So hidden amidst the new watch and phone stuff last week was the quiet death of the beloved iPod Classic. What do I do now when my current one dies?! I’m all about capacity. Please don’t bother to explain why I’m so incredibly behind the times, out of date, or any of that nonsense. I don’t want to justify why, but I need an mp3 player with lots of gigs available. I have about 90 gigs of stuff on mine right now. And now, all of a sudden, the biggest replacement I can get is a 64 gig iPod Touch - IF I want to plunk down $300 for it! Ridiculous. I’m so annoyed.
Is anyone aware of any alternative in the 100 gig range?
Not only discontinued but there are reports to the effect that the remaining stock was pulled from the Apple Store shelves before there could be a run. The bahstids.
Things to be missed about the Classic:
1: Capacity, of course, and that was local storage – the WiFi or cell network can have an outage or be out of range, or maybe you just don’t want to use up your dada cap, but as long as you can charge the battery you can still access your music
2: Clickwheel = can start/stop/skip forward and back/repeat/change volume w/o having to look at a touchscreen
3: It’s a straight media library/player, it doesn’t try to do 115 thousand other functions, some half-arsedly. Sometimes you just want to listen to your albums or podcasts, you do not need your exact planetary coordinates to do so.
In the world that used to be, this would have been an opportunity for someone to enter the market with something along those lines; but alas, that alternative may be done in by the worshippers of (grandiose musical fanfare) The Cloud!!(loud cheering crowds). Big IT are not just betting on the Cloud, they’re actively working to make it so you’ll *have *to park your 100GB not in an iTouch or something similar but in (grandiose musical fanfare) The Cloud!!(loud cheering crowds) – their Cloud, natch.
I’m disturbed about the loss of a device with a 30-pin connector. Apple sells a Lightning to 30-pin adapter, but it’s my understanding that (when it works) it only transfers audio; you can’t control the iPod or iPhone using the stereo’s headset.
FtGKid2 got me two busted iPods off eBay as an Xmas present years ago for me to fix up as fun. Got both working and still running.
Mine is a 4th Gen iPod Classic. Replaced the battery a couple times and the disk once. (A serious drop.) 10 years since the model was introduced.
MrsFtG’s is a Nano. Also battery replaced as well as a new disk in the original fix up.
Other parts available on eBay for cheap. The folks at iFixIt can show how to fix things as well as provide reliable batteries and repair tools. Just be very careful taking it apart. The ribbon cables are fragile.
My headphone jack on my classic just started acting up. And while I was about to give Apple another $250 for a new one (as the current one is about 5 years old) I obviously can’t now. And I’m not interested in any of the other options. I’d rather spend $50 getting it fixed by someone else or see if I can fix it myself.
Apple has effectively lost my business for their new products. I don’t want an iPod touch, I want an iPod. I don’t want a bunch of non-upgradable flash memory and a glossy display in a laptop, I want the older MacBook Pro with the matte screen and actual hard and optical drives. So I’m going to fix my iPod and already bought the laptop I wanted off eBay.
Yes, I see the iPhone 6 is available with 128GB. That makes it a viable replacement for the iPod. Previous versions of the iPhone didn’t have enough capacity.
Another major downer from losing the classic (and most other regular old mp3 players) is that wifi/bluetooth/camera equipped devices are NOT allowed in any secure areas. The Classic has always skirted the line and was authorized in some classified areas (but the cables were not, rendering them useless if you wanted to steal info, download stuff etc…). The Classic and the old square nano were the last iPods that were allowed. Now there will be no option. Working in a vault with a white noise generator, no music, and no windows can be brutal.
My entire music library is about 90GB…my iPod is an older 30GB model, so I’ve never had the experience of toting my entire music collection with me. There’s still enough music and podcasts on the device that iTunes measures the content in days rather than hours, and setting it to shuffle is almost always a surprising experience.
You can always get a Sansa Clip for $33 and then either a $30 64gb microSD card or a $110 128gb microSD card. Both are cheaper than an iPod classic and give you the option of infinite expandability via microSD cards.
Storage capacity and ease of replacement. I would have been more okay with the latest versions of the MacBook Pro if it used a standard, replaceable 2.5" SDD instead of soldering memory directly onto the motherboard.
