In the week before I left my last job, I had an epic hardware failure.
My work laptop, which had the most current incarnation of my iTunes library on it (and my iPhone backup data), gave up the ghost and refused to give me anything but a BSOD.
Right around that same time, my iPhone (which I’d recently jailbroken) started getting exceedingly cranky.
I was slowly in the process of restoring my data from both, when I was laid off, and suddenly lost access to the computer with my iTunes. Crap.
I also ended up having to restore my phone to factory defaults, which meant in one week I’d lost about 6 albums worth of recently purchased music and about 20 apps.
I was pretty much resigned to writing off the loss to my own poor planning and lack of backing up, but I started googling, just in case I found some miraculous way to restore my music & app libraries.
Turns out there is a miraculous way. It’s called “Ask Apple Nicely.”
I came across this blog post from way back in 2006, and whaddya know, the link to let Apple know you’re an idiot and beg for mercy still works.
So I did just that, and they re-set my purchase history to download.
And poof! it all came back! Onto my own personal computer, which is now backed up.
So let this be a lesson to ye!
Do not be as foolish as I was. Keep your iTunes library on a computer you are unlikely to suddenly find yourself without, and back that mofo up!
Though if you are insistent on following along my errant path, at least you can take some small comfort in knowing that a well-placed mea culpa is still likely to give you that second chance.
HAH! I had a similar issue when I was let got from (coincidentally?) the same place….but, thankfully it wasn’t as bad as I had all my iTunes backed up on to my external drive.
I just had the same experience with Apple last month. Although I feel like it’s stupid that I even had to ask to be able to re-download all the songs I had already purchased, I’m very happy I was able to do so and the Apple customer service people were very helpful.
If any of the iTunes purchased music was DRM-ed (and chances are much of it was), you should also de-authorize all your computers in iTunes and then re-authorize the ones you still have access to (just try to play any DRMed tune to start that). Otherwise your unavailable former work machine will be taking up one of your authorization spots.
Thanks Derek – that computer was taking up one of my auth spots, and I was wondering how to get it off the list. Now it’s all taken care of!