So what is Apple and I-Tunes doing about the Shuffle mess??

Question

Some communication would be nice!!
From all of the posts in the last few days, it seems to be apparent that Apple and/or I-Tunes is having a real mess!! Last week my computer(an old Compac Presario) did not even recognize my shuffle. I tried it a few times every day. Magically on Sunday, my computer not only recognized it, but sent an update, which worked fine.
Monday, working-out in the pool, it died. (I should add here that my shuffle has been waterproffed by 'SWIMMAN' and I have a waterproof headset and the whole thing has been fine for the last 15 months!).
Later on Monday, I attached it to my computer to be charged and the computer kept saying that it needed to be plugged into a high-speed port. So I turned on my new laptop, downloaded I-Tunes and plugged in the shuffle. I-Tunes came back and said the shuffle could only be associated with one computer and was going to erase my shuffle and resync it, OK? I said no! I then got information on how to copy my 4GB of files without making 6 backup discs and proceeded to copy all the files to the new computer.
After that was finished, I plugged in the shuffle and got absolutly no response from I-Tunes, my computer did not even recognize the shuffle as a drive! So many times yesterday and this morning I tried it again and again and no response!
As I started writing this post, on the old computer, I thought "Let me try once more". Well what do you think?? The new computer recognized the shuffle as 'SMIMMAN iPod', only a few recently added tracks were missing, and it seems to be working. So I'm giving it plenty of time to charge.
Right now it might be working fine, but what is being done to prevent this from continuing? There was one post about reseting the utility program. How can you do that when the shuffle is not being recognized by the computer?
Another pet pieve... I-Tunes has the 'settings' tab with information it reads from the shuffle. Why can't it read and report the level battery charge? My lights don't blink when the charge is low (the waterproofing may have something to do with that). Your laptop tells you when you battery is low, why not I-Tunes??
Any suggestions would be appreciated. Linda

Answer 1

My shuffle came from SWIMMAN who has worked with Apple to make the shuffle waterproof. Everything had been working just fine both in and out of the water until Monday, March 10 when I was sent an update from I-Tunes. All of the problems have been since then. Sometimes my computer recognizes it, right now it's not.
This morning it worked fine for an hour, now it's dead and not being recognized.
From reading the posts here since this past Monday, it looks to me as if there is a problem with Apple and I-Tunes.
Also from looking at the posts, there are many others with the same problem and none of them have been answered successfully!