Collideoscope

Seems like the faze hit the younger generation first, but lately I've noticed it's crossed over to the "adult" generation. Your parents (gasp!) might even have one! It's an interesting phenomenon, especially since the iPod doesn't actually work that well, according to this article in the Denver Post.

The iPod, like the cellphone, is invaluable in the everyday lives of millions. We name our iPods, coddle them, buy cases for them, insure them and sing their praises - until they break down.

Then we curse them, throw them, mock them and spread the bad word - before buying our next one.

And the cycle repeats.

"When they're working, they're great," said Tim Vargo, an early adapter who is on his fourth iPod. "But I've had the Nano for four or five months, so now I'm really getting to the point where I'm waiting for it to screw up."

There's plenty of anecdotal evidence calling out Apple's popular portable media player as a faulty device on many counts. The company has acknowledged some problems, offering subsidized replacements for faulty batteries of certain generation iPods and free replacements to the easily cracked and scratched screens of some Nanos.

However, based on anecdotal evidence and online forums of iPod users, other problems remain. It's impossible to know the repair/replacement numbers; those are controlled by Apple, and the company did not return multiple calls in the past week seeking comment.

But a survey done in late 2005 by MacInTouch.com, a popular 12-year-old website for Apple users, offers a window onto the type of problems users most frequently encounter. Of nearly 9,000 iPods owned by more than 4,000 respondents, more than 1,400 of the MP3 players had failed. The survey reported a failure rate of 13.7 percent, roughly half battery-related while the other half were hard-drive-related. Other data indicated flash- based Nanos and Shuffles, which operate without hard drives, were less prone to failure.