Washing of the iPod

After all of Anne’s posts on cleaning your computer and spilling coffee on your computer, you might think that we are a bunch of clumsy destroyers. Indeed, we are. Anne loves to spill things on herself and anything in her vicinity****. I like to wash people’s electronic goods. Yes, that is right. I washed my boyfriend’s iPod, which was snuggled inside the front pocket of his red hoodie. Nice. I think this is payback for when he washed AND DRIED my favorite black silk sweater. Anyways.

The pod emerged from the Bosch completely dead. Boyfriend attempted to dry it slowly underneath some infrared heat lamps above our stove shelfs. Nothing. He set a timer to check on the sucker every couple of minutes. Nothing. Indeed it had been more than 4 hours since the incident, and we were on our way to buy a new one at an UNofficial Apple Store (we are to get an OFFICIAL Apple store soon - they are hiring on the Apple Jobs site for a Pacific Center-based store), when the boyfriend checked it and it was alive. A little steamy under the screen, but in perfect working order. Not to mention very very clean.

But it seems that his is not a miraculous story. According to this 2005 post from the UK tech site, The Register, iPod Nanos are pretty good at surviving the spin cycle. This is likely owing to their hardy flash memory (as opposed to the hard drive used in previous iPod Minis) and a really tight seal around the battery.

Indeed if you look up “washed iPod” on Google, you’ll get a ton of similar survival stories. It seems that waiting patiently until it is fully dried is the real key here and not trying to plug it in wet to your computer or power source. In any case, it’s alll kind of ironic given the flack that Apple gets for building such disposable small goods.

***Did I mention that Anne once dropped her Nokia phone in a vat of boiling curry at the Notting Hill Carnival in London? It survived for quite a few months afterwards and only smelled a little funny.