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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.
The reason is simple. It's an ignored niche.
I have 1tb of music. I want to most of this on one mp3 player. Yet nearly every mp3 maker has moved to flash memory or sd cards. To slim down my music collection to 8gb is absurd. So people like me have to stick to their old spinny disc mp3 players. 80gb is better than 8...
Majority of people stream their music these days. But there are still a few of us audiophiles that rather listen to higher quality junk directly from their file trees.
Call me old fashion, but get off my lawn... and make a 500gb mp3 player pleeeeeease.
I have a Gen 3 (firewire, not usb) that I've repaired twice (replaced battery and headphone jack) and I'm about to repair for a third time (another battery and a hard drive). It does what I need, holds a massive amount of music, and I find the interface quicker and more intuitive than my daughter's Touch.
Could it be that Apple is having its "Windows XP" moment? That the Classic design was good enough that people just didn't see the reason to upgrade? (And doesn't this run counter to the Apple culture of "abandon your gadget when the next incremental improvement comes out"?)
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
> Apple has in fact turned into the exact kind of company they used to claim they railed against. The cookie cutter mass produced, locked down, conformity based ideal that the old '1984' ad was railing against. Their job culture was most likely always like that, but especially with all the new 'segregated temp employee' churn machines it has only gotten worse.
Exactly. That's it in a nutshell. We have met the enemy and he is us.
To carry this further, you can imagine Apple devices eventually be offered in those impossible-to-open hard molded plastic shells hanging up near the checkout counter. If the device is MEANT to be a throw-away, doesn't that just SCREAM "commodity"? Can Apple have it both ways? Boutique business model with disposable products? I'm thinking, not for long.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Yes, it's very trendy to get a new phone every year. And yes, it's fun to laugh at those neanderthals and troglodytes who have *gasp* last generation's iPod.
Now trace all those discarded electronics to their end-of-life graves and see how we're poisoning the environment with arsenic, plastics, cadmium and other toxic chemicals, all just to satisfy our craving for shiny things.
I would be proud to own a 12-year-old piece of electronic gear that still functions and does what I need. I have a five-year-old phone (Nokia N900) and bought my daughter's iPod third-hand for $30; it plays my music just fine. No plans to replace the phone or the iPod any time soon.
It has nothing at all to do with nostalgia. Not even a little. It has to do with a simple, clean device with a lot of storage, that just works.
I updated the OS on my iPod touch .. and three apps broke.
My iPod Classic? It doesn't run iOS, doesn't have apps to break, has huge battery life. Which means until it physically dies, it's going to keep doing the exact same thing.
I wish I'd realized they were getting rid of them , because I'd have bought another one.
For a simple travel player which lets me bring tons of stuff and all that ... I really would rather have that than my Touch. Because I could bring a crap ton of music and movies, and play them through the TV with a simple cable.
My iPod touch has made a lot of business trips in hotels a lot more pleasant.
The old fashioned iPod classic with a spinning HD might be relatively low-tech these days. But it did what it did really damned well.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
not to those in the financial services sector.
Investors and speculators are not normally considered the same thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculation#Speculation_and_investment
The view of what distinguishes investment from speculation and speculation from excessive speculation varies widely among pundits, legislators and academics. Some sources note that speculation is simply a higher risk form of investment. Others define speculation more narrowly as positions not characterized as hedging.[2] The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission defines a speculator as "a trader who does not hedge, but who trades with the objective of achieving profits through the successful anticipation of price movements."[3] The agency emphasizes that speculators serve important market functions, but defines excessive speculation as harmful to the proper functioning of futures markets.[4]