iPod My new iPod... The Classic (please don't axe it apple)

How do you like searching for 100 gb + of music with the scroll wheel?

AppleDApp said:

How do you like searching for 100 gb + of music with the scroll wheel?

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It's horrible really. This has been my complaint since the 5G. It was a cool novelty for awhile, something apple could count on as a unique selling point, but after using a touch screen or even other mp3 players like the failed Zune and its toshiba predecessor, I was convinced. I know the fanboys will pick up their pitchforks over this, but I'm coming at this as an apple fan and stock holder.

The one thing I will credit the scroll wheel with is that it basically revolutionized how we interface with our gadgets. It was unique enough to get people's interest. It's iconic for sure, but in most cases time makes old things obsolete.

Congratulations on your buy!
I'd love to get a classic but I just got an iPhone and I can't afford a classic at the moment.

JMG said:

It's horrible really. This has been my complaint since the 5G. It was a cool novelty for awhile, something apple could count on as a unique selling point, but after using a touch screen or even other mp3 players like the failed Zune and its toshiba predecessor, I was convinced. I know the fanboys will pick up their pitchforks over this, but I'm coming at this as an apple fan and stock holder.

The one thing I will credit the scroll wheel with is that it basically revolutionized how we interface with our gadgets. It was unique enough to get people's interest. It's iconic for sure, but in most cases time makes old things obsolete.

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Creative had a nice way of doing it with the zen vision mp3 players. Then again they did not sell in very high storage capacity.

AppleDApp said:

Creative had a nice way of doing it with the zen vision mp3 players. Then again they did not sell in very high storage capacity.

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Yes, Apple had a solid experience all around with their hardware and software integration. Brilliant marketing and brand cache, which is why it's considered the "best" and why others have been forced to the sidelines. Along with that reputation came the assumption that the scroll wheel aka click wheel was the best method of interface, but it's not necessarily true in all cases.

I've had a 80 gig classic since 2008 (I think, WHenever they were first release) and it's been with me ever since. It's my way of disconnecting from the world when I am at home. It has my entire library on it. Lots of fond memories with that ipod and I hope for many more to come.

Same case since the first day I bought the ipod too

student_trap said:

Hello everyone,

it's been ages since I last started a thread here but I just had to express somewhere that I think my new classic (which is hardly new in reality as it hasn't changed since 09!) is absolutely brilliant.

So I am sitting here, typing this post on my iPad, my iPhone in my pocket, MacBook on the coffee table and mac pro in the office, but am waxing lyrical over what many would deem the most boring bit of apple tech I own.

Why do I like it so much... Because I had forgotten just how wonderful it is to have all my songs in my pocket again.

And that's it really, it's nice that it doesn't have apps, it's nice that nobody can interrupt my listening by phoning me, it's nice that I can change songs without looking at it. But what I truly enjoy is humming a random tune, reaching in my pocket, and being able to listen to it right away.

I know this post may sound totally useless, and in a way it is. But to all those who like their classic iPod, please just jot a reply below, in the hope that when our current classics die, we will be able to walk straight back into an apple store to buy another.

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Yes The big plus for me is having all my music in one place. I usually have my iPod in my speaker dock or on the go and it's great. Not all my music is on my computer and is stored on an external drive. I love knowing that I can be thinking about a song and being able to just listen to it and not say oh no it's not on my iPod it's on my computer. Also love it when I am hanging out with friends or driving around and being able to listen to all my tunes. I love being able to be driving with friends and pulling up the most random pop song and laughing with my buddies lol.

I really wish Apple had transitioned to using glass trackpad/clickwheels when the aluminum classic came out. My old classic (recently sold) was practically unusable because of how worn out the clickwheel was.

sharpycl said:

I've had a 80 gig classic since 2008 (I think, WHenever they were first release) and it's been with me ever since. It's my way of disconnecting from the world when I am at home. It has my entire library on it. Lots of fond memories with that ipod and I hope for many more to come.

Same case since the first day I bought the ipod too

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I'm in the exact same position, and that 80GB classic travels with me everywhere I go.....which includes some very strange places. A great little iPod, nice and solid and capacious. As it happens, I've had mine since 2008, too.

