Hardware design never got better than this, IMO. Fullscreen capacitive touch seems like an improvement in theory, but iPod controls sit right in the sweet spot between digital and analog.
Slap a DAC, BT5 connectivity with aptX, and 1TB+ SSD in one of those and I'd buy one.
Honestly, battery life on modern phones doesn't lend well to them playing a full-time second role as a music player. This is what you'd want on a camping trip. Maybe there's a nascent market here
Hardware today isn't worse per se. Back then we a music player, a phone, and a camera. Each form / UX specific to the problem being solved.
Now we have a single device that solves all three and more (e.g., biometrics) in albeit a least common denominator sorta way. A single form can't expect to complete with specialists.
I prefer a crap device that I use for comms (phone and SMS), and a second device with a better camera and more storage for media that only connects via wifi. There are plenty of instances I want a camera and/or music (often without even wifi) but not the temptation of being full connected.
My daughter started asking to use my old digital cameras about 3 or 4 years ago, the ones from the early 2000s.
"Why would you want to use those?" I asked her. "Your phone's camera is way better."
She said she liked "the look" (of the photos) and mentioned that some people she followed on Instagram used them. Turns out there's a universe of retro photo accounts using film, old digital cameras, and old video cameras.
It's weird to think that for people without clear memories of it, the 2000's might be imagined in the style of early digital photos the same way the 70's look like Super 8 footage or the early 20th century is sepia toned in my head.
Something that occurred to me the other day regarding my own "memories" of times before I was born:
From 1965–Present, the world is in color. The tone shifts a bit, but it's all in color.
1900–1964: Black and white. The world was actually black and white. Sometimes people moved around at a weird frame-rate :)
1800–1899: Color, but very much sepia toned. The whole world was slightly dirty and brownish, but the sky was still blue.
Big Bang–1799: Color, no sepia or nothing.
Of course this is all due to photography and movies. The general lack of both of those before the 20th Century (yeah, I know photography goes back further, but just barely. It wasn't widespread) means whatever images I get from that time period come from paintings and illustrations and written accounts. The sepia I perceive from the 1800s is basically thinking of them in terms of the railroads, westward expansion, etc.
So the result is that when I think about the Roman Empire—when was the last time you thought of that?—I see a richly-colored world like the one we have today. But when I think about WWII, it's all black and white. And the Civil War occurred in a vast, dusty, brownish field.
I have pretty much the same mental image, though with the 40's and 50's having some color probably mostly from period movies about that time.
What I really wonder is whether the photos and videos we're taking in the present will have some kind of subjective effect on how people remember our current time. It feels like we're finally at a point where most media has the fidelity to capture an objective image of the world, but that could just be that since we have the reference point of living through these times our minds can fill in the blanks.
Maybe the original comment I replied to's grandkid will want to borrow their old iPhone 12 to take retro pictures with someday.
I'm not sure a modern iPhone photo (say) is any more "objective" than a Kodachrome 64 slide, but there are sure going to be a lot more of them available!
Back when lomo was popular (still got mine, somewhere) I played around with drilling a tiny hole in a film SLR body cap and turning it into a pinhole camera. That produced some fun results.
Still using my 2006 iPod. I've replaced the battery (easy, $8) and replaced the hard drive with an SDXC adapter which bumped the capacity from 80GB to 256GB.
Such a great device. My car knows how to control it so I mostly just leave it in the car. Also great on airplanes, with the card conversion it has many hours of battery life.
Amazing how every comparable device made today is so much worse.
A 2006 iPod (probably the 5/video?) 80GB retailed for $350, and I bet an (inflation adjusted) $530 today could buy you something with a lot of advantages over it. A lot of the android ones I'm seeing from a quick google seem to have battery life around a day, if nothing else.
Not that I think it would be worth the money given you're already in a good place, just saying the situation isn't as bleak as you portrayed.
> Also great on airplanes, with the card conversion it has many hours of battery life.
How many?
> Amazing how every comparable device made today is so much worse.
Music devices are like cameras, the best one is always the one you actually have with you.
That said, nothing will compare to the tinny sound of a Rio PMP processing 128kbps mp3s that have been recompressed to 32kbps. Sounded like angels in your ears were playing the instruments.
Depending on the device you use, you can squeeze out > 40h of pure listening time.
