tech@startribune.com or write Tech Q&A, 425 Portland Av. S., Minneapolis, MN 55488-0002. Please include full name, city of residence and phone number.

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