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Today Marks the 20th Anniversary of the iPod
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Speaking from personal experience the Apple Watch has a dedicated media partition on it that no matter what you can’t use more than 10gb, it sucks and will only resort to piggybacking off your iPhone for it to work
I've been on a shuffle all songs in my library kick lately and it takes me back to the days of using my iPods. It'll play songs that my personal station would never play. Really annoying when it tries to play songs that I uploaded from my pre-Apple Music library and says they're no longer available though.
I didn't get to fully appreciate the iPod until the 4th gen nano came out. I started out with an OG shuffle, but back then Apple's software wasn't accessible, particularly iTunes for Windows. I pretty much just had to let autofill load it up for me. A few months later I got an add on program that cost around $100 that made iTunes more usable with the screen reading software I was using. I also got a 5th gen 30GB iPod. It was great being able to carry my whole library around on that thing, but the iPod itself wasn't fully accessible. I had to resort to counting clicks on the clickwheel to find what I was looking for. Doable, but not ideal.
Then rockbox came out for the iPod and with it, rutimentary accessibility. You could have it spell out the name of each song letter by letter, or with a little more work you could have your computer generate mp3's of the names of each of your songs using its text to speech voice; Apple would later adopt this. I didn't like the rockbox interface, and it also couldn't play songs you bought from the iTunes store. When I found out the new PDA I was using supported ID3 tags, I sold my iPod since this had full accessibility. But syncing it through Windows media player was a huge pain in the butt and made me miss iTunes.
So when the 4th gen nano came out in 2008, it was one of the rare devices I had to have day one. I got a blue 16GB. Apple had started to embrace accessibility and added spoken menus using tags that iTunes would generate. Yeah they took up a little bit of space, but it was infinitely better than anything I'd used before. Every once in a while, some of the tags would go missing, necessitating a resync. I loved that little thing though and kinda wished I had held onto it just for nostalgia. It made walking around campus in college so much more enjoyable. Then in 2009 VoiceOver came to the iPhone, and by extension the 3rd gen iPod touch, which I got for Christmas that year. In 2010 Apple brought a full-featured VoiceOver to the 6th gen nano, and had I not had my touch I would've jumped on that. Like many people I'm sure, I graduated from that iPod touch to what has now been several iPhones over the following years.
As much of a music freak as I am, with AM I have it so much better now. If there's a song I want to hear, I can just search for it or if I'm feeling lazy, just ask Siri to play it. Browsing around the curated playlists, or just the AM catalog in general is awesome and can be a huge time suck. No more going somewhere like Walmart or Target to check out CD's and having to have someone with me who thinks they know what kind of music I like, but may not, so I don't get the full picture of what's available.
The iPod was absolutely awesome for its time though. Apple doesn't do nostalgia like Nintendo. Heck even though the NES and SNES classic popularized the mini systems, they've been replaced by the Switch online subscription. There's no N64 classic; they just added those games to the Switch sub.
I didn't get to fully appreciate the iPod until the 4th gen nano came out. I started out with an OG shuffle, but back then Apple's software wasn't accessible, particularly iTunes for Windows. I pretty much just had to let autofill load it up for me. A few months later I got an add on program that cost around $100 that made iTunes more usable with the screen reading software I was using. I also got a 5th gen 30GB iPod. It was great being able to carry my whole library around on that thing, but the iPod itself wasn't fully accessible. I had to resort to counting clicks on the clickwheel to find what I was looking for. Doable, but not ideal.
Then rockbox came out for the iPod and with it, rutimentary accessibility. You could have it spell out the name of each song letter by letter, or with a little more work you could have your computer generate mp3's of the names of each of your songs using its text to speech voice; Apple would later adopt this. I didn't like the rockbox interface, and it also couldn't play songs you bought from the iTunes store. When I found out the new PDA I was using supported ID3 tags, I sold my iPod since this had full accessibility. But syncing it through Windows media player was a huge pain in the butt and made me miss iTunes.
So when the 4th gen nano came out in 2008, it was one of the rare devices I had to have day one. I got a blue 16GB. Apple had started to embrace accessibility and added spoken menus using tags that iTunes would generate. Yeah they took up a little bit of space, but it was infinitely better than anything I'd used before. Every once in a while, some of the tags would go missing, necessitating a resync. I loved that little thing though and kinda wished I had held onto it just for nostalgia. It made walking around campus in college so much more enjoyable. Then in 2009 VoiceOver came to the iPhone, and by extension the 3rd gen iPod touch, which I got for Christmas that year. In 2010 Apple brought a full-featured VoiceOver to the 6th gen nano, and had I not had my touch I would've jumped on that. Like many people I'm sure, I graduated from that iPod touch to what has now been several iPhones over the following years.
As much of a music freak as I am, with AM I have it so much better now. If there's a song I want to hear, I can just search for it or if I'm feeling lazy, just ask Siri to play it. Browsing around the curated playlists, or just the AM catalog in general is awesome and can be a huge time suck. No more going somewhere like Walmart or Target to check out CD's and having to have someone with me who thinks they know what kind of music I like, but may not, so I don't get the full picture of what's available.
The iPod was absolutely awesome for its time though. Apple doesn't do nostalgia like Nintendo. Heck even though the NES and SNES classic popularized the mini systems, they've been replaced by the Switch online subscription. There's no N64 classic; they just added those games to the Switch sub.
Probably you have many different ways to enjoy your music, so the iPod became an extra device that was displaced. Not just your Apple Watch, but the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV and HomePod can do everything the iPod would do with your library.
I’d still love for it to come out, but I don’t think Apple wants you to just use an Apple Watch.
Aside from having Cover Flow for ease of landscape device usage, that is, after the release of iOS 7.
Yes good point. The need for a dedicated player just diminished when all these devices can play music quite easily!
I’ve had almost every iPod since the first one and I still use the last 7th Gen classic every day (i have 3!). I‘m quite bummed out that Apple stopped improving and selling them, because the click wheel is superior to a touch screen in many situations. I listen to my iPod when cooking and exercising, and since I have it on a belt clip, and thanks to the scroll wheel, I can quickly adjust volume, change tracks or fast forward with one hand without looking at it, while the iPod is still attached to my belt. Using my iPhone in the same way is a nightmare in comparison since I have to look a at it, which forces me to remove it from the clip and use both hands. I know that I can use voice control, but the scroll wheel still beats it every time. At least I’m glad that you can still buy the old iPods on eBay. That‘s what I do whenever they break.
I still use my iPod Classic 80GB (with a 128GB SD card and new battery) on trips. The physical controls are much more pleasant when all you need is music control. I'd definitely jump on a higher-capacity or longer-lived one with WiFi (and BT I guess for the people who want that.)
I use my iPod Classic every night but the battery seems to be getting weaker and weaker, doesn't last long.
Are there any players out there similar to the iPod that will work with Apple Music? I remember Neil Young started a company that produced a supposedly higher sound quality device but I don't know if it still exists anymore.
Are there any players out there similar to the iPod that will work with Apple Music? I remember Neil Young started a company that produced a supposedly higher sound quality device but I don't know if it still exists anymore.
In 2018?
Yeah, I don’t think they were selling millions of iPod Nanos and shuffles in 2018.
Instead they were selling millions of Apple watches and Apple Music subscriptions.
And Apple has now sold over 2 billion iPhones, easily 5-6 times the number of all iPods sold. They knew where the trend was headed and a single-function device- as nice as it was - was declining in popularity compared to the most successful pocket computers that smartphones are these days.
At the moment when Steve Jobs called iPhone the best iPod they made it was clear that the nano, shuffle and classic weren’t meant to stick around for much longer.