[HN Gopher] Apple is discontinuing the iPod
___________________________________________________________________
Apple is discontinuing the iPod
Author : minimaxir
Score : 360 points
Date : 2022-05-10 16:02 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.apple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.apple.com)
| perardi wrote:
| Looks like I finally moved my dad from an iPod touch to an iPhone
| SE at the right time.
|
| (He was convinced, for whatever reason, he couldn't figure out
| how to use an iPhone...despite he uses an iPod touch, and an
| iPad, and quite fluently. And within 1 day he was delighted,
| because he finally had something approximating a useful camera in
| his pocket.)
| m463 wrote:
| I liked that ipods were "safe".
|
| I think a lot of non tech people would REALLY benefit from a
| setting to "confirm before dialing" in ios.
|
| For example, touching ANYTHING in the phone app will
| immediately dial that number.
|
| That leads to real problems with inexperienced users, who then
| get the mindset that they're not good with tech.
|
| To be clear - the blame here is 100% on apple.
|
| Most people I know have butt dialed. I consider myself highly
| aware of my phone, yet have _accidentally called back spam
| callers_. yikes!
| tehnub wrote:
| Yes, yes. I also would consider myself highly aware of my
| phone, and I have called back spam callers I don't know how
| many times from both the "Recents" tab and the notification
| screen. I'm generally impressed with the usability of Apple's
| default apps, so this one stands out. You'd really think the
| "Phone" app on the "iPhone" would be a bit better thought
| out.
| perardi wrote:
| And the thing is: this is _better_ than it used to be.
|
| At least every single phone call doesn't interrupt at the
| absolute highest level of priority and take over your
| screen entirely. Up until...iOS 14?...you didn't really
| have a choice to not deal with an incoming call while using
| the phone: a call immediately took over.
| Headwig wrote:
| Made it really hard to ignore my friends and family
| willswire wrote:
| Honestly I'm surprised that it took Apple this long to take this
| product behind the barn and shoot it.
|
| My first device was an iPod touch - but the iPhone is better
| (clearly). A consolidated line-of-effort for one less platform
| will be helpful, I think, in allocating talent behind the other
| products that matter.
| digisign wrote:
| > the iPhone is better (clearly)
|
| They were as they designed them. Not everyone wants/needs a
| phone. No reason they couldn't put a top-end camera in the
| iPod.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| Apple hasn't put any effort into the iPod touch for the past
| few years. The last refresh was in May 2019, the previous one
| was in July 2015. The only effort there might have been is for
| someone to test the latest iOS on an iPod touch, which is a
| neglible amount of effort, especially for Apple.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I mean if Steve was around he would remind you all that as far as
| Apple is concerned the iPhone is the best iPod they ever made.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Was that his genuine opinion? It sounds like a thing to say to
| sell iPhones to me.
| SllX wrote:
| I won't try to convince you, but go watch the Motorola ROKR
| introduction from Steve Jobs on YouTube, then watch his
| introduction of the iPhone at MacWorld 2007.
|
| You can tell when he's not just selling something, but
| believes that what he says he is selling is what he is
| selling.
| rchaud wrote:
| This is the same Steve Jobs that said on stage Samsung's
| original Galaxy Tab 7" defeated the purpose of a tablet
| because he needed to file his fingers down to use it.
|
| He knew full well an iPad Mini was coming the year after.
| He just had to sell what was on the shelves now.
| SllX wrote:
| Ha! I remember that. But if you recall, the first iPad
| mini was 7.9" and subsequent iPads mini stayed close to
| the 8" watermark. A decade later my iPhone is a lot
| closer to 7" at 6.7".
| replygirl wrote:
| it's hard to undersell how big a deal the ipod was 15 years
| ago. the iphone was introduced as an ipod first, a phone
| second, and an internet communicator third. until the app
| store launched, most of the ads were "it's an ipod that makes
| phone calls". and people expected the touch to be good
| because the click wheel was good
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| This. This is something that has been interesting to see
| sort of get mixed up in memory.
|
| The struggling computer company first got into people's
| pockets with a device that played music (a key insight -
| people make emotional contact with media). That position
| then bought them the time to finance development of know-
| how around pocket computers in plain sight. And then
| finally when the timing was just right and nobody expected
| it, they basically leveraged that position to deliver that
| pocket computer to the masses.
| SllX wrote:
| And it is true whether you use the built-ins, 3rd party
| software or an amalgamation. Overcast, Apple Music, Photos and
| YouTube Premium are my "iPod".
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| That's basically what the official announcement says.
| https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/05/the-music-lives-on/
| can16358p wrote:
| To be honest I was surprised that it lived on this long, and
| couldn't even understand why Apple released the 7th generation.
| It doesn't have a non-niche use, at least not in any profitable
| form worth supporting a device category.
|
| It was great for its time and I've owned and loved my iPod
| touches, but we can't expect a for-profit company to keep selling
| a device with no future and only a niche market, eventhough the
| device was iconic at some point in the past.
|
| Good move, and a big cherish to the iPod for changing the way we
| listen to music back then.
| tfitz237 wrote:
| The Music Lives On [... while supplies last]
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I'm still using an IPod Nano 5th generation (2009).
|
| I bought it off ebay as a replacement for my iPod Nano 4th
| generation (2008) that was stolen in a home break-in!
|
| I love it. I dread the day the battery stops working, which it
| will eventually, and which is probably the only thing that would
| ever lead the thing not working anymore.
|
| I still put podcasts and mp3's on it. I listen to it in my car
| (which is also old enough to work with it via a hardwire USB
| hookup, I also dread the day I replace my car with one that
| own't), or with headphones when walking.
|
| I've become one of those middle-aged people who doesn't want to
| change. But the iPod nano _still_ seems like amazing futuristic
| science fiction technology to me. it 's tiny. It Just Works.
| (although MacOS has started having trouble sync'ing files to it
| without going crazy with duplicate files, I'm afraid).
| deergomoo wrote:
| There is a part of me that wants to abandon streaming services
| and just buy a couple of albums per month based on what I think
| might be cool. I find myself enjoying music significantly less
| now I have unlimited access to everything I could ever want. It's
| become disposable; just background noise rather than something
| I'm actively experiencing.
|
| There is also a part of me that wants to take those albums and
| keep them on an old click-wheel iPod. I always thought the early
| iPod nanos were among the best consumer hardware devices ever
| made. Just the right mix of boxy and round; small enough to be
| novel (at least at the time), but large enough to still be
| perfectly usable. Unfortunately, finding one that both holds a
| charge and isn't battered to all hell is quite difficult these
| days, and even so, it's much harder to justify a single use
| device for music when I literally always have my phone with me.
|
| As someone who was a teen when the iPod really started taking
| off, it was a constant presence during the time music was
| starting to become an important part of my life. Sad to see it
| go, even though really it's been gone since the iPhone launched.
| fullshark wrote:
| Yeah i loved the Ipod, and I loved the ability to listen to "my
| music" whenever i wanted. It was a major game changer, and now
| I can do the same but "my music" no longer feels special so it
| hardly seems to matter. Media has become a commodity good with
| the maturation of the internet, substitute goods have never
| been easier to find.
| javajosh wrote:
| _> There is a part of me that wants to abandon streaming
| services and just buy a couple of albums per month based on
| what I think might be cool._
|
| This is what I do! And for similar reasons. It's actually
| really great because a) you can pick up used CDs and vinyl for
| cheap, b) you get to listen to the whole album, c) there are no
| screens involved. I didn't realize how oppressive screen-based
| music selection has become until I ditched it. I love my setup
| (and you can pick up great used audio equipment for cheap now,
| too.) Just do it - and if you don't like it you can get rid of
| it all on ebay.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I've been doing this, would definitely recommend it. I have
| also considered getting an old school music player, but I'd
| rather not carry around yet another device when a big reason I
| bought the phone I bought was having a headphone jack.
| brewdad wrote:
| If your phone has a slot for an SD card, load it up (opus
| sounds good enough for on the go) with your collection and
| you can have the benefits of an old school player behind an
| app interface on the phone you already carry everywhere.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Phones these days have so much internal storage that I
| haven't had to use an sd card, although my phone does have
| a slot for one. I prefer to use plex and plexamp for my
| music so I have the conveniences of streaming services with
| the ownership and classic music player feel of old school
| devices.
|
| Having tried Youtube Music, Tidal and Amazon Music, I feel
| that the UIs of most streaming apps and even most music
| apps in general are not that great.
| [deleted]
| conductr wrote:
| Streaming is just a medium. How you curate and listen is the
| message. I might be a bit older than average here but I
| converted to iPod on first generation and I'm on the streaming
| bandwagon now but I never got into the habit of shuffling. I
| listen to albums, track by track in order. Always have
| regardless of the tech I was using and don't feel like I've
| missed much. Actually I've gained a bit because I can branch
| out pretty wide from my core stuff and I can put on a playlist
| for ease when I just want background noise. Also, I remember
| the feeling of buying an album out of pure curiosity and
| thinking it was trash. That doesn't happen any more.
|
| So really all to say, it might be worth trying some habit hacks
| before flipping the whole thing over.
| Bayart wrote:
| Modding old iPods to have them run flash memory and decent
| batteries is pretty common, you could look into that. I'm still
| using my 17 years old iPod 5G like this. Flashed with Rockbox
| it reads every file format (mostly FLAC) I could ever want.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| You can buy the songs on iTunes or whatever it is called and
| then you can later sync it to an iPod - and there are repairs
| on youtube where they put in fresh new batteries.
| globular-toast wrote:
| One of my favourite teachers at school noted this phenomenon
| long before streaming was a thing. He said that once he got a
| favourite film on DVD he actually watched it less. Whereas
| before he would watch it whenever it was on TV, he can now
| watch it whenever he wants, so why watch it ever?
|
| I've noticed a related phenomenon: too much choice induces
| anxiety. If there are like 5 films showing in the cinema it's
| usually obvious which one to pick. Maybe I'll watch another
| later in the week. But now I can watch any film ever made and I
| often find it hard to choose because there is a fear of missing
| out on all the other films I could have chosen.
| paulmd wrote:
| > There is a part of me that wants to abandon streaming
| services and just buy a couple of albums per month based on
| what I think might be cool. I find myself enjoying music
| significantly less now I have unlimited access to everything I
| could ever want. It's become disposable; just background noise
| rather than something I'm actively experiencing.
|
| I strongly prefer the "sit down and listen to a whole album"
| experience anyway, at least from artists who make a deliberate
| attempt to put together a cohesive album and not just one or
| two bangers and a bunch of filler.
|
| Sitting down and listening to a Bowie album or something is a
| time capsule, and I'm not a boomer so it's not childhood
| nostalgia either. It's nice to sit down and listen to an hour
| of music that was specifically curated to produce a certain
| experience.
|
| > Unfortunately, finding one that both holds a charge and isn't
| battered to all hell is quite difficult these days, and even
| so, it's much harder to justify a single use device for music
| when I literally always have my phone with me.
|
| FYI you can replace the battery in an iPod... someone pointed
| me towards Cameron Sino as being an extremely reputable
| supplier of replacements (I've known of them for a long time
| but I had no idea they sold direct to consumer!).
|
| Also, if you are not enamored with needing to use iTunes, the
| "Rockbox" open-source firmware targets Apple hardware and that
| should allow it to act like a plain old USB Mass Storage
| device. I used to use it like 15+ years ago on my iRiver H320
| music player.
|
| (the name "iRiver" actually predates the ipod! They were a
| korean company who became known for making very capable flash
| and HDD mp3 players for their day, with OGG Vorbis support and
| line-in recording and many other neat features.)
|
| https://www.rockbox.org/
|
| Also also, if you are interested in improvements, or your HDD
| died, you can get an IDE-to-CF adapter or perhaps SD/MicroSD or
| mSATA or M.2 (not sure what's available nowadays) and use a
| normal flash drive. At the time they were popular this often
| implied a reduction in capacity, but flash is big now and you
| can probably get like a 1TB drive and with Rockbox it should
| recognize it. Not all cards work, but I think the dividing line
| is often "cards that speak IDE" vs cards that don't - many of
| the high-spec CompactFlash cards actually have a "native IDE"
| mode so they speak the same protocol as the original drive did.
| It also substantially improves battery life, because you're
| going from a spinning drive pulling a couple watts to a flash
| card pulling ~nothing.
|
| No affiliation with this site and haven't used them but this is
| basically what you'll be looking for:
| https://www.iflash.xyz/ipod-and-sdhc-sdxc-cards/
|
| If your device is _physically_ battered to hell then yeah, not
| much you can do besides try to find a replacement. But if your
| ipod is still in decent shape with a fresh battery and a flash
| adapter it 'll be better than new. Do try to minimize the
| number of assembly/disassembly cycles though, there's lots of
| little plastic clips in most devices and they won't last
| forever.
|
| Also, Fiio made some devices with very similar ergonomics to
| the ipod (eg the scroll wheel) like the X5 and X5ii, although
| like most others they've gone to android nowadays. I have an
| X5ii that will take a pair of 128GB microSD cards and it has a
| solid hifi headphone amp built in.
|
| https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/fiio-x5-2nd-gen-premium-hi-...
