The deal with the iPod

John bought me (and the family) an iPod touch for Christmas last year. We have been figuring it out and finding new uses for it all the time. For example you check your e-mail on it, check the weather, chart your fitness goals, keep track of your budget, play games, listen to music, watch TV shows, watch movies, and anything else the 2,000 applications that are available for download allow you to do.

Over the past few months we have found some things that Katie likes to do on it. She likes to listen to her music, she likes to do word searches, and there is spelling application that I recently found. She is allowed about 30 minutes a day on the iPod or computer. So far she has been great on it and has picked it up faster than most adults.

On Friday she got up from her rest time (it's not nap time anymore, you know) and wanted to work on the iPod. She took it into her room as I got Will up and fixed a snack for them. I yelled down to Katie to turn the iPod off and come eat her snack. She listened right away, came up and handed me the iPod.

"I put a game on there for Will," she said.
"What?" I asked back, kind of confused.
"I downloaded a game for Will."

I turned on the iPod and there on the home screen was a new program called iMBuilder. Although the icon for the program looks like building blocks, it's actually a program for generating models of genetic molecules. (Not something we would use a lot...) I asked Katie how she found this program and she continued to explain to me how she went into the Application Store online and found it.

"Did it cost money?" I asked, beginning to get worried.
"I don't know."
"KATIE! Some of these applications cost money!"

I began to dig a little deeper and found that this particular application was $12.99, and after fees we paid over $13 for it. Since it was downloaded, it was immediately charged to my back account.

"KATIE! WHAT DID YOU DO!? THIS IS VERY WRONG!" I yelled. Then I remembered that the way the iPod is set up, she would have had to enter in a password in order to put the transaction through. I asked her about this...

"Katie, didn't you have to put in a password?"

"Yes. I tried one that didn't work, and then I tried another one and it worked." replied the little hacker. I then realized that the password I was using for the iPod was indeed the same one I had used to set up Katie's new computer game she got for Christmas, so of course she knew it.

After a 10 minute time out, I had managed to e-mail iTunes, the company responsible for all the iPod applications. I explained to them what happened and in the end, they agreed to reverse all the charges with the understanding that this was a one-time deal...don't do it again. I have since changed my password, and am NOT going to tell it to Katie. She was grounded from the iPod for 1 week, and can work on it again come Friday.

John said that we had to hand it to Katie - after all, she did figure out a pretty complicated process, AND had found something for Will, not herself. It wasn't her fault the icon looked so tempting and her mother had underestimated the intelligence of her daughter. I can laugh about it now....now that we aren't out over $13.