A plain brown box arrived at my house today. It was my iPod. A replacement to be exact.  Hat’s off to Apple for being quick with a solution.

I’ll be back into regular Podcast listening mode tomorrow. I hope I haven’t missed much.

I received an email from Apple that they’ve received my iPod and it’s on the surgical table right now being diagnosed.

While it may be killing me to be without my iPod, I have to admit that Apple’s service is much better than I had expected.  Having said that, when I needed to have my iRiver serviced, iRiver sent me a replacement unit ahead of requiring me to return the crippled one.

Less than a month after buying my 60Gb iPod Video, the unit started to act up.  On many occassions, I have been able to operate the iPod with the hold button on, and more recently, the volume jumps to full volume all by itself and deafens me in the process.

On the recommendation of the store from which I bought the iPod, I called Apple.  Phone support couldn’t help me.  Apparently I need to submit my service request online - it’s a  good thing that the series of tubes has an opening at my house.  What the support tech was able to tell me was that once the service request was opened, Apple would send me a plain brown box with instructions.  I am to put the iPod in that box, put the UPS sticker that they provide on the outside of the box and ship it to Apple.  They will service it and return it to me.

Here’s the kicker.  The tech said that I should expect the service to take fifteen days.

FIFTEEN DAYS??????!!!  How the heck am I supposed to live without my “pacemaker” for fifteen days?

To Apple’s credit, the box arrived yesterday, just two days after I opened the service request.  My iPod is safely packed away in the foam bed and the box is sealed with packing tape that Apple provided as part of the package.

It’s been just over an hour since I sealed the box and I already have the DTs.  Pray for me and I will keep you posted.

By issuing cease and desist orders for the use of the word Pod (note Pod, not iPod), Apple is earning its reputation as a tyrant.  What a shame, particularly since it had done such great work plugging itself into the social media community.

For your consideration, here are just some of the brands with Pod in their name that predate the 2001 release of Apple’s iPod:

• The Pod Caravan
• P.O.D.
• The Pod Camera Platforms
• Line6 Pod
• Portable On Demand Storage

If they keep it up, I may put tape over their logo on my laptop.

Apple has decided that it owns the word Pod and it intends to use legal channels to formalize that claim.  For a company that was attempting to demonstrate leadership in the social media movement, it is going out of its way to prove otherwise.

I don’t know the legal system very well and I can’t begin to guess what Apple plans to do if it does win its claim on the word Pod.  I do have to wonder what will happen to everyone who has a Podcast, what kind of damages a dictionary publisher will be on the hook for, and if the RIAA will treat this as an attempt to reverse engineer the book and movie versions of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Source: Paul Colligan