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| > There is a part of me that wants to abandon streaming
| services and just buy a couple of albums per month based on
| what I think might be cool.
|
| I highly encourage giving it a try if you're inclined. I
| personally never took to streaming services, largely for the
| reasons you express.
|
| For me it's mostly because I dislike shuffle, and prefer
| listing to full albums. Not a hipster snobby thing, it just
| fits my attention span better and has led to several artists
| becoming favorites when I'd felt pretty meh about their
| singles.
| Bluecobra wrote:
| > There is a part of me that wants to abandon streaming
| services and just buy a couple of albums per month based on
| what I think might be cool.
|
| I used to do this before the streaming services existed. I used
| to buy a handful of MP3's from Amazon (don't laugh) per month.
| I would also buy used CDs and rip it to MP3. Apple Music is
| included with monthly cell phone bill so I now "rent" some of
| my music now, it's just easier. I'm careful not to just
| download whole albums outright though, I have a curated
| collection of songs I like and I still use the old star ratings
| in iTunes. I also pay for $25/year for iTunes Match to maintain
| my legacy collection.
| [deleted]
| dkonofalski wrote:
| This is me as well and is the primary reason I still buy albums
| on vinyl. I'm not an audiophile snob or anything, I just think
| that listening to music on vinyl is deliberate enough to
| overcome the "disposable" issue that you're describing. If I
| want to listen to an album, I have to go to the room in my
| house with the turntable, open the album, put it on, set the
| tone arm, etc. It's very deliberate and it helps me appreciate
| and dedicate time to music.
| deergomoo wrote:
| I forget where I was reading/listening to it (may well have
| been a podcast), but I recall someone talking about printing
| out tiny artwork for NFC tags and configuring them in such a
| way that scanning them played the one album printed on it. I
| thought that was super neat--still got the convenience of
| digital music, but it is still a deliberate action as you
| describe.
| dxscorp wrote:
| I've also turned to vinyl for this, and while I love it, I
| will say I yearn for something that doesn't involve the
| dreaded 'flip' especially on modern double albums. 3 songs
| per side goes by so fast. Maybe this is why people still use
| cassettes?
| Multicomp wrote:
| Not cassettes but a dedicated CD player is what I use for
| this stuff.
|
| I have certain custom mixtape style mood music CDs
| depending on how the scene in my novel is supposed to feel
| tonally, for example.
|
| Yes I could make those into YouTube playlists, but the
| ritual of putting in the right CD has something to say for
| it, and also my CDs never have advertisements that manage
| to sneak past all of my layers of adblock, nor do they
| suddenly decide to be unavailable on one particular day or
| another.
| ckosidows wrote:
| I bought a Vinyl player (AT-LP60XBT) but rarely use it
| because I feel like I can't tell a difference between it
| and Spotify through my speakers (Edifier S350DB). Only
| difference seems to be it's more inconvenient.
|
| It feels like the inconvenience is what people _like_ about
| vinyl? But maybe my setup just isn't good enough to tell a
| difference?
| endorphine wrote:
| My thoughts exactly. That's one of the big advantages that
| vinyl comes with, for me personally.
|
| This and that I'm very deliberate about keeping track of new
| music I want to listen to (my queue). EDIT: There was a tool
| posted here on Show HN a few days ago that seemed interesting
| for this sort of stuff but I can't seem to find it now.
| dont__panic wrote:
| There's a middle ground, too -- you can host music streaming
| for your own library through [Jellyfin](https://jellyfin.org/)
| (or Plex, or a few other alternatives) for the backend and
| something like
| [FinAmp](https://github.com/UnicornsOnLSD/finamp) on the
| frontend. Easy to curate your own library, and you can avoid
| the "sync problem" when you download a new album.
|
| There are some bugs to iron out in the setup, but my raspberry
| pi home server has been running this great for 5 months now,
| and offline media served me very well through a cross-country
| move. It's a great opportunity to take back some agency from
| Spotify, start contributing to artists on bandcamp or similar,
| and cut another annoying monthly subscription from your life.
|
| When someone hands me their phone to play music on Spotify at
| this point, I find the front page absolutely overwhelming. It's
| sort of like going back to cable after streaming for years, and
| seeing your first ad. You wonder how you ever put up with it.
| jszymborski wrote:
| I do something similar with the subsonic protocol by locally
| hosting Airsonic[0] and listening with Strawberry Player[1]
| on Desktop and iSub[2] on iOS. Using Tailscale[3], I'm able
| to stream my library on the go. Best part is that all this
| infra is free and pretty hands-off maintenance-wise.
|
| [0] https://airsonic.github.io/
|
| [1] https://www.strawberrymusicplayer.org/
|
| [2] https://isub.app/
|
| [3] https://tailscale.com/
| lynguist wrote:
| Could such a setup be used for streaming movies as well? If
| yes, could you explain how?
| mouth wrote:
| Plex, Emby, and Jellyfin all could be used to accomplish
| this.
| jszymborski wrote:
| Yup! I run Jellyfin on the same machine as Airsonic for
| movies and shows.
| bitL wrote:
| With Jellyfin you might end up with the same problem if your
| catalogue is too large - it's then indistinguishable from
| other streaming services.
| brewdad wrote:
| I've been a Plex user for years. I started playing around
| with Jellyfin this week and I think I'll probably use both
| for a while since they can share the same library.
|
| Plexamp has been great for music. I can put on any CD I
| own, in FLAC quality, without having to go locate the
| physical disc. I've spent much of pandemic filing in holes
| in the back catalog of my favorite artists.
|
| If I want a mix, I tend to open up Tidal and let it build a
| "radio station" based on my mood.
| jjcon wrote:
| Also a plex user for music and have also played with
| Jellyfin. My impression is that in a couple years
| Jellyfin will be the go to but that it isn't quite up to
| snuff with Plex yet (especially wrt music) though some
| projects like JellyAmp are changing that.
| geoffeg wrote:
| I've been frustrated with Spotify's UI for so long now. It
| just seems so full of dark... or at least dim(?) user
| patterns. I started buying albums from bands I like off
| Bandcamp and loading them into Plexamp. (I really hope Epic
| doesn't destroy Bandcamp, it's one of the few remaining
| sources of high-quality (FLAC) downloadable music.)
| lapsis_beeftech wrote:
| Bandcamp is great; the only marketplace I have found with
| fair and reasonable terms for both producers and consumers
| of music. I never buy music anywhere else these days and am
| rather worried about Epic Games' acquisition.
| mikenew wrote:
| Navidrome is far and away the best self hosted streaming
| music server. I set up half a dozen and wasn't happy until I
| tried that one. The developer is very friendly and responsive
| too.
|
| https://github.com/navidrome/navidrome
| tehnub wrote:
| You can also use Apple Music to stream your own local
| library. That feature is why I switched from Spotify a few
| years ago.
| stuartd wrote:
| Been using iTunes Match for years and it's great. I have a
| load of stuff in my library which was either never released
| digitally (eg em:t) or was deleted (eg The KLF). Oink.
| stuartd wrote:
| Having said that, in the really early days it (or my
| phone, an iPhone 4 and later a 6S) was a terrible
| experience a lot of the time. Even with _good Wi-Fi_ I'd
| wait for songs to play and then they would probably still
| stutter. It's seamless now though, as long as I have a
| decent mobile signal.
| daveofiveo wrote:
| I have been using iTunes Match for years and now use
| Apple Music. I love it, especially the integration.
| Combine that with CarPlay and the audio entertainment
| options really open up.
|
| Question to stuartd: I am concerned about how long Apple
| will support iTunes Match. Have you thought about what
| you would switch to in order to stream your Apple
| Music/iTunes when or if Apple sunsets iTunes Match as a
| service?
|
| Appreciate it!
| dhosek wrote:
| That's exactly what I do. Having all the music is essentially
| the same as having none of the music. I buy an album a month,
| usually (plus more on my birthday and at Christmas), and have
| my iPhone set up so that the music is the 32M of least-played
| music, plus anything rated 3 stars that I've not heard in two
| years, 4 stars that I've not heard in a year and 5 stars that
| I've not heard in six months. It gives me a nice mix of fresh
| tracks and favorites.
| mastazi wrote:
| I think that I solved this problem, I did it through self-
| discipline, categorically avoiding any recommendation system on
| any platform I use. I only ever listen to music that was either
| on one of my playlists, or on a playlist that a friend shared
| with me, etc.
|
| Music that is part of my own playlists is there because I
| discovered it organically (was in a movie I watched, heard on
| the radio etc.) which is the same as you would discover it pre-
| streaming.
|
| Songs and playlists that friends share with me is the
| equivalent of old cassettes that friends would make for you.
|
| I do the same thing outside of music streaming too, there are
| browser extensions like Undistracted that can help avoiding
| recommendation systems (but unfortunately Undistracted doesn't
| work on Spotify).
| zahma wrote:
| Part of what you described is due to streaming, but it's also
| the production side making music available for this type of
| consumption. That's been a long time in the making as labels
| consolidate and big artists become sex symbols, actors, and
| basically lifestyle influencers while singing generically
| machine-crafted music that has no lasting potential. Moreover,
| TikTok is becoming a recruiting ground for record labels. My
| guess is singles are going to get shorter and even more
| ephemeral, just like all the "culture" streaming into our phone
| screens. So what you're describing to me is an extension of
| fatigue with a trend that doesn't try to make things to last.
|
| Having physical media or something that is individual to the
| music makes me respect my collection and helps bring it to
| life. I can't stream from a big service because it ruins the
| feeling. I don't really listen to much music on my phone either
| unless I'm in the car. I like it that way. It feels defiant
| that I'm not just randomly bombarding my ears with whatever
| cool new trash is being forced into my ears.
| joe5150 wrote:
| the tendency of artists "becoming sex symbols, actors, and
| basically lifestyle influencers while singing generically
| machine-crafted music" if not basically being the case for
| the entire history of recorded music, at least predates
| streaming by many decades. it's also not exclusive to music
| and has a long history in basically every artistic industry.
| chha wrote:
| Absolutely. But now more than ever it's about the brand,
| and not the individual. But I think this primarily applies
| to mainstream music where the artist is likely to have a
| few hits over a couple years, only to fade out (unless they
| can build the brand). Go outside mainstream music, and
| chances are that you'll see something completely different.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| Chiming in with the vinyl recommendation as well.
|
| Pulling up lyrics and going through my favorite records is
| quite a nice evening.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| I have always loved music and still do. I think what you
| describe has in part been due to scarcity. But in part it has
| to do with growing up. As a teenager you are often bored out of
| your whole mind and so have time to focus on music. You also
| listen to the lyrics and the ideas presented are brand new and
| meaningful. Later in life you are less likely to find truly
| novel albums, or even songs; maybe a phrase here and there but
| a record is less likely to capture your imagination.
|
| Here is my solution to enjoying music: treat it as a soundtrack
| to your life. Create themed playlists. Spotify has
| collaborative playlists built in and I have a couple of friends
| who are or were professional DJs. I will start a playlist and
| then have them add things to it based on the theme and feeling.
| This process has gotten better and better. I now enjoy high
| quality music that I love while also discovering new artists
| and records.
| dexterdog wrote:
| I'm in my 50s and I still listen to new music that moves me
| to both excitement and tears. I don't use streaming services
| and just maintain my own library and always have. Many of the
| bands I listen to have members older than I am, but they are
| still actively making new music.
| geoelectric wrote:
| I think this is actually a pretty real concern. I've noticed my
| appreciation for specific instances of all sorts of media has
| tanked with wide availability.
|
| I actually used to buy a _lot_ of media so I hit this problem
| before streaming. As soon as I had a backlog big enough with
| each type of media that it wasn 't straightforward to burn
| through it, it became a cloud of equally possible stuff with
| the result I wasn't particularly invested in any of it. Most
| people were smarter than me re: dumping money into bits on a
| disc, but now that streaming and/or free-feed libraries have
| hit most media types, I think the experience is becoming more
| common.
|
| I think it's a different version of Paradox of Choice: all
| individualization between the various choices is lost when
| there's too many. With PoC, the problem is that then you have
| nothing left by which you can prioritize. In this case, the
| issue is the loss of all joy you'd have found in the
| differences.
|
| What's helped a little for me is going on "kicks," like finding
| all the bands I liked that did EDM-metal hybrid, or all the
| found footage movies I liked, etc. Constraining the pool you're
| selecting from first makes it easier, and having a mission of
| some kind makes it easier still.
