My first real problem

All good things must end, and my (so far) problem-free switching to the Mac was no exception. It's not a Mac problem directly, but it's related to iTunes on a Mac.

I've been an iPod user for a few years and I currently have a 30GB iPod (5th generation). I almost never had any problems with my iPod and iTunes on Windows. The only problem was related to deleting video files from my iTunes library: when I removed them and iTunes prompted me whether the files should be moved to the recycle bin or not, even though I say yes, the files still remain on my disk and have to be removed manually. Besides that specific problem, I never had any other problems with iTunes or iPod on Windows.

Since I used it on Windows, my iPod was windows-formatted. Although iTunes on Mac OS X supports windows-formatted iPods (and it has worked perfectly for the past week with no sync problems), there is still a warning that says that further "updates to the iPod software can only be done if the iPod is mac-formatted". So, considering that from now on I'll be using a Mac and that constant updates are released from Apple, I decided to format the iPod on the Mac and restore it to factory settings so as to have a fresh start on Mac OS X's iTunes.

After this, synchronization problems started and have been getting worse. Every time I plug in the iPod to the Mac, I get this error on iTunes:

And even though some synchronization is actually done, some items, such as movies and photos, are not transferred to the iPod.

So, as any normal Internet user with a problem, I "googled" it and found out that Apple already has issued a report and a solution for this problem. However, it seems that Apple is actually joking with iPod users on this one. Let's see:

• "If the error message reappears after syncing your iPod 5 times..." - What the hell is this??? I don't get how a 5th sync will do anything different from the previous 4 attempts. What, do you think the iPod will think "Oh well! He's going for a 5th try, so I guess he means business! Better give him what he wants..."???
• "Temporarily change the Time Zone setting in Mac OS X to Pacific Standard Time (PST)..." - WTF???? Again, will the iPod think "Oh this is an American citizen! Let us give him a better service and fix his problem!!"

Reading this Apple report didn't actually bring me any faith to fixing this problem. However, my skepticism was unfounded, as apparently this fixed the problem (so far). I did follow the steps as explained on the report (no, the 5 syncs didn't work...what a surprise) but apparently the time-zone change is the sole responsible for fixing the problem. Go figure!!!

But for now synchronization is going smoothly and the error message hasn't appeared yet.
Anyone out there with similar problems? Did the fix worked for you?