> Music devices are like cameras, the best one is always the one you actually have with you.
Hehe, nice comparison. But the iPod is not about having the BEST sound quality. It's more about being decent enough in every feature it has. Pretty sure iPods can't compete with the Hi-Res DAPs like Fiio M11 Plus, Astell&Kern, iBasso and others in terms of sound quality. But the user experience may still be better, depending on your personal taste.
16 hours is easily achievable using CF and a "fat" back that fits a 1900mah battery. Rockbox provides a plugin called Battery Bench that allows you to benchmark how long you can continuously listen to music for.
Having recently switched from mSATA to SDXC I am yet to run a benchmark for SD. From recent usage I would guess 12hrs is fairly easily achievable.
EDIT: bwoodward has benched 60hrs of playback with a 5th gen Video and SDXC below.
Depending on the battery you use, it's between 40h to 60h playtime.
I successfully used the 2200mAh batteries from "thepartguru" on iPod classics with iFlash Quad. The advantage over the 3000mah ones is, that it still fits with a thin backplate.
You should also be aware, that putting more than 256GB into the device is considered as "unstable" depending on the content you use. Having more than 50000 tracks may lead to unexpected behaviour (random reboots, showing the wrong covers for items, etc.). Technically iFlash Quad supports up to 4TB microSD space, but in practise it just does not make any sense. I would not use more than 512GB - my most stable experience was 256GB.
The reboot loops are extra nasty, because once they happen, they do at random days of a week and if you don't use your iPod every day it fries your 2200mah battery after a few days of reboot loops... expensive experience ;)
Standalone MP3 players are increasingly useful, now that:
1) Most smartphones lack a headphone jack
2) Most smartphones lack an SD card slot
3) Your phone is probably the most important thing you have on your person, and conserving the battery life is more important than listening to music
I unfortunately ditched my Sansa Fuse mp3 player after I got my first smartphone, because the Galaxy S2 felt like a straight upgrade to a standalone mp3 player at the time, whereas the modern smartphone is, shall we say...no longer fit for purpose?
There's definitely a market for such things, but having looked in the past, the middle-class seems to have fallen out. You either have the dirt-cheap $20 things you see sometimes at Wal-Mart, or you see the $1000+ specialty audiophile players. I kinda wish I had something with my old Sansa Fuse's form-factor, but had bluetooth support and USB-C charging (the proprietary charger being pretty much the only reason why I haven't bought an old Sansa Fuze on ebay).
The YouTuber DankPods has an argument that the last iPod Touch is actually a good device for this use case because has a then-modern A10 which is well faster than what you need to run an MP3 player, you can use it with music streaming services to download your catalog, it has a headphone Jack, and it’s not that expensive to get a high capacity one.
That's all well and good, but I never had an iPod during its heyday. I had a Creative Zen Touch circa 2005/2006, and then the aforementioned Sansa's around 2009-2010. And, of course, my Android phones. I don't aim to change that now--it's a matter of pride.
I love standalone MP3 players, mostly because I don't like carrying my phone around with me at the gym or when I go out running. Right now I use a AP-60 II by HIDIZS. It was about $100, and perfectly fit into that sweet spot between the dirt-cheap questionably functional $20 models and the $1000 audiophile players. Sadly it looks like HIDIZS ceased to be a company at some point so once my current players and the spare I picked up for $50 die I might be out of luck.
I've been through many a music machine since my first true mp3 player (after a year of fumbling with a half-broken Sony MD player), but if I could shove a 512GB MicroSD card, new battery, and new screen into my old DAH-1500i MobiBLU Cube[1], I'd pick it up again and never let go. Even without playlists, it was perfect: tiny, but with a display (which I didn't even need to use half the time, as I could navigate its menus from my pocket, sight unseen), nicely clicky buttons, simple interface, quick startup.
So, you know, I could listen to music.
There was like a two-year period where these monochrome OLED jewels were offered (Sony's NW-E505/7[2] was another gem, horrible PC software notwithstanding), before ghastly full-color LCDs took over. And they topped out at around 4GB (32, if you include the Sansas that came later, which I don't). Damn shame.
