Q: I’ve recently noticed a quirk that my iPod seems to have developed. For some reason, some songs played on my iPod don’t play completely through, but instead play for only about maybe 30 seconds, them moving on to the next song.
Curiously, the problem seems to only appear when I am playing a whole list of songs, whether it be a playlist, an artist, etc.
When isolated on their own, the songs that had skipped play all the way through without an issue. There doesn’t seem to be any particular songs that this happens to.
What could the problem possibly be? Hardware? Software?
– Paulo
A: Because it’s only happening to a list of songs, we’d suspect that one of the iPod’s song buffer RAM chips has died, preventing it from maintaining more than a couple songs worth of data at once.
However, it’s rarely helpful to jump straight to a hardware explanation. First, you should try restoring your iPod to factory settings, and reloading your iPod from your iTunes library. If this fresh load helps, you’re set without needing to contact Apple.