I also have an iTouch, but that is too attractive to felonious nimble fingers, so it rarely travels with me.

Still love my 80GB classic think I would be lost without it, still gets regular use although mainly at home these days

I just update the odd bit of music on my iPhone for on the go or @ work

i use my 160 daily. I really wanna do the hd upgrade because I'm well out of space but keep praying Apple just keeps it around to be nostalgic and up's the hard drive.... however if they do a big touch someday I'll switch. Capacity is king for my application of an ipod these days.

Why can't they do an ipod touch with an old spinning hd or a ssd to run the os and have a dedicated spinning drive for storage. The people buying classics or this thing I dream of are NOT worried about the thickness that makes it like a deck of cards as opposed to the single digit mm thickness'!

My Classic Died

My Ipod Classic 80gb died a couple weeks ago. I've been using my iphone for music waiting to see what Apple does tomorrow. I'm hoping they keep the classic, maybe bump the capacity. I hope I'm wrong but I just don't see them going with a high capacity ssd as it would be to expensive. At any rate, if they release a high capacity Ipod classic I'm buying, if they do nothing and keep it the same I'm still buying, if they discontinue I'm gonna be sad.

All I want is something that plays music, I have my iphone for apps, photos and videos.

JMG said:

It's horrible really. This has been my complaint since the 5G. It was a cool novelty for awhile, something apple could count on as a unique selling point, but after using a touch screen or even other mp3 players like the failed Zune and its toshiba predecessor, I was convinced. I know the fanboys will pick up their pitchforks over this, but I'm coming at this as an apple fan and stock holder.

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Eh, well, I think you're wrong. I actually went back to my Classic today when my 3.5mm input died and, because I'm using the Amazon Cloud Player app on my iPhone and the stupid Honda iPod integration won't see anything but the Music app. Anyway, I haven't used the click-wheel in ages and found it to be refreshing fast and easy to find exactly what I wanted - it didn't scroll past everything like the iOS interface does if you scroll fast. You stop scrolling and it stops scrolling. It's an incredibly simple interface to use.

But Apple's going to get rid of it sooner or later because it's ALL mechanical, and they want to get rid of everything mechanical. Watch and see, they will eventually do away with pretty much every physical button on these new iOS devices in favor of touch controls. The click-wheel is just going to be the first to disappear. I'm going to miss it - this has been a very handy, dependable player, that's for sure. No compatibility issues, etc. "It just works."

malnar said:

Eh, well, I think you're wrong. I actually went back to my Classic today when my 3.5mm input died and, because I'm using the Amazon Cloud Player app on my iPhone and the stupid Honda iPod integration won't see anything but the Music app. Anyway, I haven't used the click-wheel in ages and found it to be refreshing fast and easy to find exactly what I wanted - it didn't scroll past everything like the iOS interface does if you scroll fast. You stop scrolling and it stops scrolling. It's an incredibly simple interface to use.

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I use my iphone in my car and the classic in my wife's and honestly it's a chore to use the classic compared. First of all, as the driver, I don't usually want to scroll to find a song, I usually just hit playlists and then the playlist. Or I use the search function with the keyboard, which is about 1,000,000 times easier to use than the clickwheel to input characters. Not to mention the ease of making a playlist in ios vs the ipod interface.

Now, with the ipod integration kits, I don't have to mess with volume anymore in either cars, because it all straight through the stereo, but even something as simple as changing the volume is much better on the iphone. Not only a physical button, but a slider that is almost always available by hitting the now playing button. With the ipod you have to wait for the screen to go back to the now playing screen or navigate to the main menu and scroll all the way down if you want to change the volume if you have started to browse for other songs. I know, this is a software issue, but it really is connected to the clickwheel hardware because of the limited versatility in it's interface by nature. It's just a big wheel with 5 buttons.

