iPod in Finder but not iTunes?

Ok... here's everything I know:

Info on my iPod:
- 5th generation (video,) black, 30 GB
- Battery is near full
- It plays music/video/games just fine.
- Disk mode is enabled
- I had to restore it a month or two ago... it had been appearing in iTunes but it wouldn't play music or anything and iTunes said it was corrupt. (Doesn't appear to be the issue.)
- Running the newest software that was available about a week ago... not sure if I've synced since then.

Info on my iMac:
- 2007 Al, 24", 2.4 GHz, 1 GB RAM originally, upgraded to 3 GB RAM since
- Computer is on
- Sees my iPod just fine... the files can all be moved back and forth and nothing appears corrupt or anything.
- Running 10.5.6

Info on iTunes:
- I just added about 10 albums worth of music, and downloaded a few podcasts... thus the reason I want to sync my iPod.
- Running 8.0.2
- It worked just fine the last time I synced it.

The only thing I can think of that's changed since the last time I synced is a friend used Senuti to copy some music off of my iPod... they've done that before though and it never caused an issue.

I've already tried disconnecting my iPod, restarting it, then plugging it back in. It mounted in Finder but not in iTunes. I restarted my computer. It again mounted in Finder but not in iTunes.

So... what's wrong? I'd try restoring my iPod to factory defaults except I can't even do that because iTunes doesn't see my iPod. (And besides, the iPod itself doesn't seem corrupt.)

 

Hello?

I really would appreciate being able to get the new music onto my iPod...

help anyone?

I was hoping to continue using this iPod until Apple releases a 64 GB iPod Touch for me to upgrade to (hopefully this summer.)

Edit: Alright, I fixed it.

I realized that if I plug my iPod in when iTunes is turned off, iTunes would know to start up. So I knew it realized I'd plugged an iPod in and tried to have iTunes mount it. The only issue is...

"There's a new version of iTunes available."

NO!

I know what you're thinking, and you're wrong.

You were thinking "He's got a buggy version of iTunes and he hasn't updated to the newer, working version of iTunes yet." Pff. I kinda thought about updating it but I realized that wasn't the issue, the version of iTunes I'm running right now has successfully synced my iPod several times.

No, the real issue is that it's sending an alert to open that little warning window when really, it should be sending the message for iTunes to mount my iPod. So I went into the general options of iTunes and told it to stop checking for new updates. I quit iTunes, started it back up, and it instantly synced with my iPod without any warning at all.

And just to test my theory, I turned the check for updates back on and what do you know, my iPod once again failed to sync.

So yeah. Having an older version doesn't hurt you so much as letting it find out that there's a newer version does.