{“A pal of mine contacted me this morning concerned over an associate’s second-generation iPod. It appears that since she upgraded her iPod to version 1.4 (also known as the iPod Update 2004-04-28), the contrast on her iPod has been a bit funky.
Although degrading contrast can be the sign of an iPod that’s not long for this world, before trucking the thing into Apple and dropping the price of a mini to replace it, I suggested that she downgrade to “,”. If the earlier version of the software solved the problem, cool, stick with it until the next upgrade rolls around.
“You can do that? I thought firmware was forever.”
In the case of iPods, no. Although the iPod updaters do indeed flash the iPod’s ROM, unlike with Mac firmware updates, you can run a previous version of the iPod Updater software.
“And the iPod will still work with iTunes 4.5?”
Yes. iTunes will display a message that a more recent version of the iPod software is available, but you’re not required to upgrade the iPod in order to use it with iTunes 4.5. Of course, without flashing your iPod with the latest software you won’t be able to use tunes encoded with Apple’s Lossless codec. “}