Your other argument that it's easier to not scroll past a song is somewhat valid, but I argue that I have scrolled passed many a song on the clickwheel simply because I have 19,000 tracks. That is A LOT of albums, songs, artists etc to scroll through and it's a real chore to get to the bottom. Imagine twirling your thumbs for what seems like a long time until the browsing by alphabet mode kicks in, then you miss your letter because you were spinning so fast, so you scroll back, then you let go, then you scroll for specific track on that letter.... painful. ALSO, consider this argument on physical buttons vs touch screens:

The directional pad on the zune and it's predecessors weren't revolutionary, and maybe that's partially why it wasn't as successful, but one thing they got right was the physical interface. It was easier to scroll for songs because all you had to do was hold down the "down" button then stop. You could tap the "down" button as many times as the song that you wanted was down the list and that's it. The clickwheel required much more fine motor control to exactly go down just a few selections. It's simple biomechanics... either press a button, or rotate your thumb a certain speed. One of those is much more simple to accomplish especially if you are driving, running etc.

Summary: you can do more with a touch screen, and even if you prefer a physical interface, the directional pad was more efficient, but less flashy, than a clickwheel.

Just ordered a new Classic today to replace my 80gb Classic that died. The touch simply does not have enough room. Besides my normal Itunes library I do a lot of recording in Logic, I like to mix down to higher bitrate, it takes up a lot of room. The Classic is perfect, I have my iphone for other stuff. I just need the ipod for music.

they should do away with the classic and make a hard-disk version of the touch

Well it looks like after today i would be targeting another Black Classic Ipod for $249 or cheaper. I was really hoping for an HD upgrade in the touch to at least 160 or past that. I really want to own a touch someday but 64 gig just wont cut it. I have the 80gig 5.5 version of the ipod with that nice ipod black smooth sheen over it, and it works great. BUT ive near filled it to 80 gig, so i need something bigger. Why are they not increasing the size of the touchs' highest capacity?? If they just would have announced that the new ipod touch at $399 was 160 gig capacity i would have been all over that at started to save my $$ for it. At least i can buy a new pair of earpods at a reasonable price $30.

Macinfriend said:

Well it looks like after today i would be targeting another Black Classic Ipod for $249 or cheaper. I was really hoping for an HD upgrade in the touch to at least 160 or past that. I really want to own a touch someday but 64 gig just wont cut it. I have the 80gig 5.5 version of the ipod with that nice ipod black smooth sheen over it, and it works great. BUT ive near filled it to 80 gig, so i need something bigger. Why are they not increasing the size of the touchs' highest capacity?? If they just would have announced that the new ipod touch at $399 was 160 gig capacity i would have been all over that at started to save my $$ for it. At least i can buy a new pair of earpods at a reasonable price $30.

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One big reason they are not pushing for a super high capacity iTouch is because most people are predicting that many things will be cloud based and streaming. iCloud isn't truly streaming right now, but Google Music is and I have uploaded all 19,000 of my songs to be able to play from my iPhone on the go (as long as I have signal! )

Have the 6 (I think) and just recently it took up residence in my truck (I use it with Ford Sync). I used the iPod touch 4 for awhile instead but the classic is better hands free. My son started college this year and am going to get him a 160gb classic for Christmas

JMG said:

One big reason they are not pushing for a super high capacity iTouch is because most people are predicting that many things will be cloud based and streaming. iCloud isn't truly streaming right now, but Google Music is and I have uploaded all 19,000 of my songs to be able to play from my iPhone on the go (as long as I have signal! )

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Which is backwards.
With cloud you have to have:
- a reliable connection
- deal with monthly overages
- deal with server down time
- deal with security issues, such as hackers deleting all your data
- must be in a area where you can get good reception (which isn't poSsible half the time)
- deal with overloaded servers slowing you down
- rent space yearly or monthly instead of outright owning it

There is zero benefit to cloud for users and I hope people aren't stupid enough to fall for it.

The only benefit for cloud is:
- back ups
- cross platform

Apple seems to think their lack of capacity updates will push me to cloud when in fact I'll just find another company even though there isn't anything that compares to the classic.

iEvolution said:

Which is backwards.
With cloud you have to have:
- a reliable connection
- deal with monthly overages
- deal with server down time
- deal with security issues, such as hackers deleting all your data
- must be in a area where you can get good reception (which isn't poSsible half the time)
- deal with overloaded servers slowing you down
- rent space yearly or monthly instead of outright owning it

There is zero benefit to cloud for users and I hope people aren't stupid enough to fall for it.

