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.

Comments

Wrong conclusion

[O('_')O_Bush]

What will end up happening is that those $500 iPod Classics will stay in their boxes and be sold for $3k a few years down the road. Same kind of thing happened with old NES/Gameboy Games, etc. If they wanted a music player without a touch-screen, well, there are hundreds of those not made by Apple. The people that want these are hoarders and price manipulators.

Re:Wrong conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

>

The proper term is "investor".

Wrong, the proper term is "speculator". An investor expects the investment to make a return for them through a growth in value. For example, they buy walmart stock because they feel that the company will continue to do business and thus give good returns through buy-backs, dividends, etc while balancing it against inflation, returns available from reliable investments (AKA US Gov Bonds), etc

A speculator buys something because he believes that it will go up in price without growth, that there is something wrong with the current pricing of the investment, or that an event will trigger a temporary price increase or decrease.

BTW, A good investor enters his investment for the reasons a good speculator goes in; the market price is clearly to low for the value of the company. But instead of selling it when the price returns to normal, he instead waits for the dividends. He also buys companies that he knows are not likely to have serious trouble. That is Warner Buffet buy the best companies when the price is undervalued and hold them.

Re:Wrong conclusion

[jedidiah]

No. The proper term is speculator.

Re:Wrong conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

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]

nah it's a dead cat bounce

[Spy Handler]

nostalgia only goes so far; you can't make a mass market product on nostalgia alone. They sell what, 50 million iphones every 3 months? A few thousand nostalgia seekers wouldn't even be pocket change inside the pants of a rounding error.

Plus the people seeking the mini hard drive storage capacity will be mollified in a couple years when iphone flash memory capacity reaches 256 - 500 GB.

Re:nah it's a dead cat bounce

[gstoddart]

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.

you can have my classic when you pry it from etc..

[roc97007]

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"?)

My iPod Classic has 160GB of capacity...

[osu-neko]

...and that was great when I got it, but it's gotten a bit on the small side actually. Apple wants me to upgrade, they need to produce a bigger unit. Current store only has them up to 64MB. I'm certainly not going to downgrade just to get a newer unit.

Re:Vinyl refuses to die too

[xaotikdesigns]

There is a select group of people that do indeed want to pick up some buggy whips. You just have to visit the right night clubs.

physical buttons are better

[steak]

with physical buttons, you dont have to look at it to know where your inputer is on the device.

Re:Ignored Niches

[ScooterComputer]

I agree. Many of the people I know who have hacked their classic iPods put in substantially larger HDs (or even SSDs), because they were available in sizes greater than Apple bothered to ship.

My vision is an "iPod" that would effectively house wireless, some kind of storage, whether SSD (perhaps for longer battery life and ruggedness) or HD (size), and a battery. Then the software would seamlessly integrate with Apple's OSes and the various media libraries. Effectively a portable "Home Sharing" library, a "local iCloud clone". Better yet, it would sync to iCloud and fill itself when availed an internet connection. iOS 8 brought several new APIs to facilitate just such a thing. Then we could merely stick the thing in gloveboxes or center consoles, and, using the iPhones/iPads we have, play our 500GB music/movie/podcast libraries anywhere without consuming costly cellular data or even NEEDING a cell/wifi connection. Why Apple hasn't seen the analog to old-school multi-CD changes and the entertainment systems in minivans, I'll never know. In the age of 16GB iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touchesit just makes sense.

I hate electronics consumer culture

[dskoll]

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.

Re:I hate electronics consumer culture

[Dutch Gun]

As an old(er) fart, I would respectfully disagree. Shitty firmware and an abandoned or poorly supported product is a perfectly good reason to throw something out and get new hardware. If you're dissatisfied enough with your phone to complain about it to other people, don't then turn around and grumble that people are telling you to get a better one. What else are they supposed to suggest? Just don't make the same mistake and buy a product that doesn't work well out of the box, or buy from the same company, thus rewarding their poor after-sales service.

The way I figure it, my time and satisfaction level are both valuable to me, and I'm willing to pay for a product that performs to my satisfaction. Of course, once I find a device that's working well for me, I'll hold onto it for a long time - typically long into obsolescence. I'm not into the "replace my gadget every year or two" race, but I don't see the point in putting up with unnecessary annoyances when better alternatives exist for a very modest price.

Rotating hard disk memory...

[dbc]

... just has a warmer sound.