Ah I had this, used it for years, and share your feelings. I really love interesting form factors, especially when they maintain practicality. There was a lot of interesting things back then, before the smartphone convergence, when electronics were still toys. I accidentally smashed the screen of my fancy phone (at the time) and on a whim I bought the cheap Nokia Twist as a replacement. Nearly two decades of touchscreens later and I still miss how tiny it was and how good it felt to slide open.
The small, square gadgets not made by Apple were often underrated. The Twist looks like a better version of the Blackjack II I had as my last non-touchscreen phone. I'd like to have tried it!
This is actually one of the things that makes me excited for AR (pending workable haptics). So many proofs-of-concept are just floating screens; what about functional digital fascimiles of our old gadgets? What about new ones with wild designs? What about modding the old, physical devices themselves to function as interfaces?
In the meantime, it would be nice if this sudden resurgence of interest in older gadgets makes it easier to rehabilitate and maintain them.
Just for anyone who's now thinking about using/restoring/upgrading their old iPod, I did it last year to my old 5th gen and I can highly recommend it. It's easy and rewarding.
The iPod is such an underestimated device... I'm still searching for a comparable replacement of my iPod Nano 6G / 7G. The thing is: Even modern Android players throwing tons of features at it, can't really compete with the user experience.
Most people only listen to music, so they will never miss the awesome audio book and podcast integration of the whole iPod line (besides the good music ability).
The iPod Nano is many years old and still:
- Is REALLY small
- Already has bluetooth low energy
- Supports cable headphone remote controls (EarPods have questionable audio quality, but the remote works absolutely flawless)
- Can play a variety of formats for a really long time with a 220mah battery
- Supports audio book single files with chapters (m4b format)
I modded many iPod Classics with Rockbox and iFlash Quads, but the original interface is hard to beat in terms of audio books. Unfortunately repairing iPod Nanos is really tough compared to the iPod classic 2009 (even this device already supports the cable headphone controls). Currenlty I'm trying to mod an iPod Nano 7G to have a 600mah battery by milling out the backplate, keeping the original BMS and placing an iPod Mini Battery (which fits perfectly in size, when the backplate is milled out). This way I hope I will have the only iPod Nano 7G with interchangeable batteries ;)
The best alternative I found so far is the Unihertz Jelly 2(e) Phone with selfhosted Audiobookshelf and different player / sync apps, but the experience is nowhere near the iPod... It's bigger, way thicker and the headphone controls are "unstable". Not to talk about the app crashes, unsupported android background service playing and missing / non-working chapter controls.
Disclaimer: I'm the developer of m4b-tool[1] and tone[2], so I know what I'm talking about :-)
I restored a first gen ipod last year that I originally purchased new. New OEM battery and drive, some polish and shine. Same old Sony drivers. Damn. Forget streaming. No one in streaming gives a shit about audio.
I got an iPod last year and have been really enjoying what's possible with them. Using rockbox opens up a lot of features, especially usb file transfer and flac. I've gone so far as to make my own themes to build upon the old UI
Does rockbox support headphone remote controls (vol+,vol-,play,pause,next,prev) and audio books with chapters these days via extra "audio books" category? I would be interested.
I love rockbox but never quite found the UX to feel quite as effortless as iPod OS. I've tried a few skins for it but all of them end up feeling slightly less slick than stock
I've still got a 3rd gen iPod I bought used that works great when plugged into power (needs a new battery).
It's been to 56 countries with me, been frozen at -40C/F many times, used at +50C and about a bazillion corrugations and nightmarish dust. Still going strong.
I am just now trying to enter this space. These things are apparently called "digital music players." Information on playlists is sketchy, at best, which seems to hold true everywhere, from car head units to the humble Roku, but that is the feature about which I care the most.
The click-wheel patent Apple had has finally elapsed.
I've been wondering how long until someone comes up with a drop-in logic board for the classic iPods, now that the patents are dropping off. Not only is it the only part with no new replacements, but mobile parts have come a long way.
My biggest worry would be matching the smoothness of the interface - rockbox has been going at least since my iPod Mini was new, and it still doesn't feel right.
I now somewhat expect to see discussion elsewhere or articles in questionable publications suggesting that the iPod’s sound quality is superior, on the false axiom that so-called vintage sound reproduction devices offer superior audio quality.
50 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 95.6 ms ] threadI loved my first generation iPod Nano. It was such a beautiful little thing.
