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Apple's iPod Classic Refuses To Die
Nerval's Lobster writes A funny thing happened to the iPod Classic on its way to the dustbin of history: people seemed unwilling to actually give it up. Apple quietly removed the iPod Classic from its online storefront in early September, on the same day CEO Tim Cook revealed the latest iPhones and the upcoming Apple Watch. At 12 years old, the device was ancient by technology-industry standards, but its design was iconic, and a subset of diehard music fans seemed to appreciate its considerable storage capacity. At least some of those diehard fans are now paying four times the iPod Classic's original selling price for units still in the box. The blog 9to5Mac mentions Amazon selling some last-generation iPod Classics for $500 and above. Clearly, some people haven't gotten the memo that touch-screens and streaming music were supposed to be the way of the future.
You can build one right now, but it won't be cheap:
- Any android phone with microSD and removable back that has a "thick" back plate available for extended batteries.
- A 512GB SD card.
- A microSD-to-SD cable
In the near future Sandisk will probably be able to cram a hole TB in an SD card and Android phones with 128GB/256GB internal storage are coming.
No. The proper term is speculator.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It's not just the Classic that's missed. I like the size and convenience of the Nano, but despise the newest generations with their touchscreen interfaces. I use my Nano 5g walking and driving. I like that I can easily hit play/pause or skip without having to take my attention away from what's in front of me.
That's precisely what's keeping my iPod classic in use years later. With the clickwheel thing, I can keep the ipod in my pocket and still pause/unpause or change tracks without having to reach into the pocket, just by putting a bit of pressure on the area where I know the wheel is. Volume changes need hand in pocket, but none of these basic interactions require removing it from my pocket and looking at the device, so it's less distracting.
You can't get that with a touchscreen player. The closest I've seen is sometimes players can use hardware buttons, and there are headphones that have controls built in, but I've tried both methods before and they just aren't as convenient as the ipod classic's wheel.
The massive storage and long battery life are also useful. Even years later (6 or more?) my ipod classic gets better battery life than any phone I've used, if both are playing music non-stop. Plus I can have my entire collection at decent quality instead of a fraction of my collection at inferior quality.
I'm not even an Apple fan, and I don't generally like their products, but the pre-touchscreen ipod is a fine piece of hardware that deserved its popularity. Its biggest failing was Apple deciding to shackle it to iTunes, but once I activated the device I didn't care because Linux had good enough support for adding playlists and music.