You did ? So it wasn’t just me then ? To be honest I am astounded that this fact seems to have largely escaped the Apple blog network and the mainstream gadget press, because personally I think this is a REALLY big deal ! The Apple Support Forum has a long thread where many disgruntled customers are venting their displeasure after spending a lot of money on second generation iPod Touch and Bose speaker combos only to find that when they plug in the iPod they are greeted with the message “CHARGING IS NOT SUPPORTED WITH THIS ACCESSORY” !

From what is said in the thread it appears that the dock connector on the new iPod uses pure USB charging whereas the original model used a hybrid USB/Firewire charging arrangement hence the accessories designed for the first gen iPods will no longer charge newer models. This means that there is NOT going to be a software update that will fix this, and many customers will find that their older speaker setups will NEVER work fully with their new iPods.

On a personal note I convinced my sister to shell out for the new iPod Touch from her birthday money and so this weekend she tripped off to the local Apple store where she parted with a pile of cash for the iPod and a Bose SoundDock only to find that the two devices are really not meant to play with each other. I feel responsible for her now having a partially working solution, especially as I initially advised her that it would “probably be fixed in the next software release”. I have now advised her to return the speakers until a fully compatible model is released.

Apple have really disappointed me with the latest updates, not only has my first gen Touch been broken, but it now seems as though Apple have decided to purposely re-engineer the dock connector which I for one thought was a “sort of standard” without so much as a passing mention.

Somebody should get a rocket for this !

Since updating to V2.1 firmware users have been left with a completely broken app. According to this thread the fix should be released to Apple this week. Heres hoping Apple don’t decide to do the dirty on Last.fm as they have done with Podcaster

When the first gen was released last year Apple must have known that the App store was coming shortly and that games were certain to become a major selling feature of both the iPhone and the Touch. The speaker design was already there in the iPhone and as such would have been very easy to transfer to the Touch, but Apple elected to not include it. Now a little over a year later they have released a Touch with speaker included, and Touch users like myself are all thinking about whether they should “upgrade” to a virtually identical device so we can get sound in our games like iPhone users.

Clearly without the addition of the speaker there is little reason for first gen Touch owners to upgrade to the latest model, but WITH the speaker I am sure many will find the upgrade worthwhile.

What do you think ? Are you thinking of upgrading ?

Personally my Touch has a number of issues at the moment and more are coming to light as I use it. The first problem I hit was with the iPod dock in my car ( a new Honda Civic ). This works by emulating a CD auto-changer, with the virtual disks being represented by playlists named Honda1, Honda2 etc on the iPod. Unfortunately since the upgrade the skip to next/previous disk buttons on my stereo now cause the iPod to effectively disconnect meaning I cant use the car dash to control playback, which is a royal pain.

The other problems I have noticed are fuzzy cover art, issues with backlight staying on, and the killer for me is Last.fm app is completely broken.

Hopefully Apple are on the case and will get another version out quickly. If not I will seriously consider going through the hassle of restoring back to 2.0.

What problems have you had with 2.1 ?

There had to be something wrong and looking around the forums I found a number of others reporting similar problems but none of the suggested solutions appeared to work. These ranged from removing all the installed apps, then reinstalling one by one to a range of what appeared to be mumbo jumbo approaches. Suffice to say I either didn’t try them or they didn’t work. Then the other night I noticed one comment in a thread ( which I can’t now recall ) that mentioned USB hubs possibly being at fault.

Now my iPod is normally plugged into a Belkin USB hub which has always worked fine so I really didn’t see this being a solution, but as the proposed solution ( plugging direct into my iMac USB ports ) was not a major effort I thought I would try it. Revelation ! Sync completed in about 5 minutes….

Now quite why this should fix the problem I am not clear but solve it it certainly did. If you are having problems with iPod Touch/iPhone synching performance, try this ( if you are using an external USB hub ). If it fixes your problems I would love to know.

Cheers