Edit: this will have to do! https://web.archive.org/web/20060529192323/http://www.apple....
Slap a DAC, BT5 connectivity with aptX, and 1TB+ SSD in one of those and I'd buy one.
Honestly, battery life on modern phones doesn't lend well to them playing a full-time second role as a music player. This is what you'd want on a camping trip. Maybe there's a nascent market here
Now we have a single device that solves all three and more (e.g., biometrics) in albeit a least common denominator sorta way. A single form can't expect to complete with specialists.
I prefer a crap device that I use for comms (phone and SMS), and a second device with a better camera and more storage for media that only connects via wifi. There are plenty of instances I want a camera and/or music (often without even wifi) but not the temptation of being full connected.
"Why would you want to use those?" I asked her. "Your phone's camera is way better."
She said she liked "the look" (of the photos) and mentioned that some people she followed on Instagram used them. Turns out there's a universe of retro photo accounts using film, old digital cameras, and old video cameras.
There are also accounts featuring resurrected media from those eras. It looks mundane to me, but triggers some fond nostalgia (see https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/style/art-school-instagra...) even for people who didn't live through those eras.
From 1965–Present, the world is in color. The tone shifts a bit, but it's all in color.
1900–1964: Black and white. The world was actually black and white. Sometimes people moved around at a weird frame-rate :)
1800–1899: Color, but very much sepia toned. The whole world was slightly dirty and brownish, but the sky was still blue.
Big Bang–1799: Color, no sepia or nothing.
Of course this is all due to photography and movies. The general lack of both of those before the 20th Century (yeah, I know photography goes back further, but just barely. It wasn't widespread) means whatever images I get from that time period come from paintings and illustrations and written accounts. The sepia I perceive from the 1800s is basically thinking of them in terms of the railroads, westward expansion, etc.
So the result is that when I think about the Roman Empire—when was the last time you thought of that?—I see a richly-colored world like the one we have today. But when I think about WWII, it's all black and white. And the Civil War occurred in a vast, dusty, brownish field.
What I really wonder is whether the photos and videos we're taking in the present will have some kind of subjective effect on how people remember our current time. It feels like we're finally at a point where most media has the fidelity to capture an objective image of the world, but that could just be that since we have the reference point of living through these times our minds can fill in the blanks.
Maybe the original comment I replied to's grandkid will want to borrow their old iPhone 12 to take retro pictures with someday.
I appoligize for the source, but if you scroll down hopefully you get what I mean https://www.boredpanda.com/first-color-photos-vintage-old-au....
Such a great device. My car knows how to control it so I mostly just leave it in the car. Also great on airplanes, with the card conversion it has many hours of battery life.
Amazing how every comparable device made today is so much worse.
Not that I think it would be worth the money given you're already in a good place, just saying the situation isn't as bleak as you portrayed.
How many?
> Amazing how every comparable device made today is so much worse.
Music devices are like cameras, the best one is always the one you actually have with you.
That said, nothing will compare to the tinny sound of a Rio PMP processing 128kbps mp3s that have been recompressed to 32kbps. Sounded like angels in your ears were playing the instruments.
Depending on the device you use, you can squeeze out > 40h of pure listening time.
> Music devices are like cameras, the best one is always the one you actually have with you.
Hehe, nice comparison. But the iPod is not about having the BEST sound quality. It's more about being decent enough in every feature it has. Pretty sure iPods can't compete with the Hi-Res DAPs like Fiio M11 Plus, Astell&Kern, iBasso and others in terms of sound quality. But the user experience may still be better, depending on your personal taste.
I've trialled mSATA, SDXC and Compact Flash.
16 hours is easily achievable using CF and a "fat" back that fits a 1900mah battery. Rockbox provides a plugin called Battery Bench that allows you to benchmark how long you can continuously listen to music for.
Having recently switched from mSATA to SDXC I am yet to run a benchmark for SD. From recent usage I would guess 12hrs is fairly easily achievable.
EDIT: bwoodward has benched 60hrs of playback with a 5th gen Video and SDXC below.
I felt like I never had to charge the thing, so I just let it run. It went for just over 60hrs and still had 5% to go.
I successfully used the 2200mAh batteries from "thepartguru" on iPod classics with iFlash Quad. The advantage over the 3000mah ones is, that it still fits with a thin backplate.
