I cast Aeofel's Resurrect Thread, since it's labeled as "THE evilbore IPOD thread"
And I will begin with profanity: FUCK Apple.
A month past its warranty, and my iPod Touch 32GB headphone jack became flaky. I've been waiting to take it for repairs another month, because we've been in heavy overtime mode at work. Today I took it to the Shinsaibashi Apple Store and waited to talk to a repair guy. I won't say "Genius" because the advice was this:
Repair Guy with Apple Nametag: "Repairing this will cost 23,000 yen. The 'repair' is getting a refurb unit. Buying a new iPod Touch 32GB will cost 29,900 yen. If you don't want to keep your 'broken' one, we'll refurbish it and give you 10% off your replacement purchase."
Me: "The device cost me 50,000 yen and you're going to give me 3000 yen for it, repair the headphone jack, and sell it to someone for 23,000 yen as a repair unit? I'll keep it for my wife to play Bejeweled, thanks."
Until now, I'd been thinking about replacing my PowerBook; it has a dead battery and both power adapters I had for it were recently destroyed in quick succession. That notebook was really flaky as well; it went in for repairs several times, each time was a surreal contest of wills with Apple's apocryphally friendly staff. It was a refurb unit, and after all the trials I had with it, my friend at Apple who set me up with it claimed that PowerBook had the worst track record or any Apple equipment he'd ever seen.
So replacing that long-held lemon was a priority, especially since the adapters alone are 10,000 yen, but a new iPad will be 50,000 yen or so. A new MacBook, was also in the running, but now apparently I need to re-purchase my iPod Touch because the headphone jack went bad. There are places in the USA which will do the labor for US$25, but the local handyman places which handle out-of-warranty iPhone/iPod repairs in Osaka want 12,000 yen. What a racket.
When I had to start thinking about dropping another 30-50,000 yen on a new player, I stopped thinking about replacing my PowerBook and bought a replacement adapter. ¡VIVA LÍMON!
I loved my iPod Touch for the year (wait -- just over a year!) but I'm seriously thinking about a different media player, and seriously reconsidering buying any Apple hardware in the future.