The only benefit for cloud is:
- back ups
- cross platform

Apple seems to think their lack of capacity updates will push me to cloud when in fact I'll just find another company even though there isn't anything that compares to the classic.

Click to expand...

Thats the old way of thinking. Much like how more and more people are renting movies to stream online rather than physical disks, or watching TV shows online, the idea that you need to physically hold something in your hand to "own" it will disappear in time. Think of how much actual cash goes in your hand when you get a paycheck. A VERY small percentage. I usually only carry a few hundred dollars. Most bills are paid electronically. I don't physically touch about 99% of the income I make. All of my monetary lively hood and hard work is a bunch of 1s and 0s on some servers out there that belong to the banks. What if THAT system went down or the ATMs stopped working for some reason? If I can trust the system with my money, one would assume that I would trust them with my music. That is not to say that I will delete my music from my local hard drive. It's still all there, but it just doesn't need to be physically on my phone.

One day, you will have a signal everywhere you go to a reasonably reliable degree. Maybe thats not today, but what apple usually does is try to jump the gun to push their standing on the edge of technology. Remember how people used to complain about the lack of a physical keyboard? Not so much complaining now as the tvirtual board is more and more accepted.

JMG said:

Thats the old way of thinking. Much like how more and more people are renting movies to stream online rather than physical disks, or watching TV shows online, the idea that you need to physically hold something in your hand to "own" it will disappear in time. Think of how much actual cash goes in your hand when you get a paycheck. A VERY small percentage. I usually only carry a few hundred dollars. Most bills are paid electronically. I don't physically touch about 99% of the income I make. All of my monetary lively hood and hard work is a bunch of 1s and 0s on some servers out there that belong to the banks. What if THAT system went down or the ATMs stopped working for some reason? If I can trust the system with my money, one would assume that I would trust them with my music. That is not to say that I will delete my music from my local hard drive. It's still all there, but it just doesn't need to be physically on my phone.

One day, you will have a signal everywhere you go to a reasonably reliable degree. Maybe thats not today, but what apple usually does is try to jump the gun to push their standing on the edge of technology. Remember how people used to complain about the lack of a physical keyboard? Not so much complaining now as the tvirtual board is more and more accepted.

Click to expand...

Although accepted, it doesn't change the fact that typing on a virtual keyboard is still kind of terrible. It is rare to find a user who thinks that virtual keyboards are better for lengthy emails than a blackberry. On the other hand, the versatility of a 4 inch touch screen and thin device more than make up for that. But the typing still sucks.

The day when I have signal in the Subway, don't have to pay for signal on an airplane, or have 100% reliable signal on interstates are far into the future. These are very common use cases for my iPod use.

iEvolution said:

Which is backwards.
With cloud you have to have:
- a reliable connection
- deal with monthly overages
- deal with server down time
- deal with security issues, such as hackers deleting all your data
- must be in a area where you can get good reception (which isn't poSsible half the time)
- deal with overloaded servers slowing you down
- rent space yearly or monthly instead of outright owning it

There is zero benefit to cloud for users and I hope people aren't stupid enough to fall for it.

The only benefit for cloud is:
- back ups
- cross platform

Apple seems to think their lack of capacity updates will push me to cloud when in fact I'll just find another company even though there isn't anything that compares to the classic.

Click to expand...

Well argued case against the cloud.

Just because something is new and shiny doesn't mean its always the way forward.

Don’t Call My iPod Classic “Classic”

I might be getting a Classic soon, so that I can have my entire music collection with me. My 64GB iPhone 4S can hold all my music, but only if I compress all my Apple Lossless CD rips. I'm glad Apple hasn't discontinued it yet. I love the click wheel interface on my 5th gen iPod nano.

Still love mine and can't really afford a 64Gb iPhone so I can carry everything around, even that wouldn't be enough with Apps though

Ours spends most of it's time docked @ home

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allan said:

Don’t Call My iPod Classic “Classic”

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Ha! Very good read that one