Not for the first time, I have issues with those lovely alternative types at Apple.

I switched on my iPod mini yesterday, all set to listen to my latest amazing playlist (a selection of classic indie tracks for a Danish friend who’s about to leave the country, and doesn’t know what indie really is, poor guy) only to find that they’d all gone. Together with most of the main menu options, leaving me:

• Extras >
• Settings >
• Shuffle Songs
• Backlight

The presence of the Shuffle Songs option was encouraging enough for me to try it, and sure enough off it went, playing track 1 of 691. Not sure what to do, I just let it give me a random selection from all those 691 tracks.

Today I decided enough was enough, and set about learning how to reset the damn thing. Apparently, if you:

1. Toggle hold on and off again
2. Hold down Select and Play/Pause Menu for 5-10 seconds
3. Wait

The Apple logo appears and the iPod is reset. Mostly, this is true. Sometimes, nothing happens, and you feel a bit stupid, but every now and then, the apple logo does appear, and the iPod resets itself. It doesn’t however restore lost playlists etc, it seems.

I was on the verge of contacting Apple support, when I was browsing the menu system, and came across “Reset All Settings”. Why not? I figured, and selected it. Given the option of canceling or resetting, I took the plunge, and chose “Reset”. Without so much as a pause or reboot, the screen reverted to its default unbacklit state, and all my menu items were restored, including playlist selections, and album and artist selections. Silly old me, I must have selected the option for “Don’t allow me to choose what I listen to” at some point yesterday, and forgotten all about it. Damn 99 hippie nonsense hardware.

So there you have it - if your iPod doesn’t work properly, don’t reset it, just, er, reset it…

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