| sharkweek wrote:
| Child of the 90s here and my parents wouldn't get cable TV.
|
| This meant my access to movies was basically whatever was on
| broadcast TV that night or if I was really lucky whatever was
| available at our local video rental store.
|
| I remember not always loving whatever movie we chose (or
| whatever was on TV) but I watched it because it's what I had.
|
| Now, like many others, I stare at the home screen of a few
| different services each night, start and stop a few different
| things, then give up.
| boredtofears wrote:
| Personally I think that has more to do with what movie
| offerings there are today vs 20 years ago. I could
| absolutely care less about the latest comic book movie but
| that seems to be where movie studios have put all their
| effort.
|
| On the other hand, TV series have never been better - we
| seem to be in some kind of golden age where you can find
| tons of high quality well acted series on every streaming
| service. There was a bit of a lull (for me) during Covid,
| but my backlog is completely full through the next year.
| Syonyk wrote:
| The consolidation of movie studios (mostly into Disney
| lately...) hasn't been helping either. There used to be
| plenty of small studios that would do "weird" stuff - it
| wasn't going to be a huge commercial success, but it
| would probably make back the modest budget it had.
|
| There's always older films to watch. I'm at a point where
| I'd far rather put the time into something older, with
| solid actors, than watch the latest and greatest mostly-
| CG special effects laden [whatever]. That most of those
| movies are unwatchable unless you're "deep into the
| fandom" doesn't encourage me to invest in them either.
| And if it's not those, it's the "How can we prequel all
| the popular things," even when it makes no sense at all.
| To yell at a cloud briefly, Han Solo doesn't _need_ a
| prequel. He 's a standard drifter archetype, and to nail
| his past down doesn't do the character any service at
| all.
| boredtofears wrote:
| > greatest mostly-CG special effects laden [whatever]
|
| There was some threshold that was crossed probably close
| to a decade ago for me where CG effects stopped being
| interesting in any way, but watching older movies with
| their incredible special effects and stuntmen really does
| look impressive to me. There is no CG in the world that
| compares to the immersion in Apocalypse Now, for example.
|
| I do think there are many ways to use CG to subtly
| support the impact of a scene driven by characters, but
| when the scene itself is driven by the CG (in ways that
| are unrealistic for actors or stuntmen to perform) it
| just feels like a lazy way to progress a storyline.
| sharkweek wrote:
| I do think this is why anytime the A24 logo comes up
| before a trailer it piques my interest.
|
| (side note: the one they just released, Everything
| Everywhere All The Time, might be one of the best movies
| I've seen in the last decade)
| mmmpop wrote:
| > He's a standard drifter archetype, and to nail his past
| down doesn't do the character any service at all.
|
| old man makes great point
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| I have discovered so many (good) bands via Spotify over the
| past 5 years it's honestly insane. If I had stuck to "guessing"
| at what I might like, I would not have had such a rich
| collection of new music from relatively unknown or foreign
| artists. It's also allowed me to sample so many varieties of
| genres without any direct monetary involvement. I wouldn't
| trade it for the world honestly.
|
| I also support the artists I listen to by buying merch/going to
| concerts to supplement the pittance they get from streaming
| royalties.
| zerocrates wrote:
| I've never moved to streaming; I still just load songs onto my
| phone. I don't feel like I'm really missing out on anything. I
| buy things on CD (often used) or vinyl-with-download-code or
| Bandcamp mostly.
| Daneel_ wrote:
| Same camp here, with the exception of soundcloud - it has
| such a variety of user-generated content, as well as longer
| sets (multi-hour mixes, DJ sets, other long-form content)
| that you just can't find on other platforms.
| cyral wrote:
| The biggest benefit for me is finding new music, Spotify's
| discover feature is how I find most new music these days and
| it's decently accurate at finding things I like.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Couldn't have put it better myself. This is 100% how I feel.
| greedo wrote:
| I do the same thing with Netflix. I used to get DVDs (then Blu-
| rays) but their quality was consistently bad (damaged discs)
| and their collection has turned to crap. So now I just stream
| Netflix (cuz the family would lynch me otherwise), but I buy a
| Blu-ray every month with the money I'm saving.
| deergomoo wrote:
| I buy Blu-Rays for films and shows I really like. Streaming
| services may be 4K, but the bitrate of a 4K stream is
| typically just a fraction of even a 1080p BD, and it _really_
| shows.
| Groxx wrote:
| To be a counter-anecdote: I love streaming music, I listen to
| _far_ more and _far_ wider variety than I did more. I can
| definitely see why that 'd be a downside for some, but I love
| it.
|
| My only real complaint is that nothing wants to work together,
| so migrating services / backing up playlists / etc is a real
| nightmare. But I never actually maintained that in any real
| fashion to begin with, so I do the ones I care about by hand
| and ignore the rest and I've become fine with that.
| vlunkr wrote:
| As a counterpoint, I enjoy music more now. Music discovery is
| light years ahead of where it was in the iPod era. There's no
| additional cost to exploring as many artists and genres as you
| want. Also, streaming services are doing nothing to prevent you
| from listening to music the old way. Yeah, Spotify has a huge
| library, but it's not like the whole thing is on shuffle. If
| you find you're not spending the time to enjoy specific things,
| that's ultimately your problem.
|
| I do get where you're coming from, I'm very nostalgic for my
| old click-wheel iPod. Probably the biggest downside in moving
| away from physical media in my mind is the loss of the rest of
| the album art.
| duxup wrote:
| I think the iPod was somewhere in the area where I discovered all
| the nice to have features and polish of Apple products that made
| me admire Apple. (I was into PCs long before that but my exposure
| to Apple was limited and I wasn't all that impressed)
|
| By no means was the iPod perfect, and it was effectively the same
| product as many other media players that came before and after,
| other products even had more features sometimes ... and yet the
| friction of using the iPod was just lower to the point that I
| enjoyed using it more than other media players at the time.
|
| It's a mysterious process to me finding those places to make use
| of a thing easier, more intuitive and etc. When something is bad
| it is easy to see, but there's a step beyond "take away the bad
| friction" that I'm always wondering about when I'm building
| things. I never quite reach that Apple-ish feel.
| meibo wrote:
| This might be true, but only if you stay on the "beaten path".
| If you do anything they don't intend you to do with these
| devices it ends up being a massive pain and you often just end
| up getting hit with the ol' "you're holding it wrong".
| duxup wrote:
| I feel like product defects are .. a thing everywhere.
| Holding it wrong was just bad choices related to it, but it's
| not like that's unique to products tailored to specific use
| patterns either.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > it was effectively the same product as many other media
| players that came before and after, other products even had
| more features sometimes
|
| For me, at the time, the iPod (Classic) was a worst-in-class
| product (required iTunes, pretended it didn't know what a file
| was, annoying to navigate, etc.) The iPod Touch was that but
| also not attractive.
| jyounker wrote:
| When it came out, I had one requirement for an MP3 player: It
| had to play without skipping while I ran.
|
| The iPod was the first MP3 maker on the market that crossed
| this bar.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I never had an mp3 player that skipped, unless you count
| the two that read mp3s off CDs. _Every_ manufacturer passed
| your test that I know of.
| duxup wrote:
| I think one of the things was the iPod wasn't "for" most of
| us who were face down in our piles of MP3s and managing them
| and etc.... at least not at first.
|
| One of those cases where the first in the market consumers /
| enthusiasts weren't the best folks to take your hints from as
| far as the future of that tech.
|
| Arguably they've long been left behind by streaming services
| and etc. My piles of files are certainly just ... sitting
| there now.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Nah, it was absurdly heavy marketing. I don't remember any
| other mp3 player being marketed at all. The click wheel was
| also cool, although pragmatically it sucked and nobody ever
| used it on on anything again.
|
| Also, buying an mp3 player was a bit of a minefield back
| then, because you couldn't tell if it behaved as a drive or
| through some elaborate software DRM/obfuscation dance that
| might even be specific to Windows ("playsforsure," maybe?
| Talk about an Orwellian name.) At least people knew that
| the iPod would work.
| closedloop129 wrote:
| Too soon. The iPod would be the perfect companion for an Apple
| Watch once there is a bit more energy available in the battery of
| the watch.
|
| Instead of selling the watch as an add-on to the phone, the watch
| could be the central device and the screen of the iPod could be
| brought out when the voice assistants come to their rare limits.
|
| There is no need for a phone when better screens are available
| most of the times (e.g. at the desk, the car or the tv).
| microtherion wrote:
| That would make the iPod more of an "iPad micro".
| booboofixer wrote:
| This is great news. I have an old iPod touch that i kept because
| it had no trade-in value. Can't wait for it to be worth something
| in about a decade or however long it takes for these electronics
| to become 'vintage'. Also, if anyone wants to pay $$$ for a 2012
| Macbook Air..
| jsiaajdsdaa wrote:
| I kind of liked having a phone without phone service. Good use
| for kids.
| playpause wrote:
| For the last 2 years I've been using an iPod touch as my
| "downtime" device. I usually put my iPhone away in a drawer from
| early evening until I'm ready to start work the next day. I found
| this impossible to stick to until I got an iPod touch, because in
| the evenings and mornings I often need to manage things like
| HomeKit devices or other Apple ecosystem things like Reminders. I
| don't have any distracting or time-sucking apps on the iPod
| touch, and the screen is small and fiddly, so I barely use it
| except for a few seconds here and there for something practical.
| The difference in stress levels and mindset has been huge. I
| can't recommend highly enough separating your phone usage into
| 'social/work/news/comms' and 'practical/home/calm' categories, on
| different physical devices.
|
| I have tried using the new iOS Focus and Downtime features to
| make my iPhone work a similar way (hide all the time-sucking apps
| at certain times of day etc), but having a dedicated device for
| the purpose is much simpler and much more effective.
| darknavi wrote:
| You can still do this buy just purchasing an older iPhone and
| never putting it on a cell plan right?
| brundolf wrote:
| I do something similar but not quite the same with my iPad: it
| has most of the same (non-work) apps that my phone does, but
| I've disabled all notifications for all apps so it never yells
| at me; it's an entirely chill-out/self-directed device where
| nothing ever grabs at my attention
| dwighttk wrote:
| I do something similar but with my main iPhone. There's like
| 3 apps that have notifications and none of them make sound.
| brundolf wrote:
| I treat my main phone as a notification entrypoint; trash-
| notifications are turned off, of course, but every
| messaging, calling, email, etc app has them turned on. If I
| want to know if anything relevant to me has happened, I
| look there or keep it nearby. If I don't have a
| notification there, I know nothing has happened
|
| On my iPad, even messages with friends, emails, etc are all
| blocked. Not even red badges on the app icons. Nothing that
| can possibly prompt or notify me in any way. I don't think
| I could get away with that on my main phone
| tomchuk wrote:
| I have an older iPad mini for this purpose (but an old iPhone
| without a data plan would work too). I setup a separate
| home@<domain> iCloud account under my family plan and use it
| exclusively for streaming music vi AirPlay, cooking w/ recipes
| on Paprika, HomeKit controls, reminders, timers, etc. - no
| Slack notifications, no calls, no calendar reminders. The
| AppleTV goes on the same account too. It's really been a great
| solution.
| hancholo wrote:
| I went down a rabbit hole a few months ago and bought an ipod
| classic 5.5 with the wolfson dac for ~$40, I plan to modify it a
| bit storage and battery wise, and possibly some cosmetic mods. I
| also researched IEM's and paired it with some 'Chi-Fi' IEM's like
| the moondrop Aria and then got some aftermarket spinfit tips and
| changed the headphone cable to something of better quality. I
| plan on upgrading the IEM's to something more expensive but right
| now these are a good first pair for $70.
|
| The real reason I did all this was because I got nostalgia and
| could not afford an iPod back in the day but now I see myself
| buying more exclusive harder to find music because nothing is
| more annoying that having playlists on Spotify where songs are no
| longer available/blacked out or deleted rare music from youtube
| due to copyrights. I would like to have some kind of ownership
| over my music independent from an internet connection or a
| streaming service (nice to discover new music) dacs of course are
| not as good as modern phones of today but goddamit-NOSTALGIA!
| standardUser wrote:
| I only ever owned one MP3 player and it was a cheap little thing
| that ran on a single AAA battery. Plug it into my computer, drag
| and drop a few dozen albums worth of music, grab some extra
| batteries and I could listen to music indefinitely when I
| travelled. Never saw any need for something more than this, and I
| still don't!
