Two days ago, after learning that Apple’s last surviving iPod touch had been consigned to oblivion, I looked at my 160GB iPod Classic BattleX and said really loudly, “Just you and me again, kid”.
It’s easy to see why Apple nixed the last iPod standing; The company more or less announced that its coveted dedicated music player is no longer needed, as its iPhones (and iPads and even Apple Watch) now include the whole portable music thing.
OK, Tim Cook veteran may have called time on a 21 year legacy product in standard, nano, shuffle and mini guise, but my 15 year relationship with me is as strong and lasting as ever, thank you very much .
(image credit: TechRadar)
The iPod you can see in the photo above has been around the world for countless auditions, job interviews, castings, rehearsals, and gigs. It was there when in-flight movies didn’t work, when Apple CarPlay didn’t come with a rental car as promised, when German songs needed to be learned overnight, when everyone’s phone on the last train home died. , and that’s when it finally made sense to me streaming Hi-Res Lossless on Apple Music really does Grabbing mobile data.
In 2007, I saved up for the bigger storage option simply because 40,000 songs seemed like a mind-blowing figure; It still does today – I’ve never come close to filling it up. Steve Jobs did well on his goal of having “1,000 songs in your pocket” by 2001, but look at the scale of progress in those six short years!
So why end the musical marriage now, 15 years later? After all, the file formats supported by this iPod (AAC, AIFF, ALAC and my dear old friend MP3, aka Lossie But Little) are still very relevant.
The same can hardly be said of my ever-beloved Sony MiniDisc player—and although CDs are a viable, tangible music format, come on… a futile attempt to avoid the damned skip many moons ago.
(image credit: TechRadar)
That iPod you see above is still going strong: dented, scratched, overused, but still singing. Once, close to tears, I begged a man in a phone shop on Rieperbahn in Hamburg, Germany, to remove the broken headphone jack.
,Ist ist kaputt and ich kann die music nimls ersetzen!I cried, even though I had previously coined the phrase (‘It’s broken and I can never change this music’). He blushed. I came back the next day and fixed it for the equivalent of $60, and Kurt Cobain could join me as I walked to work once again.
There’s no Bluetooth involved here, so forget wireless earbuds, and no streaming over Wi-Fi either, but therein lies the iPod’s genius. Are we moving on to nostalgia? No, (though if that’s what you’re after, you can relive the days of iPod glory with this Spotify and Apple Music web player); The thing with the iPod is that you have to to like music.
You’ll have to physically plug the thing in, choose your Sonic Poison, and wait until all those albums slot themselves into your library, viewing the 2.5-inch QVGA LCD display as their little postage stamp. Light up with artwork offerings.
But the real beauty is that once loaded, those files are going nowhere; Great album in a long and colorful alphabet row ready to eat. nirvana No problem Won’t be thwarted by guest Wi-Fi networks, Alexa miscommunication, Spotify free playlists, ads, Bluetooth dropouts, app updates, an incoming phone call, a Google notification or an important email.
Rarely will your access to music be marred by battery-life issues – my iPod Classic still lasts a comfortable 30-40 hours on a full charge.
iPod and Lossy MP3 Files: Blight or Boon for Music?
(image credit: TechRadar)
The elephant in the room where iPods are concerned has long been a thorny issue of resolution. Did Apple destroy sound quality with the iPod? While the Cupertino giant certainly didn’t do you any favors within your music collection (as you noticed you loaded your players with lossy files) one of the arguments is accessibility.
You didn’t have to wait hours or sacrifice much storage for that album to arrive. You’ve plugged it into a friend’s computer, you’ve plucked it from various iTunes libraries, and you’ve (on a whisper) even used BitTorrent or other file movers once or twice – call it the cynical youth. And the pudding doesn’t have to be over-egged, but you can actually take several tracks of them on a road trip.
Remember carrying a CD wallet on public transportation, which separates your delicate discs using a transparent sleeve? I do, they were my work tools. I left the cases on to reduce the load on my back because the CD without the case weighs just 16 grams – useful to know.
Now, the Note’s leading edge isn’t as flashy, flashy or impressive in an MP3 file as they are in 16-bit/44.1kHz CD quality, but an iPod Classic weighs 140 grams—the equivalent of about 8.75 CDs. And with an iPod, you can Horrible Much more than that…
“Music has always been a part of our core at Apple, and the iPod has influenced more than just the music industry, bringing it to millions of users – it also defined how music is discovered, heard and shared. “Today, the spirit of the iPod is alive,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s SVP of Worldwide Marketing, announcing the iPod’s demise.
I agree wholeheartedly with the first bit, Greg, but I have to tell you that my iPod really lives on in more than just spirit. Yes, Teen Spirit too.
