Despite a hasty fix to repair the last update, reports of problems continue to pour in

Photo: Apple Inc.

Only hours after Apple (AAPL) released version 3.0 of the software that runs its Apple TV set-top box, complaints began appearing on its online discussion boards — the company's own early warning system for detecting major bugs.

By Saturday, Nov. 7, when Apple advised owners by e-mail to immediately update to version 3.01, the discussion topic TV 3.0 — Many Problems had drawn 134 posts and been read more than 10,000 times. A second topic, Apple TV lost all media, had 108 posts and more than 3,000 reads.

Unfortunately, update 3.01 addressed only the "lost all media" issue. The other problems — periodic freezes, random restarts, overheating, sluggishness, disappearing networks, screens going "blocky red" etc. — haven't gone away.

"3.0.1 has actually made things worse for me," wrote user "laozi" late Saturday evening. "Now iTunes won't see the AppleTV at all, and no combination of rebooting/resetting is helping. Totally stuck. Apple, please fix this."

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