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| Remember what.cd?
| flint wrote:
| Vinyl, and a burbor manhattan. No screens in the room.
| aj7 wrote:
| Original iPod 1st generations are going for $180-$500 on ebay.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Sad to see the iPod go. I have an iPhone, but it's not the same.
| There's a lot of value in unitaskers.
|
| I have a long train trip coming up. I'll have my iPhone with me,
| but I'll also bring my iPod shuffles. They're simply better
| suited to the task than to have to deal with all the compromises
| of a device that tries to be everything to everyone all the time.
|
| - Vastly superior battery time. In part, because it's not trying
| to do a million things other than play music.
|
| - Better ergonomically. I can lay in my berth at night with my
| wired earbuds and listen with a tiny, durable device instead of a
| large, fragile device. It's not tragic if I roll over on a
| Shuffle, or drop it out the side of the bed.
|
| - A shuffle on a small train table takes up much less space than
| an iPhone. Or no space at all, since I can clip it to my
| clothing.
|
| - To me, the Shuffles just sound better than the phone. I'm sure
| there are a million blogs that dispute this with all kinds of
| mathematical blather. But I use the same earbuds with my Shuffles
| and my iPhone, and the Shuffles just sound better to my ears.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| For me, the feature that beats all of those combined is simply
| being able to carry all my music around for free. Now I have to
| either constantly swap it around and filter it, or pay through
| the nose to stream it.
| deanCommie wrote:
| All the comments lamenting the "end of the iPod" are premature
| IMO.
|
| Give it a maximum of 5 years, and there'll be some social trend
| to offer an "minimally online" device to help you disconnect
| better from your overwhelming digital firehose in the interest of
| "wellbeing", and some new iPod device will come back.
|
| The 2020's equivalent of the iPod shuffle - deliberately feature
| limited for a very specific market.
| gnat wrote:
| Shame! A bunch of our retail clients use them as in-store devices
| for staff who walk the retail floor -- they don't need to make
| calls or take gigapixel photos so the iPhone is overkill (and
| thus expensive) for them. I expect they'll move to Android and
| mourn the loss of cachet ...
| IshKebab wrote:
| Or iPads.
| richardjdare wrote:
| The end of an era. I used the iPod Touch to develop and use iOs
| apps without spending money on an iPhone. It was a relatively
| reasonably priced gateway into the Apple app ecosystem.
| 0000011111 wrote:
| Ya, I switched to VLC on Android years ago.
|
| And; yt-dlp --recode-video mp3 https://youtu.be/P5JplB64m5U
|
| Most of my collection for research purposes of course.
| bigdict wrote:
| > Apple is discontinuing the iPod
|
| They never actually say so in the press release.
| izzydata wrote:
| Sony is still making modern variants of the Walkman. I'm not a
| big fan of their Android powered versions, but I like the
| slightly earlier versions that can only play music.
| DizzyDoo wrote:
| I imagine that Apple would never bring back an iPod in the future
| with the clicky wheel because it could be perceived as 'backwards
| looking' and cuts against their desired image as 'innovators' who
| bring out the 'next thing'. Bit sad, because my memory of the
| later generations of the Nano is that it was an excellent device.
|
| It's probably true that most people just get their music and
| podcasts through streaming services on their phones though, so
| perhaps they don't care to keep a niche product around.
| darknavi wrote:
| Give it another decade and maybe something like the Analogue
| Pocket will come out. AnaloguePod?
| DizzyDoo wrote:
| I think we'd all probably welcome that... except Apple,
| because I just did a quick Google and it does look like Apple
| have successfully patented (Patent 7,932,897) the clicky
| wheel input. So I don't think a US based company like
| Analogue could get away with that!
| nicolas_t wrote:
| They're HK based, but I doubt that that would help all that
| much.
| karmakaze wrote:
| I've owned so many iPods from the very first and loved each one.
| Now I don't care for ~iTunes~/Apple Music and the dumbed-down
| walled garden that it lives it. It's not even because I carry a
| smartphone. Just the other day I was researching non-Apple music
| players.
|
| To me the iPod died with the introduction of the Touch which was
| a cheap iPhone, that had lower quality standards even in the area
| of sound quality. iPhones have no headphone jack so they're not
| suitable listening devices if you care about audio quality (or
| are willing to carry an external DAC). Apple Music makes nothing
| about managing music on any Apple device great.
|
| M1 Macs are doing well, and still waiting to see what happens
| with iPadOS and if it can live up the the 'OS' name in terms of
| creation not consumption apps.
| astrange wrote:
| > iPhones have no headphone jack so they're not suitable
| listening devices if you care about audio quality (or are
| willing to carry an external DAC).
|
| The $9 official headphone dongle is a superior DAC to most
| audiophile products and has a bigger R&D budget than that
| entire industry. Same goes for Google's USBC dongle.
|
| https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/r...
|
| You can still carry around an amp if you have very power hungry
| headphones though. Personally, I don't think I could ABX lossy
| audio while outside dodging cars in the crosswalk.
| robotnikman wrote:
| I remember having one in highschool, good times, back when all
| the games on the app store were maybe a few $ at most and in app
| purchases were mostly unheard of.
|
| iShoot was one of my favorite games to play on it, I miss it.
| Maursault wrote:
| I don't get it. Though iPod _Touch_ is a lotta bit of feature
| creep, surely the portable media player market is still
| profitable. I just want it to play music and fit all my music in
| my change pocket. Bring back the iPod Shuffle!
| Zigurd wrote:
| Dedicated music players has become an audiophile market. That
| means volumes are too low for a company that sells enough
| Airpods for that business alone to be almost 10X the revenue of
| Snapchat, while being under 5% of Apple revenue. You have to
| use a microscope to see the iPod numbers.
| MBCook wrote:
| It exists. See things like the recent Sony Walkmans. But my
| guess is it's quite small and Apple doesn't see it as worth
| spending time on.
|
| For a company their size I don't think they're wrong. It's
| never going to move the needle any noticeable amount for them.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| You can still buy new portable music players, including some
| Sony branded walkmans, but at least the Sony ones are just with
| an expensive DAC, some hardware buttons and interally run
| Android. Probably has too, because most people get their music
| through streaming.
| frickinLasers wrote:
| Yeah, I still run with a 20-ish year old Shuffle, waiting for
| the day it falls apart.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| Hey, the iPod Shuffle is 17 years old. Don't take those 3
| years from me lol. I'm still smarting from the loss of the
| two pandemic years. :)
| alfanick wrote:
| Thank you for reminding me iPod Shuffle! Gosh, this was a crazy
| good thing. Now everything is in an (i)Phone... Shuffle was
| honestly the first mass-market wearable device that worked. I
| love not taking my phone on a longer runs/hikes, but I want my
| music. With 2022 Apple Shuffle I could have my Apple Music with
| me lightweight, but I cannot. Sure I could used Apple Watch for
| this, but I'm in Garmin ecosystem... sigh. Gimme my music
| without transferring MP3 files I can buy on Amazon or directly
| from the artist to my Garmin watch, so I could just run with my
| watch.
|
| Or you know, Garmin, split-off your wearables division in
| separate company, Apple buys it, Apple takes some Garmin
| thingies into Apple Watch, create Apple Watch Pro based on
| Garmin Hardware and sports functions, add Apple software and
| we're golden. This is a business advice, if Garmin/Apple decide
| to do this, compensate me. /s
| Kerrick wrote:
| SanDisk still makes simple, small, portable music players.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Isn't that what the Apple Watch is supposed to do?
|
| I agree that a relatively simple, relatively low-priced media
| player with great build quality would have a market - but Apple
| would be cannibalising it's 'fitness-oriented' market if they
| allowed both the Shuffle and the Watch to exist.
| lostgame wrote:
| Yeah, but you can't use the Watch as a standalone device
| (something that, as a WatchOS developer, I have always found
| stupid beyond reason...it should just have limited
| functionality on its own, including media playback) - if you
| could, not only would they sell millions upon millions more
| of them, but it could be a reasonable replacement for an
| iPod.
|
| Until then, if you want to use it as an 'iPod', it's just
| another expense on top of the iPhone you already have that's
| your 'iPod'.
|
| Apple cancelling the iPod line completely is frankly dumb. I
| know at least a dozen parents who use these for their kids.
|
| Also, what's with all the people suggesting parents just buy
| an iPhone with no sim? Y'all realize that the cheapest iPhone
| is twice as much as the $199 iPod Touch? :/
| mulderc wrote:
| The watch isn't 100% standalone but I have no issues
| listening to music and podcasts away from my phone and I
| think people using it for listening to music while
| exercising away from the phone is a huge selling point for
| many people.
| alphabettsy wrote:
| They've made it so that the Watch can be used as a child
| device assuming a parent uses an iPhone.
| can16358p wrote:
| Watch + Bluetooth headphones go great together.
|
| Especially if you're on Wi-Fi and I believe on cellular (we
| still don't have it here in 3rd world) you can just go
| hiking with the watch and stream your music on Bluetooth
| without phone.
|
| Same for messaging, fitness tracking, and voice calls. I
| think it's enough for that device.
| Adraghast wrote:
| What exactly are you asking for the Watch to do? I load
| mine with music to play while my phone is in a gym locker
| all the time. Do you just want to be able to get files onto
| it without needing an iPhone? There are "millions upon
| millions" of people clamoring for that feature?
| bsimpson wrote:
| iPod Wear
| r00fus wrote:
| These days you get more storage and better form factor with an
| Apple Watch combined with a bluetooth headset/buds.
| javier_e06 wrote:
| I have the ipod nano 7th gen with a radio tuner! I also have the
| 1st gen apple shuffle, that one that looks like a usb stick. I
| hate all things apple (The Disney of Story Telling) but those 2
| gadgets I keep in the kitchen crap drawer.
| tempnow987 wrote:
| My standard view is, you should be able to read just the
| headlines and have some clue about what is happening. Modern
| marketing means headlines have gone to absolute trash. You can't
| tell product updates from just stupid SEO spam articles (tips to
| do x with y). You can't tell product intros from outros.
|
| I do like AWS style announcements. Their headlines are a bit
| long, but skimming them it's the what, and then the tag
|
| https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/
|
| For week in review I wish they did parens for services - ie, Week
| in review (RDS, IAM, ECS).
|
| Some services are basically dead from an updates perspective,
| others like RDS seem to have pretty solid budgets.
| leokennis wrote:
| Those AWS headlines are perfect! I try to aim for the same in
| my e-mail subjects:
|
| <this happened>: <this is what it means> - <this is what you
| need to do>
|
| Example: "Database X ran out of space: all orders since 20-04
| 14:30 are stuck - request to increase space"
| tempnow987 wrote:
| Awesome, I like it. I've been putting more in my subjects
| recently to good effect.
|
| No one wants to read a long email from what I see. "hey
| john... " just isn't great.
| tmountain wrote:
| My morbid hot take on the headline was that they'd be allowing
| you to will your digital music collection to a family member as
| some kind of covid related estate planning marketing.
|
| Turns out it was something much more benign, but I agree that
| headlines have gone straight to hell these days.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Sad news. I've been waiting for a chin-less upgrade for a while,
| it made for an amazing gaming/music device, and also a cheap
| high-quality touch screen remote for random hacks.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| RIP. I still have a classic in a box somewhere.
| Wump wrote:
| Maybe they'll finally remove "iPod Touch (7th generation)" as the
| default selected simulator in XCode :)
| mjr00 wrote:
| I had a 6th gen iPod Classic that I used for almost 15 years
| before it finally died on me a few months back. Dedicated music
| players nowadays are a niche market, so it was really hard to
| find a replacement. I ended up getting a FiiO M5, and while it's
| definitely got some pros -- much better sound quality, can pop in
| a 512GB/1TB SD card for effectively infinite space for compressed
| songs, can play FLAC/WAV/OGG -- the ergonomics of the iPod were
| just so much better. It's funny how seemingly little things can
| be so frustrating: there's only enough space on the screen for 4
| names at a time, the scrolling isn't adaptive so it takes forever
| to get to the bottom, the play order isn't consistent with the
| song display order within a folder... I used to love just
| browsing my music collection on my iPod on the train to work, but
| with the M5 I'll just pick an album or playlist and press play.
| It's just not as fun to flip through music.
|
| I don't consider myself an Apple fanboy, but the iPod was a rock
| solid product that got all of the little things right. Given that
| the market for standalone DAPs is tiny because most people today
| just use their phones and music streaming apps, it's unlikely
| that we'll ever see a music player that compares to it.
| cush wrote:
| It's a shame that personal music players are still so niche.
| The hardware coming out of China right now blows any phone out
| of the water in terms of usability, performance, and battery
| life, all at a fraction of the cost.
|
| We're in a Renaissance age of mobile listening thanks to ChiFi.
| I love carrying around a second device that has no persistent
| connection to the internet, no notifications, and can drive any
| headphones I throw at it... With sideloaded Audible and Tidal
| to boot.
|
| Media used to be this easy and pleasurable to consume before
| phones got it the way.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > The hardware coming out of China right now blows any phone
| out of the water in terms of usability, performance, and
| battery life,
|
| Can you point to anything in particular? I bought a Chinese
| mp3 player earlier this year and it's a piece of junk.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| "can drive any headphones"
|
| Can it drive Bluetooth headphones? That's the only reason I
| no longer use my Xduoo X3.
