iPod Touch help

[richidoo]

Any iOS iPod/iTunes experts here?

My son has a latest gen iPod Touch iOS5. It was running fine with his downloaded apps until we used iTunes to put some music on it. Somehow iTunes neutralized all the downloaded apps so they won't start anymore. The downloaded apps on the iPod are not visible in the iTunes Apps pane. The standard apps that came with the iPod work fine, so maybe it licensing issues.

The iPod is not yet registered because it was not necessary for it to run his apps. The PC that runs iTunes is not yet authorized for this iPod, because it is my laptop and only used temporarily to load the music because iTunes won't start on the kids' XP machine (separate but related problem.) Could either of those be the problem (DRM mischief) even though the apps are free and worked fine before iTunes 'big sis' got involved?

I can still see the dead app icons, they just won't start. So if they are actually killed I can download them all again, after I find out the cause of death so it doesn't happen again.

I thought Apple products were supposed to "just work?" Other than this, it is a very cool gadget.  
Any help is appreciated.
Rich

[richidoo]

It seems to be coming together now that I authorized the PC that is running  iTunes. I think the games are being authorized by iTunes that their unique downloads of each game match the account that bought them. That prevents another device from using apps bought by someone else. It is slow going to sync it all, because the games need to be copied on or off the device, or maybe from appstore to PC? I don't know, and no explanation why the steps take so long. But the apps are working again.

[richidoo]

Eventually it all synced and working fine now. But it put copies of everything (4GB) on the hard drive of my PC.



Edit: I found the 3GB of files that iTunes copied onto my PC during the sync.... they were in the recycle bin. So it cleaned up after itself pretty well.  

Now that it's all done, I think it works pretty well. I'm justa dumb old fart pissed that I can't copy files around like the good ole days.  

[Barry (NJ)]

I'm justa dumb old fart pissed that I can't copy files around like the good ole days.   

You're not alone there, I hate all the automation built into software these days...

[bpape]

Yup - Idiot proof = Cant' do what I want to do as long as I know what I'm doing.   Grrrr.

Bryan

[richidoo]

Idiot Proof, that's why I don't understand it! 

Thanks guys!