RIP Ipod Classic

donlaw

Legend
Location
Texas
Name
Don
My daughter's gen 7 160g iPod classic died this week. I went to order a new one and they are out of production.
Can't find one any where except eBay where the prices have soared to ridiculous levels.
An early adopter, I bought my first one when they brought out a 40g hard drive version. Then later upgrades to 120g and finally 160g.
I have travel with one of these all over the place. Always knowing I had 10,000+ songs to listen while driving or flying into wild and woolly places.

This was such a huge game changer for the music business and influenced future tech like the smart phone and tablet.
Say what you will about the sound quality of compressed music formats like MP3 or ACC, (I still prefer to listen to my turntable when at home) it was a great feeling to know you could have your rare Captain Beefheart bootleg or whatever else you fancy playing at 30,000ft in the middle of nowhere.

I always thought they should have updated the iPod classic with a solid state drive and a higher capacity. But, I guess the business model is better if they can sell cloud space storage instead.

Sorry for the rant, but I will miss the iPod.
 
i still have the first gen 5gb firewire one. i love my 160 gb as it fits pretty much my entire large collection plus my pretty large video collection. just an awesome tool and its too bad the marketplace no longer appreciates it. or has music just become so much more disposable? ya' know, no one waits on baited breath for their favorite group to come out with their latest album anymore like we used to, and so i think no one is interested in building up a collection. each of my friends growing up had literally a couple hundred albums. they were honestly time/place soundtracks of dozens of artists, whom we discussed, debated, compared and knew everyhing about. and if we could get bootleg concert albums, alternate take albums or VIDEO to share, wow! i just dont think that kind of cultural thing exists anymore. hour upon hour hanging out at someons apartment--or a bar with a great jukebox-- talking, having a couple beers and listening to music. my nephew is a college senior and honestly i dont think he and his buds ever talk about music. maybe 'cause theres nothin happening...20 years from now no one will be playing their miley cyrus or gaga-googoo albums like many of us still play the soundtracks of our youth. instead they will have fond memories of assassins creed 4! ):
 
Well, with the new iPhones having 128gb and with so many people moving to streaming services anyway, all that capacity seems unnecessary, not to mention the vulnerability of a hard drive in a pocket device just doesn't seem suited to the times. Sort of like a Walkman, but not quite...

-Ray
 
Hey Don,

I absolutely understand your rant, as I thought of the same thing, there are still places were there is no power or internet connection for the iphone generation users were the ipod classic will still work as a main gadget. Hiking, deserts, many parts in asia, etc. anyway not worth it, I bought the iphone 6 128gb but I still have my 160gb ipod and I noticed something else besides the battery lasting difference which for obvious reasons the ipod runs cirlces around the iphone. And that is that to me it seems that the ipod is made for listening albums whereas the iphone music app seems more like to play songs than full albums.

And many will come and say, hey but who listens to a full albums anymore. But again, not because everyone is jumping from the 10th floor means I will too. so.

If it helps of anything and you like doing some DIY-ness there are some tools to fix your ipod classic and even expand its memory using SD cards, or replacing the drive or even using compact flash cards.

iPOD and SDHC – SDXC cards – iFlash.xyz That guy has dedicated years in customizing ipod classics and sells all the components to do it. check it out.

Also ifixit has a tutorial on how to upgrade the 160gb drive onto a 512gb ssd one. 512GB SSD Hard drive installation for iPod Classic 7th. Gen. - iPod Classic.

hope that helps. long live the ipod!.
 
I still have my 30gb iPod Classic and it still works. But it can't accomodate my entire music library and I'm beginning to worry about the battery. So a replacement iPod may be on the way... or perhaps a high-capacity iPhone 6. I have nothing against cloud services. Except that I don't want to pay for them. Nor do I want to pay for a large amount of data each month. I already have a large music library (mostly from purchased CDs) and it's already in iTunes. I prefer to simply purchase a device that can handle it all. If I lose or break the device, I still have my music at home on my iMac.
 
Hey Don,

I absolutely understand your rant, as I thought of the same thing, there are still places were there is no power or internet connection for the iphone generation users were the ipod classic will still work as a main gadget. Hiking, deserts, many parts in asia, etc. anyway not worth it, I bought the iphone 6 128gb but I still have my 160gb ipod and I noticed something else besides the battery lasting difference which for obvious reasons the ipod runs cirlces around the iphone. And that is that to me it seems that the ipod is made for listening albums whereas the iphone music app seems more like to play songs than full albums.

And many will come and say, hey but who listens to a full albums anymore. But again, not because everyone is jumping from the 10th floor means I will too. so.

If it helps of anything and you like doing some DIY-ness there are some tools to fix your ipod classic and even expand its memory using SD cards, or replacing the drive or even using compact flash cards.

iPOD and SDHC – SDXC cards – iFlash.xyz That guy has dedicated years in customizing ipod classics and sells all the components to do it. check it out.

Also ifixit has a tutorial on how to upgrade the 160gb drive onto a 512gb ssd one. 512GB SSD Hard drive installation for iPod Classic 7th. Gen. - iPod Classic.

hope that helps. long live the ipod!.

Thanks for these links. I am not sure I would do it, but it is an interesting alternative.
 
I still have a couple of 160s one in each car and will miss them when they die, although the new Ipod Touch should be getting larger the next time, just a lot more money
 
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