Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

Dear iPod nerds:

Okay, so last week my iPod touch started acting strangely. On last Wednesday I was using it when it when the backlight suddenly turned off. Meaning, the iPod was still working, and if I could touch the screen by memory it still worked, but I couldn't see what I was doing. So I clicked it off and back on, and it worked fine. It happened a few times more on Thursday, but on Friday I noticed it didn't do it if I was plugged in. By Saturday and Sunday it was unsuable. Nearly as soon as I opened it, the backlight would shut off and I would have to try again. I restarted it, I restored it to factory settings and back again, I kept it plugged in, and nothing would keep the backlight on for more than two seconds.

So Monday my husband came home early from work so I could drive up to Salt Lake and get it fixed. I took off my case, typed in my serial number to see that yes, the warrenty is still in effect, and then put it back on and got in the car. And I thought I would check one more time to make sure it was doing it so I didn't get up there and have the guy see no problem. And lo and behold, it was fixed. No matter how much I have played with it in the last two days, it has yet to do this again.

The only connection we have is that I took off the case. My husband has owned an iPhone for years, but he didn't know of any physical buttons the case could have pushed accidentally to turn off the backlight. Do any of you have any ideas? Or is this just a weird occurance?

No idea, but I had a similar mystery occurrence with my macbook a while ago. The built-in camera wasn't working at all for some reason. Well, it may have been working, but all of the programs that use it like photobooth and ichat and skype said that no camera was found. This went on for a few days and it was really annoying. So I went looking around on google, and some website said to turn the computer off, take the battery out, and put it back in. I did, and the camera worked again. It's stopped working several more times, and every time taking the battery out and putting it back in fixes it. No idea why. It's the mystery of the apple products.

I have no idea why that might be. But I would definitely take it into the apple store next time you go, while it's still under warranty. The last thing you want to happen is for this problem to pop up again 2 days after your warranty expires. They'll probably just replace the whole iPod.

Another good tip for iPod warranty: they come with a 1 year warranty. You can buy "applecare" for some large amount of dough to extend it to two years. But, if you buy it with an American Express credit card (such as the Costco card), American Express will automatically cover it for an additional year. Woot!

Basically, my hesitancy came from a prior visit. This is actually my second iPod touch. We got my original one in October, and the . . . button on the top that puts it to sleep only worked sporadically. Which was really annoying, because I would have to carry it around and wait for it to go to sleep so it wouldn't keep running in my purse and clicking all sorts of buttons. So I took it all the way up to Gateway to have it looked at, but of course it didn't do its sporadic problem while I was there. At which point the guy said tough nuggies. Well, okay, what he actually said was that he would log that I came in, and while he couldn't do anything if he didn't see the problem, if I came up again to complain they would just replace it anyway. But by the next time I came in it was so broken there was no question anyway. I ended up getting a new iPod in December, which was nice. But now I know - if the Apple guy doesn't see it have the issue, you will be driving for two hours for nothing.

My husband is thinking I should sign up for Applecare, given my current track record. We don't have an American Express card, though I know many people who swear by them. We'll see.

I understand how much of a pain it can be to drive all the way to an apple store. I've usually actually just used their phone support, which is pretty good and can take care of pretty much everything. When you need a replacement, they'll generally just ship it overnight, and include a postage-paid box for you to ship back the broken one. You may want to call just to "log" the problem (like you did with your last problem), so that it will be easy to replace if you get the same problem again.

You can see a list of their support phone numbers here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HE57