|
| If I had something similar (small, minimal screen, dual TF
| slots) that worked with Bluetooth, I'd use it all the time.
| zls wrote:
| Well, if you use Bluetooth you're no longer using the DAC
| inside the DAP, so it's not "driving" the headphones in the
| sense that GP meant. That said, most DAPs support bluetooth
| these days, with trendy codecs like LDAC, aptX-HD, etc.
| However, eschewing the device DAC kinda wastes a lot of the
| money you spent on the DAP.
|
| For Bluetooth usage a year or two ago I would have
| recommended the Shanling M0. All these devices have awful
| touchscreens and the M0 is no exception, but it's tiny,
| light, and has long battery life. Unfortunately, in this
| space the manufacturers tend to discontinue products in
| favor of new ones within a year.
| zls wrote:
| Battery life? Usability? Renaissance?? Have I been trying the
| wrong DAPs?
|
| I'm also really into single-purpose electronics. My whole
| library is FLAC, so these players should be right up my
| alley. Except they tend to be heavy and expensive, and when
| it comes to UI, either they're using Android poorly, with
| incredibly bad battery life (HiBy R5/R6, Fiio M9, A&K
| anything), or they're using a custom UI with pre-iPod UX
| sensibilities. And even when they use Android, they try to
| graft their own UI onto it, so that in the end you have the
| worst of both worlds -- just watch what happens to the volume
| settings on any Android-based HiBy DAP after connecting with
| Bluetooth.
|
| The communities that buy this stuff are much more into the
| technical and theoretical sound quality than how it actually
| comes together as a product. The marketing reflects that; the
| product pages are all litanies of incremental DAC processor
| upgrades, circuit diagrams, and cryptic audio codecs. And
| because this is what folks care about, it's hard to find
| reviewers who even mention into UX.
|
| If you have a rec I'm all ears, because I'm on the verge of
| resuscitating my original Pixel just for this.
| thorncorona wrote:
| Just get an old iphone tbh. They have great DACs built in
| and support iOS apps.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > all at a fraction of the cost
|
| But you already have a phone (I guess) so the cost you're
| competing against is zero.
| refactor_master wrote:
| So in fact it's actually entirely additional cost.
| Tenoke wrote:
| Not for phones without SD cards on which you might have
| limited space or for situations/phones where you have to
| conserve battery.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Phones come with like 128 GB of storage. Not all is
| usable but that accommodates like four days of continuous
| uncompressed music. How long do you really go without a
| network connection and need music for?
|
| Also I think they playback with hardware don't they? They
| aren't running the CPU. It uses a trickle of charge just
| like your iPod.
| brundolf wrote:
| You might consider:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30345399
| TavsiE9s wrote:
| I've recently revived a 6th gen iPod Classic with a flash
| adapter and rockbox, it's been great so far.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| If building your own isn't acceptable, I like the Sony Walkman
| series quite a bit. I have a WM1A and a ZX300 and I have
| minimal complaints other than they cost way too much. There are
| also a bunch of Chinese brands making players with decent
| DAC's, but they all use the same Android interface with minimal
| tweaks for the most part, the battery life and UX sucks..
| Definitely wish there were more high quality off the shelf
| players for the non-audiophile who doesn't want to use their
| phone for everything.
| csdvrx wrote:
| > I like the Sony Walkman series quite a bit.
|
| Can you recommend an audio player with a better UX than the
| default Sony app?
| paulmd wrote:
| Fiio does have the X5 which has a similar jogwheel but I agree
| with you that the lack of exponential scrolling does make it
| annoying. Not sure if that's patent-encumbered (fuck UX
| patents) or what.
|
| Rockbox does have exponential scrolling, but only supports a
| limited list of hardware. There is an "unstable port" for the
| Fiio M3k but that's not what either of us own ;)
|
| Might be a good project for someone here who wants to play with
| embedded hardware! It's one of those situations where once you
| get it up and going on a particular set of hardware, you will
| benefit from a lot of "passive" development from others, both
| past and future.
| windowsrookie wrote:
| iPods have made a bit of a comeback. Checkout r/iPod there's
| people modding them by adding bluetooth and USB-C. There are
| adapters to replace the hard drive with MicroSD. (iFlash)
|
| They (iPods) are relatively simple and new replacement parts
| are readily available. Pick up an old iPod off ebay and install
| a new battery. It's a fun little project, I've done it a few
| times now.
| nfriedly wrote:
| Shucks. I was hoping they'd finally release a new one.
|
| I have an old 6th gen iPod touch that I recently replaced the
| battery in, and my son uses it a lot. I had thought about getting
| another one for my daughter, but I was waiting in hopes that
| apple would release an 8th gen sometime soon.
| musesum wrote:
| Live music provided a sense of belonging.
|
| Radio provided shared stories and feelings.
|
| The Walkman provided a soundtrack for my life.
|
| The iPod provided a full solo theater of emotions.
|
| Smart playlists now provide a feeling of serendipity.
|
| But, that personalized experience feels selfish and hollow.
|
| Maybe I should get out more.
| smm11 wrote:
| I had an iPod something-or-other, and I think it gave Spotify the
| idea of shuffling maybe 45 songs of thousands over-and-over, and
| completely ignoring 93 percent of the music.
|
| I might pick one of these up so I can do that now in color.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| This is a problem with Spotify's shuffling algorithm. It's
| really stupid, it ignores some songs completely.
|
| They used to have a good algorithm, but because it was truly
| random, some users complained about hearing the same artist
| quickly in sequence.
|
| Instead of implementing a list of recently played songs they
| changed the algorithm to be 'smart' but it's actually quite
| dumb because it really never plays some songs. Especially when
| you have only a few artists in the playlist, and some with less
| songs than others. As I tend to do.
|
| They say it's "more appealing to the human brain" but I think
| it stinks. I wish they had an option to switch back a truly
| random one. If I don't like a song I'll skip it anyway. But
| never presenting some is worse.
|
| https://medium.com/immensity/how-spotifys-shuffle-algorithm-...
| sleepybrett wrote:
| unfortunate, the ipod touch was a super handy device for all
| kinds of applications. Great for giving to kids so they could
| have an 'iphone'. Bought a ton of these back in the day and
| paired them to bluetooth pairable RFID reader/writer guns for an
| RFID retail POC. Nice to be able to write software for a platform
| you know, or can easily hire for, and deploy it to this kind of
| device. They often have either weird built in SOCs with
| proprietary apis for UIs.. though sometimes you are now seeing
| built in android devices so _shrug_.
|
| End of an era I guess. Couldn't just rebrand it the 'iPad Micro'
| and keep selling it :)
| skinnymuch wrote:
| The retail price is probably the issue. Apple isn't really in
| the business [yet] of selling $200 hardware. The iPad Mini is
| $130 more than the cheapest iPad. Vs having a model cheaper
| than the cheapest iPad.
|
| It would be funny and maybe even possible! To have a comeback
| as an iPad Micro and be the size of the normal iPhones or the
| current 13 Mini. Though I heard because of its unique size for
| apple hardware, some apps don't look correct on it.
|
| Edit: I flubbed. Apple TV has to be under $200. Maybe their
| Alexa competitor too.
| gjulianm wrote:
| I still have a 4th gen iPod Nano, that despite some heavy use in
| the past still works and plays music perfectly well. I remember
| it fondly, it was a very well designed piece of hardware. Light,
| easy controls that could be used without looking, durable,
| small...
| m3kw9 wrote:
| A10 Fusion chip from 5 years back, must be discontinuing the line
| mdasen wrote:
| Possibly. Apple had used the A10 in the 7th generation iPad
| released in September 2019 so it's not quite as old in terms of
| prime usage as the iPhone would suggest. iPhones have often
| been a few generations ahead of other Apple devices.
|
| The Apple A10 first released 5.5 years ago in the iPhone 7
| Geekbenches at 555 single-core in the iPod (1.6GHz) and 722-750
| in the iPhone 7/iPad (2.3GHz). Multicore is 1069 for the iPod
| and 1280-1398 for iPhone/iPad. That single-core speed matches
| up nicely against processors used in current Android phones
| like the Snapdragon 690 (571-590), Snapdragon 778G (714-777),
| Snapdragon 750 (582-643), or Snapdragon 765G (570-593). It's
| kinda amazing how Apple's A10 from 2016 matches up against the
| best non-flagship (non-8-series) Qualcomm processors for
| single-core performance.
|
| I'd guess it might be more around how long Apple wants to
| support iOS on the hardware. The iPhone 6s (A9) has access to
| the latest iOS (7 major versions), but I think there's a decent
| chance that it won't get iOS 16. That would mean Apple would
| support the iPhone 6s for 6 years post-introduction and 4 years
| post-discontinuation. If Apple wants to support the iPod touch
| for a couple years post-discontinuation, they'd probably want
| to discontinue it now so that they can stop iOS updates in 2-3
| years. If they stopped iOS upgrades in 2-3 years, that would
| mean supporting the iPhone 7 for 7-8 years. That's quite the
| lifespan for that hardware.
| postit wrote:
| Just bought one for each of my kids with their names engraved,
| I'll load with my favorite albums and leave in storage, in 15
| years there will be a revival of ipods and they'll have a choice
| to play the hipster card.
| asddubs wrote:
| That's a bold move for a glued shut device with a built-in
| battery
| alphabettsy wrote:
| My iPod Classic is glued shut. It's still serviceable, but
| hasn't needed any service yet.
| wfhordie wrote:
| Your iPod Classic not glued shut. It has clips. Very easy
| to open with a guitar pick.
| Gigachad wrote:
| In some ways glue is easier than plastic clips. Plastic
| clips would always snap on me while glue melts under a
| hair dryer and comes off cleanly.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| The iPod touch has got to be the last PDA. Smartphones are the
| realization of the '90s vision of PDAs, with cellular capability
| and additional features included, but it's interesting how
| standalone PDAs no longer exist.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Nobody would buy a standalone PDA these days, mainly because
| they'd need one core feature: Access to e-mail. At that point,
| you need, at the very least, a WiFi connection, but customers
| would likely expect a cellular connection.
|
| And at that point, bam, you have a phone.
|
| You could try to make it "not a phone" by removing the speaker
| and microphone, but people will occasionally want to play a
| game, so you'll need the speaker, and someone might want to
| record speech for note-taking, so you'll need the microphone.
|
| TBH, I'm not sure how you could possibly make a "not a phone"
| PDA.
|
| Nobody would buy an offline PDA. At least, not enough people to
| pay for the development of it.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Even back in PalmPilot days, internet connectivity was
| definitely desirable. I suppose Planet Computers' devices are
| trying to capture some of the PDA spirit by emphasizing the
| computing, productivity aspects of smartphones with good
| keyboards.
|
| https://www.www3.planetcom.co.uk
| ilamont wrote:
| Used the iOS models as a poor man's iPhone (with Skype) and my
| first connected digital camera to share on Instagram and
| elsewhere.
| dry_soup wrote:
| The article notes that the first iPod touch came out in 2007.
| That was just six years after the first inch-thick iPod with a
| monochrome screen and magnetic storage. The pace of technology
| really does seem to have slowed down.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| Great, then they surely won't hesitate now to release any and all
| documentation for their old hardware, to prevent millions of
| devices from becoming useless junk even though they're perfectly
| fine, hardware wise. I've got a nice iPod touch 6th gen here that
| will be perfect as an mp3 player on linux or rockbox.
|
| Gonna hold my breath now, okay? :)
|
| /s
| windowsrookie wrote:
| What exactly do you want them to release? You can still use an
| original iPod from 2001 if you want.
| mmebane wrote:
| Driver source code/detailed hardware documentation for all
| the components. Signing keys to enable proper persistent
| installation of custom firmware. In a perfect world, source
| to whatever the final version of iOS to run on it is.
|
| Basically, everything required for third parties to support
| the devices to the same level that Apple did before
| discontinuing them.
|
| ---
|
| (Getting downvoted for a strong right to repair stance? I
| wasn't really expecting that here, but OK.)
| smoldesu wrote:
| Right. It's totally feasible for a community-maintained
| firmware to keep these devices alive if there was no
| barrier to installing custom firmware, Apple ought to have
| a customary "EOL" update for these devices that allows them
| to be unlocked if the owner chooses.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| I'd pay to be in your situation - at least you have the
| hardware and it's still perfectly usable.
| ddoolin wrote:
| I mean, you _can_ pay to be in their situation. Just buy one.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| I'd pay, just not an open-ended amount :) One of my few
| regrets is not buying a backup classic when I had the
| chance.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| huh? I mean, an iPod 6 touch is gonna be much cheaper now
| than when it launched :P
| lostgame wrote:
| Lots of frankly silly comments here suggesting parents buy an
| iPhone without a SIM instead of an iPod Touch?
|
| Assuming you buy them new, the cheapest iPhone is $399 vs. the
| $199 iPod Touch. Buying used is often a mixed bag. An iPad Mini
| is _$499_!
|
| This is basically _just_ a kick in the pants to parents who
| bought these for their kids.
|
| Guess those parents are going to go off and buy another brand and
| type of product now, since Apple refuses to offer a price-
| equivalent product for kids like this. I don't think it would've
| hurt Apple to keep producing this product...
| kawsper wrote:
| I guess that was destined to happen.
|
| I still use my 6th generation iPod Nano, mostly for radio, but
| the usefulness of it is dwindling as more and more stations move
| away from the FM-band and go digital, it's still a cool device
| and it also still works with Music/iTunes.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| I started using my 6th gen nano again just a couple of weeks
| ago, after my last-gen iPod classic finally gave up the ghost.
| I don't know what I'm going to do long-term - the capacity of
| the nano just isn't enough. It's heartbreaking watching
| functionality regress like this :(
| SamBam wrote:
| Perhaps a silly question: is there any way to get music (saved
| mp3 files) onto an old 5th-gen nano from a Chromebook?
|
| Thinking of getting one for my daughter, who has a Chromebook
| from school. Of course I could manage it from my Mac, but it
| would be nice to give her the power.
| Gaussian wrote:
| I always thought of the iPod as THE inflection point for Apple.
| Not the 1998 iMac, not the iPhone, even though it was the latter
| that made Apple the company it is today. But I think the iPod put
| Apple on a track to get to the iPhone-it's why Apple/Jobs were
| even thinking about it. The pod and the phone shared form factors
| and have always been intertwined in my mind. For that reason,
| when the iPhone came out, I automatically assumed that Apple had
| just killed its iPod business. I was wrong, but I suppose that it
| did eventually come to pass... 15 years later.
