iPhone 3G vs iPod Touch

The difference between the new iPhone 3G and an iPod Touch is that the iPhone has the following functionality:

* GPS with maps. However, this does not include road directions for use in a car, not tracking of where you walked or latitude and longitude display. The iPod Touch has maps as well, but not GPS.
* Camera. But it is just 2 Megapixel, so it is unlikely to replace your DSLR.
* Phone. Of course. One device less in your pocket.
* 3G. Which is the perhaps most useful service, as one can use the 3G to retrieve mails and surf the web even without WiFi.
* Then there is the tight integration with your address book. Finally I can use Chinese names for Chinese friends. With most phones, the synchronisation only works with Latin characters.

Neither gadget has copy-paste, file browser, usage as external harddisk or possibility to add a real keyboard.

Oh, just buy a pen and a blank sheet of paper instead. It is much cheaper.

One big button. A lot of problems: shuffle

Do you remember my ipod shuffle? Or course you do. It is the simple gadget I found incredibly difficult to use.

Not only that. Now it is completely gone. I have hardly used it, as it is a piece of equestrian detritus.

What is the exact problem description?

It does not play music.

What have I done to fix the problem?

I searched the internet for instruction how to update, reset and restore the little beast. I downloaded the manual. I read about flashing lights and their mysterious meanings on long and impenetrable web pages that apparently were written by an energetic Tolstoy (Лев Николаевич Толстой), after he finished War and Peace as a light warm-up.

I reset. I restored. I updated. I deleted all songs. I added others back. I changed name of the shuffle back and forth and got strange messages saying that it could not be synchronised (when I tried to change its name!) properly. I ended up with one name in iTunes and another one in the Finder. I see songs added in iTunes, and the Shuffle happily shows me a top secret light combination which means that no songs are present.

As far as I can tell we are in for some quantum physics here. The songs are only there when they are observed. As soon as they are not observed they are gone.

I think I can safely say that never has such a small and simple gadget caused me as much problems as that shuffle.

Update 24 hours after the problem was discovered

I solved it. Stroke of luck I guess. I connected the Shuffle to another Mac and restored it there. The first Mac has USB 1 but the second one has USB 2. I do not know if that is what made a difference. Anyhow, after I restored it in the second Mac and got a strange error message that "the file" could not be found, I connected it to the first Mac again, synched, and now it works.

Update several weeks later, 27 July 2008. After Christ.

I had similar problems again. This time it was solved by moving the on/off switch to off and then back to on. I have no idea why this helped.