Well I stupidly upgraded my iPod touch to the iOS4 system yesterday.

Don’t do it!

The battery life is now less than 12 hours even with wifi off. The advantages of the OS are not worth the hassle but to add insult to injury I can’t go back.

Now the first rule of any computer system is that you need to be able to recover to where you were before you changed stuff. That’s why we all do backups right?

Well Apple will not allow you to downgrade or go back a version in the firmware once you have upgraded. I called Apple Customer support and was told no option exists to do this at all. I tried to post in the Apple discussion forums as the rep said I should do to suggest that people call in and request changes and my message was rejected and pulled from the forum.

Here is it in its entirety because the issue is important:

From: communityhosts@apple.com
Subject: Apple Discussions – Post Removed by Host
Date: June 25, 2010 11:20:38 AM MDT

OogieM,

Apple removed your post on Apple Discussions, titled “Apple Cust Serve response re iOS4,” because it contained the following:

Speculation or Rumors
Discussion of Apple Policies, Procedures or Decisions
Off-topic or non-technical posts

We are including a copy of your post at the end of this email for your reference.

Our terms of use, which include helpful information about using Apple Discussions, is located here: http://discussions.apple.com/help.jspa We encourage you to continue using the Apple Discussions while abiding by our terms of use.

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Kind regards,

Apple Discussions staff

++++++++++

A copy of your message:

I just got off the phone with Apple Customer Support. I have verified that there is no way for a consumer to downgrade the firmware in an iPod or iPhone unless you jailbreak it.

If you think the consumer needs to have the ability to choose which version of firmware & SW to run and the ability to go back a version if something isn’t working for you you have to call in to Apple. They will only consider it an issue if they get Apple Support calls on it. The highest level person I spoke with had not had any other calls about the problem.

I mentioned the numerous reports here and was told that unregulated forums are not considered important.

This message is sent from a send-only email account. Any replies sent to this address are deleted automatically by the system.

UPDATED DATA

Here is how I’ve managed to downgrade my iPod Touch 2nd generation to 3.1.2

I can’t get the 3.1.3 firmware to install. Apple has disabled it.

Doing so is at your own risk and you will lose all application specific data. My app data was only game high scores so I didn’t really care.

I have one app that I was using fabric stash that now won’t run because it required 3.1.3

I did call Apple Support, paid $59 for the privilege of telling them how stupid it is to not provide an easy backup/downgrade plan. No satisfaction there at all. But at least I can harass them again for another 2 years. (I bought the Apple Care plan as I figured if I use it 1 more time I am at break even)

To do it you must either locate a copy of your old firmware on your machine the files are usually in ~user/library/itunes/iPod software updates

You can also download the various firmware files here: http://www.felixbruns.de/iPod/firmware/

Be sure to put it on the desktop or somewhere not in the normal folder.

iTunes automatically moves to trash all older firmware files when it comes up

Run iTunes and option click on restore. Navigate to the location of the new file and select it for restore.

This did all work and I was able to eventually restore all my apps except as noted above.