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _I was wrong, but I suppose that it did eventually come to
| pass... 15 years later._
|
| It happened way earlier than 2022. iPod has been in life
| support for the longest time now and arguably the last true
| iPod was the last iPod Nano in 2012.
| Gaussian wrote:
| So you're saying I was _less_ wrong! I knew it. ;)
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| Not surprising but it's fun to reminisce about the iPod Touch.
| While not technically my first iPod/tech device, it was certainly
| the first computer that was actually my own which was pretty cool
| in 2008. I certainly attribute my current tech career to
| Jailbreaking, it was a great way to learn about Unix style
| systems.
| mwint wrote:
| The iPod touch was so great for me as a kid, it provided an
| accessible (read - cheap) platform I could plug into a Mac and
| deploy iOS apps to at a young age.
|
| Now there's really no reason to keep it around, as you can get an
| off-contract used iPhone that is better in every dimension for
| less money. Still feel a bit sad to see it leave.
| stnmtn wrote:
| I fell in love with computers through jailbreaking iPod
| touches. Back then, for me a jailbroken ipod felt like there
| was a whole world waiting for me; and you could tweak anything
| at all. I eventually started running a mini business at my
| school, offering to jailbreak anyones ipod/iphone (for a small
| fee, of course). I would even put a custom boot logo
| advertising my enterprise on all my customers device. Looking
| back now, that feels a bit scummy, but at the time I thought it
| was the coolest thing ever.
| Snowworm wrote:
| It never left. The iPhone is the new iPod, it just has more
| features that make it more than just a music player and more
| importantly has the option for a SIM (although it isn't
| necessary).
|
| I get what you mean though. I think the iPhone SE has taken its
| place in terms of affordability.
| paxys wrote:
| End of an era. This was the last iPod still being sold right?
| Definitely one of the most impactful consumer products/brands
| ever.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| The iPod introduced me to Apple's entire ecosystem. Without
| that early-2000's experience of design, build-quality, and
| usability, I would probably never have taken the plunge on Mac
| mini, iPads, and a MacBook.
| oh_hello wrote:
| This does jump out to me is a surprisingly profound. I was a
| freshman in college when the iPod first came out. I was a huge
| Apple fan, but didn't get their move into consumer electronics.
| It was so expensive. Why weren't they building more cool Macs
| instead? 10 years later I was putting serious time toward
| learning how to develop for the App Store. Another 10 years later
| and that path has had a profound effect on my career and life.
| Thinking back to the moment my friend Peter showed me the gen 1
| iPod he bought on launch day, the vision, progression, and
| brilliance you can tie back to that product is astounding.
| donthellbanme wrote:
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I haven't tried this in a long time, but is it now possible to
| set up an iPhone without a SIM card in it?
|
| The last time I tried this (years ago, admittedly) the iPhone
| would not "activate" without a working SIM card.
| cmckn wrote:
| My first iPod was the 1st generation Nano. I still think it's one
| of the most beautiful products ever made. I'll miss the iPod era;
| they really were just magical products, and probably the reason I
| became interested in the Mac.
| omar_alt wrote:
| It would be interesting to show the market capitalisation of all
| major record labels vs Apple over the last 25 years. File sharing
| was given a massive leg up at the expense of recorded music and
| looking back it was really the underground and independent labels
| that have perished.
|
| When it comes to competing for attention music has a lot more to
| compete with now than it did then. If I had to predict I can't
| see a significant cultural change happening like in the 20th
| century unless new musical instruments are invented
| pachico wrote:
| At the time I compared different models and none looked good to
| me as the Archos gmini 220.
|
| iPod users were in awe when saw what this little machine could
| achieve.
| amelius wrote:
| The end of the podcast?
| [deleted]
| technotarek wrote:
| I've always imagined that an iPod-something would be my child's
| first camera/media device. We're not ready for that leap yet (at
| only 3 1/2 yo), but I'm curious -- what are others opting for in
| this use case?
| SigmundA wrote:
| iPad has been my kids only device, media, games, school, etc.
| They are getting to the age where they want phones but we are
| holding off.
|
| Also they sometimes need to use laptop/desktop for school but
| that is rare now that most everything works in Safari or there
| is an app. Even printing etc works great and they love the
| pencil. They also have mouse and keyboard for them usually for
| schoolwork.
| lilyball wrote:
| The iPad works great for young kids. There's a lot of great
| iPad cases for kids too.
| _fzslm wrote:
| how about an iPad? mini if the size is a concern for you guys,
| but the camera is pretty solid, performance means it'll last
| your kid years, and there are so many edu-tainment titles on
| the App Store. i think especially the Pencil (or the child-
| oriented Logitech alternative) would be great to encourage a
| growing child's creativity, as well as apps like iMovie,
| GarageBand...
| windowsrookie wrote:
| I'm assuming just a smartphone without a SIM. That's
| essentially what the iPod touch was.
| asciimov wrote:
| Sure, but then you have that background concern about them
| accidentally dialing 911.
| paxys wrote:
| Having the ability to dial 911 if needed is probably a good
| thing.
| dymk wrote:
| Ehhhh I distinctly remember being around 10 years old,
| getting a miniature landline phone [1], and dialing 911.
| Then my parents had to explain to the operator that there
| was no emergency and how sorry they were. Kids do dumb
| things.
|
| [1] this kind of thing -
| https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1891964717.html
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Can you uninstall the phone app, or whatever Apple calls
| it? I'm using LineageOS and it looks like I can disable it,
| though I don't care to try right now.
|
| Plus, it's arguably worth risking accidental 911 calls to
| allow necessary ones. And landlines have had the same risk
| for decades.
| asciimov wrote:
| > Can you uninstall the phone app
|
| You can't uninstall the dialer. As far as I know you
| can't even lock the dialer down.
|
| > Plus, it's arguably worth risking accidental 911 calls
| to allow necessary ones
|
| One of my friends kids (about 5) went through a phase
| where she was fascinated with calling 911. The iPod Touch
| became the way to handle this, you could hand her the
| iPod and know she couldn't dial out. Sure an iPad could
| work, but this girl had siblings and the parents didn't
| want to have to buy everybody an ipad.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| You can't uninstall it, but you can hide it from the home
| screen
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Sure, but then you have that background concern about
| them accidentally dialing 911.
|
| Kids should be taught about 911 at a very young age anyway.
| IMO, if they're old enough for an iPod Touch, they're old
| enough to be taught about 911.
| LargeWu wrote:
| My kids get our old phones, without cellular capabilities.
| That's basically what an iPod touch is anyway.
| eddieroger wrote:
| Kidless adult asking - why not make the device cellularly
| capable, just limiting calls (if not data-only)? Most of the
| time they won't need it, but I can see the benefit of having
| a cellular-capable device in my kid's possession if they ever
| found themselves in an emergency situation. I would assume
| cell carriers could limit the device from doing for-cost
| things, and there are unlimited data plans again.
| LargeWu wrote:
| For my older child, 10, she has a Gabb watch, with very
| limited cellular capabilities and low monthly cost. My
| other kid, 7, is unlikely to be in a situation where he's
| without adult supervision, so not really worth it. Besides,
| I don't really want my kids to have unfettered internet
| access, especially when unsupervised.
| xahrepap wrote:
| Pretty sure Cell Phones in the US are still able to call
| 911 even without a sim card or an active plan.
|
| So a sim-less phone would still allow for an emergency call
| in that sense.
| xeromal wrote:
| Young kids (3 years old) have a knack for finding naughty
| things.
|
| My mom's bf's 6 year old loves sonic and loves playing
| sonic video on youtube. We were having dinner and it had
| autoplayed into some naughty sonic furry stuff and we had
| to change it also while trying to maintain his innocence
| and not explain things he might not be ready for. lol. This
| was last year which I think is after youtube really tried
| to improve video for children but it still happened
| somehow.
|
| I remember being 9-10 years old and accidentally clicking a
| popup and learning about genitals. It's not the best way to
| learn as a kid. It's better coming from their parents.
| paulmd wrote:
| > I remember being 9-10 years old and accidentally
| clicking a popup and learning about genitals.
|
| X10 popup ads claim another victim ;)
|
| those things were _everywhere_ back in the day!
| xeromal wrote:
| They were! And we didn't have popup blockers. lol. I
| remember you could mess up and accidentally open 1000s of
| windows (we didn't even have tabs then. lol)
| windowsrookie wrote:
| Because you don't want kids having access to the internet
| unsupervised for obvious reasons.
|
| My little cousins (under 12 years old) get a cellular Apple
| Watch. That allows their parent to always know where they
| are and can contact them, but prevents the kids from being
| able to use the internet.
| danieldk wrote:
| Our daughter first had two generations of iPod Touch. However,
| one big downside is that the screen is tiny compared with other
| devices. About a year ago or so, she switched to an old iPhone
| 6s without a SIM card and it's fine for Facetiming/messaging
| with her grandparents and photos.
| nytesky wrote:
| How did you get iPhone to enable iMessage without a phone
| number?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| iCloud messaging?
| jaywalk wrote:
| iMessage doesn't require a phone number, it can use email
| addresses as well.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| Sorta-related topic: I like to listen to music while I run. I
| currently use a 7th Gen iPod Nano. It works because it's small
| and it has Bluetooth; I just put it in my pocket and go. However,
| I would rather have this same functionality (play music,
| Bluetooth) on a wristwatch device, as the iPod bouncing around in
| my pocket can be kinda annoying.
|
| All the popular "smart watch" devices are packed with
| functionality I just don't want - not interested in having my
| fitness tracked or reading text messages while I run. I just want
| music and Bluetooth, and I guess a stopwatch/timer, too. That's
| it.
|
| I've looked around and the best I could find was a wristwatch
| device straight outta Shenzhen. I bought it, and unsurprisingly,
| it was junk.
|
| Does anyone know of a quality wristwatch device that _only_ plays
| music and has Bluetooth (and stopwatch /timer)? Does a product
| like this exist? Or, is it "smart watch" or nothing (or junk)?
| mikestew wrote:
| Take a look at Garmin's products. Does what you want, and if
| there is no model that _doesn 't_ do what you _don 't_ want,
| just don't turn those features on. For example, I already have
| an Apple Watch, I don't care about "smart watch" stuff on my
| Garmin. But their top-of-the-line 945LTE that I bought for
| running also has "smart watch". I just want running stuff, so I
| simply did not pair the watch with my phone. There, no smart
| stuff. (Granted, I guess I'm paying for features I don't
| use...)
| softfalcon wrote:
| Yeah, my Apple Watch does this. You can also uninstall all the
| apps and disable all the notifications to make it dumb so it
| only plays music.
|
| I know a few folks who bought the older models or the new Apple
| Watch SE solely for this purpose.
|
| Is it more expensive than an iPod? Yup.
|
| Does it work amazing when running? Also, yup.
| astrange wrote:
| It's easier to just get a smartwatch and turn the stuff you
| don't care about off. It's not like the watch's feelings will
| be hurt if you don't use it.
| Wojakmeme wrote:
| How do you know that exactly?
