Since buying an 5th Gen 80Gb ipod I have had to deal with the dreaded restore loop, and thought I’d show how I finally fixed it in case it helps anyone else.

I am using a Macbook running OS X 10.5.2, and iTunes 7.6.2, though one of the screen shots is from a PC.

The restore loop begins when the ipod comes up with the screen on the left, asking you to connect to itunes and restore your ipod.

When you connect, itunes shows the screen below. Clicking the restore button will wipe the ipod and return it to factory settings. If it is the first time you have done a restore it will take a little while for itunes to download the ipod firmware file, subsequent restores will be much quicker.

So far this is exactly how things are meant to work. The problems begin when the ipod restarts.

It should then reconnect to itunes and appear ready to be named and filled with music.

Instead the restore screen reappears and itunes says “iTunes has detected an iPod in recovery mode - Use iTunes to restore”. Repeated restores follow the same cycle.

Looking on the web there appear to be a few different solutions that people have found. Firstly for PC users, renaming drive letters can sometimes solve the issue. More info on this can be found here.

The next solution that works for some people is to put the ipod into disk mode and then connect it to itunes. Before placing the iPod into disk mode, you should verify that it is charged.

First toggle the Hold switch on and off.

Press and hold the Menu and Select buttons for at least 6 seconds until the Apple logo appears.

When the Apple logo appears, release the Menu and Select buttons and immediately press and hold the Select and the Play/Pause buttons until the Disk Mode screen appears, (as shown to the right, it will say Disk Mode at the top of the screen).

Connect the iPod to your computer; the screen on the iPod will change and say “Do not disconnect”, and the ipod should appear in itunes and in Finder. Detailed instructions can be found here.

This worked for me to begin with. When connected my ipod appeared in itunes as a new ipod, I named it and could copy music to it. Unfortunately when I ejected the ipod I got this screen to the left as expected, but it stayed jammed on that screen and would not let me access the music.

I had to reset the ipod to get off that screen.

Resets are done by turning the Hold switch on and off, and then pressing and holding the Menu and Center (Select) buttons simultaneously until the Apple logo appears (about 6 to 8 seconds).

My ipod then reverted to the “Connect to your computer, use itunes to restore” screen, and I appeared to be back to square one.

After more searching online I decided to try using an older version of itunes as some people mentioned issues starting with itunes 7.

I downloaded itunes 6.0.5 from oldapps.com, and replaced my existing itunes installation with it. I had to re-import all of my music into this older itunes as it would not recognise the itunes 7.6.2 library.

Once this was done I put my ipod which was still displaying the “Connect to your computer, use itunes to restore” screen into disk mode and connected it.

It displayed the “Do not disconnect” screen and then itunes showed a message saying something along the lines of “This ipod requires a newer version of itunes”, and the ipod did not appear in the itunes sidebar. I quit itunes and saw that the ipod was appearing in Finder (as it should in disk mode), so I ejected it and lo and behold it ejected properly, and the music I had put on it back when it had been connected to itunes 7.6.2 was there!

I re-installed the latest version of itunes and the ipod connected straight away and ejects as it should. I have been a little wary of exploring more so far, but I will see how it goes and update this page if it stops working or I fiddle any more.

I assume that the software clitch that was kicking the ipod back into restore mode was somehow connected to itunes 7.6.2 but I do not know how, or why, the loop was broken by trying and failing to connect to itunes 6.0.5?

I hope this might help someone out there. Please let me know if you find any other solutions and I’ll add them here as well.

After a few months of using Apple’s Mail I recently decided to have another go at using IMAP for my email rather than POP. IMAP has several advantages not least of which is the ability to synchronise your messages between your local computer and the remote email server. This gives a full backup of your email and allows access to your email from any computer.

In my experience Apple Mail falls down quite badly in it’s imap intergration, particularly when using a slower connection as I am normally forced to do.

There are several alternatives available for OS X including Entourage, Thunderbird, Mailsmith, Eudora and many more. After trying most of these I narrowed my main requirements to four:

1. Full OS X Address book integration.
2. Multiple account and multiple SMTP servers support.
3. Plain text & HMTL.
4. Quick and efficent on and offline imap support.

In the end all of the email clients above fell short in one area or another. I had tried Gyaz Mail in the past but it had lacked imap support until version 1.5 was released.

After giving Gyaz 1.5 a go for the 40 day trial I was happy to cough up the US$18 for the full license and a month or so later I am still using it as my main email client.

There are a few annoyances. No unified inbox for one (all accounts have a seperate inbox). Secondly there is no built in spam filter, there is the option to integrate Spam Sieve, a third party filter but that costs an extra US$30. In my case my primary email host fastmail does an excellent job of reducing spam so I don’t miss it too much.

Overall Gyaz mail works well and most importantly the imap connection is fast and works flawlessly. No hanging up as Apple Mail used to, quick checking of all the imap folders and sub folders and full OS X Address book integration. Have a look and see what you think.

OS X comes with some very nice screen savers and I’ve been wanting to use some of the pictures in them for my desktop background?

Thanks to a hint from Macworld this is how to do it.

The following screensavers have images you can use - Beach, Cosmos, Forest, Nature Patterns, and Paper Shadow, and the images are stored in the ‘/System / Library / Screen Savers’ folder (the system folder is seen circled here).

Open the folder and ctrl-click on Beach.slideSaver (or whichever other you want to use), and choose ‘Show Package Contents’ from the drop down menu. When the new window opens, navigate to ‘Contents/Resources’ to see the pictures.

Now you can copy the images to a more convenient location. I have made a folder in the ‘Pictures’ area of my user account for all my Desktop backgrounds.

Finally to use these pictures as your desktop background go to ‘Desktop & Screen Saver’ in System Preferences (on the apple menu in the top left of your screen), click on the ‘Desktop’ tab, and select the folder with your images in from the source list. Click on the image you want, and it will appear as your desktop image. You can also select the images to rotate at a certain speed.

There are sites devoted to OS X icons all over the web. Icons are the little pictures like this one (a customised ‘Preview icon’) that identify programs, folders and other items on your computer. By changing the standard icons you can not only add a touch of colour and personal taste to your Mac but also can help identify folders and programs more quickly and easily.

OS X makes it very easy to change icons on most folders and applications. Simply highlight the icon you wish to use (click once on the icon), in this example Internet Explorer is highlighted, then press cmd i to get the information on that program / folder, (cmd is the key with the apple on it next to the space key).

Then click once on the small icon in the top left as shown here, and press cmd c (copy) to copy the icon.

To insert the new icon it is the same procedure, highlight the icon you wish to replace (click once on the icon), then press cmd i to get the information on that program or folder. Then click once on the small icon in the top left, and press cmd v (paste) to replace the icon.
Should you change you mind returning to the old icon is as easy as highlighting it in the Info window and pressing delete.