You should also be aware, that putting more than 256GB into the device is considered as "unstable" depending on the content you use. Having more than 50000 tracks may lead to unexpected behaviour (random reboots, showing the wrong covers for items, etc.). Technically iFlash Quad supports up to 4TB microSD space, but in practise it just does not make any sense. I would not use more than 512GB - my most stable experience was 256GB.
The reboot loops are extra nasty, because once they happen, they do at random days of a week and if you don't use your iPod every day it fries your 2200mah battery after a few days of reboot loops... expensive experience ;)
1) Most smartphones lack a headphone jack
2) Most smartphones lack an SD card slot
3) Your phone is probably the most important thing you have on your person, and conserving the battery life is more important than listening to music
I unfortunately ditched my Sansa Fuse mp3 player after I got my first smartphone, because the Galaxy S2 felt like a straight upgrade to a standalone mp3 player at the time, whereas the modern smartphone is, shall we say...no longer fit for purpose?
There's definitely a market for such things, but having looked in the past, the middle-class seems to have fallen out. You either have the dirt-cheap $20 things you see sometimes at Wal-Mart, or you see the $1000+ specialty audiophile players. I kinda wish I had something with my old Sansa Fuse's form-factor, but had bluetooth support and USB-C charging (the proprietary charger being pretty much the only reason why I haven't bought an old Sansa Fuze on ebay).
Stepped on mine. I don't leave anything with a screen on the floor anymore. I still have it, hoping I can extract some old files from it someday.
So, you know, I could listen to music.
There was like a two-year period where these monochrome OLED jewels were offered (Sony's NW-E505/7[2] was another gem, horrible PC software notwithstanding), before ghastly full-color LCDs took over. And they topped out at around 4GB (32, if you include the Sansas that came later, which I don't). Damn shame.
[1]https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dah+1500i&iax=images&ia=images
[2]https://www.crutchfield.com/S-PPVgsomq9x6/p_158NWE505B/Sony-...
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Nokia+twist&kp=1&t=ffab&iar=images...
This is actually one of the things that makes me excited for AR (pending workable haptics). So many proofs-of-concept are just floating screens; what about functional digital fascimiles of our old gadgets? What about new ones with wild designs? What about modding the old, physical devices themselves to function as interfaces?
In the meantime, it would be nice if this sudden resurgence of interest in older gadgets makes it easier to rehabilitate and maintain them.
I can highly recommend this site for parts: https://eoe.works/
Most people only listen to music, so they will never miss the awesome audio book and podcast integration of the whole iPod line (besides the good music ability).
The iPod Nano is many years old and still:
I modded many iPod Classics with Rockbox and iFlash Quads, but the original interface is hard to beat in terms of audio books. Unfortunately repairing iPod Nanos is really tough compared to the iPod classic 2009 (even this device already supports the cable headphone controls). Currenlty I'm trying to mod an iPod Nano 7G to have a 600mah battery by milling out the backplate, keeping the original BMS and placing an iPod Mini Battery (which fits perfectly in size, when the backplate is milled out). This way I hope I will have the only iPod Nano 7G with interchangeable batteries ;)The best alternative I found so far is the Unihertz Jelly 2(e) Phone with selfhosted Audiobookshelf and different player / sync apps, but the experience is nowhere near the iPod... It's bigger, way thicker and the headphone controls are "unstable". Not to talk about the app crashes, unsupported android background service playing and missing / non-working chapter controls.
Disclaimer: I'm the developer of m4b-tool[1] and tone[2], so I know what I'm talking about :-)
[1]: https://github.com/sandreas/m4b-tool [2]: https://github.com/sandreas/tone
A virtual iPod where you can add a Spotify playlist then send the link to your friends.
https://www.jukelab.com/ipod?layout=pink
There are other “vintage” music players like vinyl, cassette, Winamp and MTV.
https://github.com/D0-0K/adwaitapod
It's been to 56 countries with me, been frozen at -40C/F many times, used at +50C and about a bazillion corrugations and nightmarish dust. Still going strong.
The click-wheel patent Apple had has finally elapsed.
My biggest worry would be matching the smoothness of the interface - rockbox has been going at least since my iPod Mini was new, and it still doesn't feel right.