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| I want to think the iPod just became the iPhone without the LTE
| radio, and manufacturing more iPhones is simply cheaper for
| Apple. Is there any difference between the iPod touch and the
| iPhone for media consumption?
| devindotcom wrote:
| Try turning that thought around and you may see why it makes
| more sense to discontinue. If Apple can get someone to spend an
| extra $100 on a base-level iPhone instead of an iPod Touch, the
| margins aren't as good but the product pipeline is simpler and
| suddenly they're a convert to the iOS ecosystem and all the
| revenue that brings. It just doesn't make sense to offer a
| disconnected iPhone type device any more.
| paulmd wrote:
| Don't ipods run ios as well? If you can buy apps and stuff,
| that's the same thing from Apple's perspective.
|
| As a variation of the iPhone 7, maybe they just want to
| finally be done with that era of hardware and having to
| manufacture chips for it (although they've been great about
| support), and the volume definitely isn't there to justify an
| update to a more modern chip.
| alexott wrote:
| I'm using 13 old iPod for one simple reason - its very handy for
| music and podcasts. Just set the play list "didn't listen for N
| weeks" and music is automatically synced, listened podcasts are
| removed and new are uploaded, etc.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Looking online, a used 256 Gig iPhone 8 from Gazelle is about
| $150 cheaper than a new 256 Gig iPod Touch despite having a newer
| SOC.
|
| https://buy.gazelle.com/collections/iphones/products/iphone-...
| amelius wrote:
| You see the same difference between a SmartTV and a DumbTV.
|
| The iPhone is cheaper because it really is a vending machine in
| disguise.
| MBCook wrote:
| How so?
|
| An iPod Touch and an iPhone run the exact same apps.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Before depreciation, the iPhone was the more expensive
| device.
|
| "Smart" TVs are cheaper because the manufacturer is selling
| your data.
| astrange wrote:
| That's mainly Vizio. There just isn't much point in making
| a dumb TV when the smarts are free. Saves having a Netflix
| dongle too.
|
| Do wonder why LG OLEDs fall so hard in price after a year
| but there's probably an innocent explanation.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Crap :( I always loved the iPod Touch as a secure but tiny
| device. I use it like a "Secure Element" with my most trusted
| stuff on it.
|
| I hope the current generation goes on offer before they sell out.
| Here in Europe there's never been a significant sale on them. I
| got my current previous-gen for 139 euro but the current model
| has never been below 200 here.
|
| An iPhone is way too expensive (even the SE is ridiculously
| expensive in Europe) and I don't want second-hand / "refurbished"
| crap that third party sellers will have put questionable
| batteries in. And I don't need a SIM.
|
| But I guess what I want is a really small niche.
| [deleted]
| greenie_beans wrote:
| but does it have a headphone jack tho
| CharlesW wrote:
| It does.
| ErneX wrote:
| "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame"
|
| 20 years, huge run.
| bombcar wrote:
| Some form of Slashdot finally outlives the iPod.
|
| https://apple.slashdot.org/story/22/05/10/1650258/the-ipod-i...
| gtvwill wrote:
| Eh another lump in apples pile of "it still works but now it
| e-waste" design strat. Just like the early gen still working but
| discontinued and no longer supported iPads on my cupboard next to
| me.
| [deleted]
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I have been considering getting some kind of dedicated music-
| playing device. I have a very cheap plan and am not interested in
| streaming. So I guess this gets ruled out, although the Itunes
| reputation itself was already something of a negative.
| CharlesW wrote:
| The current iPod touch runs iOS 15 and will be just as good 5
| years from now.
|
| The only downside of buying a discontinued Apple product is
| knowing that you'll have to switch devices if/when it dies, but
| even that's mitigated by the fact that you'll likely be able to
| buy used ones for many years.
| newsclues wrote:
| Bring back the iPod Classic with a click wheel, modern
| connectivity for BL and WiFi to get podcasts and solid state
| storage please.
|
| I don't want a phone (all the time) anymore.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| The day before the first iPod was to launch a co-worker (in
| marketing, at Apple) loaned me an iPod to take home over night.
| To this day I am blown away as to how that happened. No way
| that could have happened with the first iPhone. (In case he was
| not supposed to do so I'll withhold his name.)
|
| We (the family) were at a car dealership that evening and to
| entertain my 3 year old I put the ear buds in her ears and gave
| her the iPod to rock out to.
|
| Perhaps unsurprisingly, no one batted and eye or seemed to take
| notice of a little girl sporting the white earbuds that would
| become so iconic later.
|
| Related memory _after_ the iPhone had come out: I remember
| being on a train in Tokyo where, counting the two other Apple
| employees with me, we all three had our iPhones out.
|
| Looking around the train though at all the Tokyo-ites with
| their flip phones and lanyards I began to doubt whether the
| iPhone was ever going to be able to conquer Japan. If for no
| other reason, where do you attach a lanyard?
|
| (Or maybe there's a better term for that bit of
| "personalization" that dangled like a tassel from all the cool,
| urban Japanese flip-phones.)
| flyingfences wrote:
| > (Or maybe there's a better term for that bit of
| "personalization" that dangled like a tassel from all the
| cool, urban Japanese flip-phones.)
|
| I believe the Japanese call it a "strap", transliterated
| directly.
| paulmd wrote:
| it's continually bizarre to me that Japan exists as a tiny
| insular market that gets all kinds of products and devices
| that never make it anywhere else, not even china or the rest
| of SEA.
|
| The rest of the world we never stop hearing about 'there
| isn't a market for X' but Japan is this tiny market that gets
| their own things all the time.
| Zhenya wrote:
| I just wish there was a good way to sync Spotify/YTM playlists
| to these offline devices.
|
| What I have seen is using the 5th gen iPods with new firmware
| is great.
| no-dr-onboard wrote:
| "the music _lives_ on" as a title to describe the death of the
| iPod is such an intolerable attempt at paltering.
|
| As my XO used to say, "Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's
| raining."
| j16sdiz wrote:
| (Non-English native speaker here) What is a "XO"?
| bitwize wrote:
| GP programmed an AI that could run on a green OLPC computer.
| austinsharp wrote:
| "Executive officer" - used in the military, from what I am
| aware.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_officer
| adolph wrote:
| the language is more 1SG, an XO communicates via ppt
|
| Slide 1: Leg: Anatomy and Function of Bones and Muscles,
| Plus Diagram
|
| Slide 2: Establishment of ownership of leg to a soldier,
| attached and special conditions of detachment
|
| Slide n: ... blase blase blase
| [deleted]
| prionassembly wrote:
| He's a Cylon, but he's on your side.
| MisterSandman wrote:
| Is XO a typo of SO or a very interesting acronym
| [deleted]
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _" the music _lives_ on" as a title to describe the death of
| the iPod is such an intolerable attempt at paltering._
|
| Only if you're reading it as a discontinuation notice, but the
| purpose of the release is far broader than that. It's a
| celebration of the impact the iPod touch has had on the world,
| a prompt to iPod touch fans that this is their last chance to
| buy a new one, and a reminder that Apple continues to express
| its love of music through other products.
|
| I understand none of that will resonate with you or seem
| authentic to you, which is fine since you're not the audience
| for it. For someone who grew up with an iPod touch, it's going
| to seem as sincere and bittersweet as the person who wrote it
| intended.
| dang wrote:
| Yes, if the corporate press release isn't the most insufferable
| genre that exists, I'm not sure what is. We've changed the
| title above, in keeping with HN's title rule. More at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31331736.
| adolph wrote:
| pal*ter | 'polt@r | verb [no object] archaic
| 1 equivocate or prevaricate in action or speech: if you palter
| or double in your answers, I will have thee hung alive in an
| iron chain. 2 (palter with) trifle with: this great work
| should not be paltered with. DERIVATIVES
| palterer noun ORIGIN mid 16th century (in the
| sense 'mumble or babble'): of unknown origin.
| ______-_-______ wrote:
| A very carefully worded press release. They didn't want to come
| out and say it, but the iPod product line has been discontinued.
| tiahura wrote:
| The subheading is "iPod touch will be available while supplies
| last"
|
| Seemed straight forward to me.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| No, it doesn't. It sounds like they're having a buy one get
| one free sale, not a discontinuation.
| mgarciaisaia wrote:
| I understand it's really carefully worded, but I tend to feel
| insulted by a press release that says everything _except_ the
| message, to make it less harsh.
|
| Be honest.
| dang wrote:
| Yes. We've changed the title above. More at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31331736.
| jfultz wrote:
| Looks like Apple's dumping their final handheld* device with a
| 3.5mm headphone jack. Let's once more admire their courage.
|
| * There's still one iPad model with a headphone jack, but that's
| not quite in my definition of "handheld".
| nicolas_t wrote:
| I just wished that all other vendors didn't follow in that
| stupidity.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| 100%
|
| Other vendors fail to understand that sometimes the reason
| people use their product is because it's not Apple. Most of
| the regressions I've seen in the Windows 11 UI/UX are from
| them trying to imitate Apple.
| dangoor wrote:
| This seems like the most indirect way possible to say "we're
| discontinuing the last iPod". _Most_ of the content of this press
| release is fine, in my opinion, but saying "iPod Touch is
| available while supplies last" just doesn't seem like a great way
| to phrase it.
|
| Am I wrong about that?
| jrockway wrote:
| Google had this down to a science. "An update on..." was the
| best possible business euphemism for cancelling something, and
| they did it every time, so you didn't have to read the rest of
| the article/blog post. "The music lives on" just isn't as good.
| I know Apple didn't want to copy Google here, but they should
| have. "An update on [the] iPod Touch". Easy. You know what the
| update is.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| "The Music Lives On" is the part that makes me chuckle at them
| being Excessively Apple about it, really. I understand they may
| not have wanted "Finally Killing the iPod" as the headline, or
| even "The iPod is Gone, but the Music Lives On", but I can't
| help think of Phil Schiller standing on stage a few years back
| describing removing the headphone jack as "courage".
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _This seems like the most indirect way possible to say "we're
| discontinuing the last iPod"._
|
| To me, the subhead "iPod touch will be available while supplies
| last" succinctly performs double-duty: (1) We discontinued iPod
| touch, and (2) if you want (another) one, this is your last
| chance.
| bredren wrote:
| I think you're right. Even this seems like a pretty minor
| sendoff for such a massively popular product, though.
|
| Will iPhone some day be quietly, ambiguously sent to the grave
| in a similar fashion?
| dang wrote:
| Agreed. I've changed the title above. If there's a more
| accurate and neutral title, we can change it again.
|
| HN's title rule is " _Please use the original title, unless it
| is misleading or linkbait_ ", and corporate press release
| titles are usually both. For that reason we usually rewrite
| them.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| libria wrote:
| "Wow, iPods, it's been a wild ride, amirite?"
| pjmlp wrote:
| It is in the same vein as when a company uses "process
| optimization" to mean a firing round.
|
| I guess Apple marketing team didn't want to put it clearly what
| they are doing.
| starik36 wrote:
| One would think people write these missives, but on further
| thought, it might be OpenAI trained on 1000s of previously
| similarly obfuscated press releases.
| croddin wrote:
| It's like a TikTok video plot: Tell me you are discontinuing a
| product line without telling me you are discontinuing a product
| line.
| smrtinsert wrote:
| I remember when a key selling point of the iphone was that
| "there is an ipod _inside_ it! "
| stuart78 wrote:
| I read it like three times to see if I'd missed it. Very
| strange approach to this. There is no shame in celebrating its
| impact and saying the brand/category is being retired.
| tobr wrote:
| And the weird thing is when you try to say something without
| saying it, it makes it look like _you're_ ashamed of it.
| There's nothing here to be ashamed of, so why not just say it
| clearly and succinctly?
| Ninjinka wrote:
| When I was a kid, I was looking to buy my first gaming device. I
| was debating between getting a Nintendo DS and the 4th gen iPod,
| ultimately deciding on the iPod. This ended up being a great
| choice as I was able to get more games than I would have been
| able to on the DS and it opened up a world of being able to text
| my friends (primarily through Words with Friends at the time).
|
| It's a shame it's being discontinued, it was the perfect first
| device for children.
| kin wrote:
| As someone who used both devices for gaming, I would say that
| while the iPod may have had quantity, the DS without a doubt
| had the quality of games. Amazing library.
| asciimov wrote:
| That's a damned shame, the iPod Touch was a great way to give
| kids a "phone" without giving them a real phone.
| MBCook wrote:
| I wonder if they'll launch something new to fill the gap, or if
| that gap is just too small for them to decide it's worth
| pursuing.
|
| Or maybe they see that as belonging to the iPad mini's purpose.
| coastflow wrote:
| The iPad mini might be Apple's response to mostly fill the
| gap. The device can run phone apps without having the
| features of calling/texting.
