If I resurrected my iPod, u can too!

Question

My question is at the bottom of this rant.
My iPod was so good to me, i never had a problem with it, and my battery has always lasted the advertised time, which i never expected anyway. All of sudden it stopped working. It wouldn't mount on my mac or get past the black apple logo startup screen when i tried to turn it on. It would just constantly keep on resetting itself until the battery ran out.
So i knew the battery had to be OK still, cause when it first died it took all night to run out of battery. I was using it when it died, and it was perfectly fine until then, so I was sceptical when one apple outlet told me the battery or the HD was dead. They said they would send it away for $40 (AUD) and that was just so they could tell me what was wrong with it, if i wanted to get it fixed after that, i was looking at like $400 repair cost, cause they thought it was probably the HD. (Then they say: but a new 30GB video iPod is just under that, so youre better off getting that...) I don't want a new iPod, i have a 40GB that cost $650, and i should be able to use it for a long time, and i don't want my photos or videos on it. I barely take it out of my pocket when i use it anyway, who wants to see yet another walking apple advertisement going around with an iPod? Not me. I only want black headphones & music.
My girlfriend has a new video 30GB pod, and id definately say it seems not as good quality. Doesn't turn on or off straight away when you are pressing the respective button (takes a couple of tries sometimes), goes into deep sleeps - where you need to mount it on your mac to wake it up after leaving it off at work. It works nowhere near as well as my 4G iPod (i can't speak for the colour photo ones though), which was flawless. The new gen is to be avoided at all costs. Well maybe not a $400 repair cost, id rather get a different brand MP3 player...
I took it to another place and had an unpleasant dealing with the so-called apple expert kid who was working there, this place asked me for my receipt, which i produced so they didnt think it was a stolen iPod or something, then he said its out of warranty (no **, its 2 years old dude) and there was nothing they could do apart from trying to restore the software, which as i told him wasnt going to work cause that was the problem, it wouldnt mount. So after he tried and failed to mount the pod, he said there was nothing that apple could do for me, but if i still wanted it fixed out of warranty, it was gonna be the $400 repair fee. Which he then informed me was just over the price of a new video 30GB... pattern emerges...
Interestingly, my friend's iPod died the day before mine, it was out of warranty, he had the luxury of taking it to this place in his lunch break, and some dodgy guy there took it out the back, opened it up and told him it was the HD, charged him $150 and that was that, no receipt, but a working iPod.
I told him about my friends dealing there, and the guy looked puzzled and upset, so i dropped it. I wasnt gonna get the same treatment.
So here i was, with a $650 paperweight, and looking at $400 to get it repaired. Granted getting a new battery was like $200, but i knew that wasn't the problem.
Now, my last resort was typing "fix my iPod" into google as a last act of desperation.
Which led me to:
http://www.ipodwizard.net/wiki/index.php/ForcedDiskMode
http://www.methodshop.com/mp3/ipodsupport/diskmode/index.shtml
http://www.methodshop.com/mp3/ipodsupport/diagnosticmode/index.shtml
http://www.g4tv.com/callforhelparchive/features/45700/Secretsof_theiPod.html
http://www.extremedap.com/article2/0,1895,1639474,00.asp
http://playlistmag.com/help/2004/09/trubipod/index.php
- a few of the better ones.
Anyway, by the end of the night i had fixed my iPod.
I'd say most people here know this, but there is an easily accessible 'diagnostic mode' screen which you can bring up on your iPod, whether its dead or not (hmmm).
I ran the HDD Scan option, which told me my HD was fine, as i thought.
I tried the 'disk mode' (which forces your mac to mount your iPod) and you have to do it with a USB iPod cable, not the firewire. Well what do you know, my iPod mounts, i restore the pod, and i have a working iPod again.
Now, im sure these apple places know this trick. If id known it i couldve fixed my iPod a month ago when it died.
Why don't apple tell us this on the website? Why do we only get the bogus "Five R's" advice? Sure, i can see going into diagnostic mode might be a void of warranty, but why would it matter when the warranty only lasts a year? As we know most peoples iPods die after a year. And besides, there's not one option on that mode that ruins your iPod (apart from losing on-the-go playlists and user settings) Dont they want us to enjoy their product?
Or do they want us to either throw the repair cost cash at them (which is ridiculously overpriced, considering they probably only run the diagnostic test to determine whats wrong with it, and then maybe replace a part if needed, where in my case and probably alot of others, didnt need anything replaced) or pay up for another iPod?
Thats my question. I've been a strictly mac man since the beige G3, and i've always ragged on my mates for using PC's, even when no one used macs. Now, i can't because its turned into a monopoly, and the product quality gets worse and worse. Mac is still better than a PC, but i wouldnt recommend either way at this point. It started when apple took our free mac memberships away, and has gone to the dogs since the popularity of the iPod exploded. They wanted our support, they get it, now look whats going on.
Hopefully you'll get to read this before the moderators take my post down.

Answer 1

Sorry, no. Not possible to locate the device without the Find My iPod app installed before it was lost.
"Apple does not have a process to track or flag lost or stolen product" from >  Reporting a lost or stolen Apple product