|
| The tablet also has more educational value as it supports
| handwriting and drawing, though it comes at the cost of not
| being pocket-size (adding inconvenience for users who just
| want to listen to music).
| skinnymuch wrote:
| The iPad mini costs more than an iPhone SE. it's not that
| small either so if it isn't going to be in your pocket, an
| iPad is over $100 cheaper.
|
| I think the iPad Mini makes sense as a product line in
| general. Which is being a smaller screen (and thus cheaper)
| iPad Air. It does work as an option, but so do iPads.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| The regular "iPad" is more similar. Low priced model that
| lags behind the design and power of the flagship models.
| Starts at $329 vs $500 if you don't mind the big bezels,
| lightning port, and A13 processor with 3GB RAM.
|
| Mini has the small bezels, USB-C port, supports the
| magnetically charged stylus, and has an A15 with 4 GB RAM,
| so it's priced more in line with the iPad Air even though
| it's the small one.
|
| I used to have an iPad Mini, I think 3? Whichever model was
| before it got Touch ID. Back then it was a smaller and
| cheaper version of the normal iPad, more recently it's
| moved to the middle of the line (but below the "Pro"
| versions).
| skinnymuch wrote:
| I just realized the iPad mini I still use doesn't have
| Touch ID. I have an iPad mini 3. It's slow on the last OS
| it can be on, iOS 12. I use it because a jailbreak tweak
| that can last.fm scrobble (tracks listening/viewing
| history) works on older devices like that one.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Just went and checked, the Mini 2 didn't have Touch ID,
| the 3 added it but changed pretty much nothing else.
|
| I think what I had was a 2 purchased after the 3 came
| out, someplace was clearing them out for around $150 off
| even though it was practically the same device except it
| took half a second longer to unlock. Pretty good deal,
| eventually got demoted to kitchen recipe screen.
| foogazi wrote:
| What about an iPhone without a sim card ? camera will be way
| better anyway
| izzydata wrote:
| That seems far more expensive than an iPod.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| iPhone SE 2nd generation (from early 2020) will be pretty
| cheap nowadays with the 3rd gen out. Probably still a bit
| pricier than an iPod Touch, but Apple went long periods of
| time without updating the Touch. While not reducing the
| price.
|
| Though it won't be possible to get new iPhone SE 2nd gen
| for long. At that point, a refurbished or used 11 or XR or
| SE 2nd gen will not be too much. The latter two should be
| cheaper than a new iPod Touch.
| mrpippy wrote:
| An older (or new with discounts) iPhone SE isn't much more
| Gigachad wrote:
| These days parents hand down their phone to their kids so
| its basically free from that perspective. The height of the
| iPod Touch was the time when parents were only just getting
| their first smartphone.
| windowsrookie wrote:
| It's essentially an iPhone 7 without a SIM. Just buy one of
| those. I'm assuming it would cost less than a new iPod touch
| and it prevents old iPhones from becoming e-waste.
| kgwxd wrote:
| On an iPod FaceTime and iMessage work as expected over Wifi.
| Last time I tried to use an iPhone without a sim card they
| didn't work. Is that still the case? If so, is it a technical
| limitation or an intentional one?
| nytesky wrote:
| Yeah I posted about it above and people said it works fine.
| I wonder if it depends on who you original carrier was or
| something? I'm going to try again!
| chemmail wrote:
| You will need to go down to iPhone 6S to get the headphone
| jack.
| Gigachad wrote:
| You could just stick the adapter on the end of their
| headphones cable and it effectively works the same.
| kingcharles wrote:
| Someone gave me an iPhone 7 the other day. It's a great
| phone. It runs the latest iOS too, so you're supported for a
| good while.
|
| Some apps are a little cramped on what is now considered a
| small screen though (e.g. TikTok UI takes up most of the
| screen).
| Tade0 wrote:
| It's very much not an iPhone 7 without a SIM.
|
| Chiefly, it weighs 88g vs the 138g for the iPhone - a
| considerable difference for a child.
| windowsrookie wrote:
| I'm sorry but I disagree. I carried around a game boy
| pocket, with several game cartridges just fine as a kid. I
| see kids taking Nintendo switches and an iPad everywhere
| with them today.
| simlevesque wrote:
| > It's essentially an iPhone 7 without a SIM. Just buy one of
| those.
|
| You literally can't "just buy one" that's new to give to a
| kid.
| spicybright wrote:
| Why be pedantic, the point GP is making is obvious.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| It's not even pedantic. The next line says "new iPods"
| are pricier than iPhone 7s. So they meant non new iPhone
| 7s. Followed by e-waste which wouldn't be about a new
| device
| skinnymuch wrote:
| The person knows that. If you read on. That's why they say
| it's probably cheaper than a new iPod. By saying "new" for
| iPod, it's a distinction versus iPhone 7s. Then they bring
| up e-waste which is about used devices being re-used. Not
| using a new device.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Major problem with that: Phones without SIMs can still make
| emergency calls (911, etc).
|
| I got one for my kid as a camera. Why? Because it costs as
| much as many kids cameras, while they're absolute trash, and
| the camera module/software in the iPod takes really high
| quality photos that are easy to export or manipulate.
|
| Old iPhones are inexpensive, but you cannot disable emergency
| calling for a good reason, but that good reason still doesn't
| make you want to hand one to a 7-year-old as a glorified
| camera.
| tempestn wrote:
| Is the concern that they will accidentally dial 911, or
| intentionally? I have a 7 year old and can't really imagine
| either happening.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Both. Just a whole scope of problem that can be
| eliminated by not getting a device with a cellular modem.
| Plus a lot of iOS devices have strange interactions with
| iPhones without phone numbers (imessage and signal for
| two specific examples).
| procombo wrote:
| This is the worst thing about Signal, IMO. I want to use
| old phones as backup communication devices (wifi) but
| can't natively use the software that way.
| nytesky wrote:
| We have a bunch of old iPhones for kids, but we can't setup
| iMessage on those phones without an active phone number. We
| can setup iMessage (email based) on iPad and iPod Touches, so
| this is frustrating. I want my kids to not be full on
| cellular internet, but I like that they can message
| relatively safely friends and family with iMessage.
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| I thought you could set iMessage up to use an email
| address. I did that before but it's been a while.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| You do not need a phone number for iMessage. You can make
| an apple account with an email address, and use the email
| address as your Apple ID.
| mstolpm wrote:
| I'm using an old iPhone without a SIM card as a spare
| device and iMessage works on it WIFI-only. But I have to
| admit that initial setup of the Apple ID wasn't done on
| this phone. Perhaps you could setup your kids Apple IDs on
| another device and then use them on the old phones with
| iMessage as well?
| refracture wrote:
| You're missing something; I have a first gen SE that's got
| no SIM and it has email based iMessage setup and working.
| It's for my son to FaceTime with family.
| FactolSarin wrote:
| We use a cell service called Tello for my kids phones. For
| $5/mo you can get a plan with 100 minutes of voice calls,
| sms, and no data whatsoever. It's perfect for my kids,
| since I don't really want them to have mobile data anyway
| rsync wrote:
| Thank you!
|
| I have been looking for a cheaper, no-data SIM card to
| use with 2FA Mules - this is very helpful.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| I don't believe this is true or something let's me not need
| any [working] sim in my phones. I can log into an iCloud
| account and FT, iMessage accounts on non sim working phones
| too.
| piperswe wrote:
| Strange, I have iMessage set up on an old iPhone XS with no
| SIM and no phone number tied to the Apple ID
| clairity wrote:
| from apple's vantage point, the watch (with airpods) is meant
| to fill this niche (more lucratively for them). apple even went
| against its own one-user-one-device edict to allow one iphone
| to control multiple watches to support this positioning.
|
| edit: i should add that this is also one of the reasons apple
| has the "voice only" music subscription.
| belazeebub wrote:
| The watch most definitely does not fill this niche as most
| parents bought the iPod touch partly (mostly?) for its gaming
| abilities.
| daptaq wrote:
| Why would you even what that? I get the opposite (phone without
| internet), but this has all the downsides for the development
| of a child without the advantage of a child being able to
| contact their parents or vice versa?
| francisofascii wrote:
| > Why would you even what that
|
| Cost. $199, new.
| daptaq wrote:
| You can get a new Nokia dumbphone for 60 euros: https://www
| .nokia.com/phones/de_de/nokia-6310?sku=16POSE01A0.... Up
| until recently there were even models that only cost 20.
| windowsrookie wrote:
| You can't get a cheap dumb phone in the United States.
| Carriers here will not activate a device unless it has
| 4G.
| protomyth wrote:
| The iPod touch cannot call 911. The iPod touch doesn't
| require me to have a phone contract. Not every kid needs a
| phone, but having an iPod touch keeps the kid from getting
| bullied by the "Blue Message" crowd.
| cactus2093 wrote:
| You're saying the most important considerations for a kid
| are 1. preventing prank 911 calls and 2. teaching them not
| to be anti-android snobs?
| [deleted]
| protomyth wrote:
| Accidental[1] or pranks by others mostly. Welcome to the
| wonderful world of elementary school.
|
| 1) although having had to make a 911 from Car Play, I
| wouldn't worry about accidents, but it was concerning how
| long it took to make the damn call.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| iPhones do not require a phone contract either.
|
| iPod touches also sent iMessages, since all you need is an
| Apple ID.
|
| https://support.apple.com/guide/ipod-touch/set-up-
| messages-i...
| protomyth wrote:
| _iPod touches also sent iMessages, since all you need is
| an Apple ID._
|
| That's why I said _" having an iPod touch keeps the kid
| from getting bullied by the "Blue Message" crowd"_ - It
| was the device you could buy a kid and not worry about
| the green messages.
|
| iPhones without phone contracts can still call 911.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Sorry, I read that incorrectly.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| If jailbreaking will continue working on iOS 15, then
| people can do that and nuke the phone app from iPhones to
| prevent the 911 issue.
| DerekBickerton wrote:
| Damn I love these devices. For me they were a sort of _very_ mini
| iPad in an iPhone form factor and I loved how they didn 't have a
| baseband processor. Always laughed when trying to download
| Whatsapp onto them and got an 'Incompatible' message in the app
| store.
|
| Apple never released new versions frequently though, meaning
| certain apps became incompatible over time, since iPods couldn't
| be updated to the latest iOS. My fifth gen device was stuck on
| iOS 9 for a number of years now and it basically became unusable
| (and very insecure since apps couldn't be updated along with the
| OS).
|
| I will be snapping up as many devices as I can from AliExpress &
| eBay though. Still worth having a few to toy around & tinker
| with.
| mdoms wrote:
| Ipod was dead to me when they killed the Shuffle, the only Apple
| product I genuinely liked.
| DerekBickerton wrote:
| Damn I love these devices. For me they were a sort of _very_ mini
| iPad in an iPhone form factor and I loved how they didn 't have a
| baseband processor. Always laughed when trying to download
| Whatsapp onto them and got an 'Incompatible' message in the app
| store.
|
| Apple never released new versions frequently though, meaning
| certain apps became incompatible over time, since iPods couldn't
| be updated to the latest iOS. My fifth gen device was stuck on
| iOS 9 for a number of years now and it basically became unusable
| (and very insecure since apps couldn't be updated along with the
| OS).
|
| I will be snapping up as many devices as I can from AliExpress &
| eBay though. Still worth having a few to toy around & tinker
| with.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."
|
| Twenty years is a long time.
| Nition wrote:
| I noticed that the NOMAD lives on in Apple having to be extra
| specific in today's announcement:
|
| > The original iPod, introduced on October 23, 2001, was the
| first MP3 player to pack a mind-blowing 1,000 songs and a
| 10-hour battery into a stunning 6.5-ounce package.
|
| The NOMAD had more storage than the first iPod (6GB vs. 5GB),
| but weighed 14oz and had a four hour battery life.[0]
|
| [0] https://archive.org/details/manualzilla-
| id-7341241/page/37/m...
| kilbuz wrote:
| haha, classic.
| nileshtrivedi wrote:
| Since smartphoners have taken over, we are seeing most businesses
| insisting on users' owning and sharing their phone numbers. WiFi-
| only devices like iPod Touch could have played an important role
| in resisting this trend - especially with kids. Too bad there
| never were any popular WiFi-only models in the Android world.
| Headwig wrote:
| There is the WiFi-Only Ipads,so not all hope is lost! This had
| led to the new "Ipad Kid" trend though which is loathsome at
| best.
| cheschire wrote:
| Just don't put a sim card in it?
| m463 wrote:
| I think apps that could run on an ipod within its
| restrictions, might require that kind of stuff
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| So I just spat Apple in the eye and bought an old iPod classic
| with iFlash + 1TB SSD retrofitted in it (I do have another one,
| but I have no sufficient opening-fu to pry it open without
| damaging).
| RajT88 wrote:
| If you wanted to really spit in Apple's eye, you'd buy a Zune.
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