Last month, I bought an iPod Classic at Best Buy. It was expensive but I thought the iPod classic was bulkier, larger and had a larger screen. I held the iPod in my hand and thought, this is tiny.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The iPod seemed huge when I was young. The screen also seemed bigger but then the iPhone happened and now the iPod looks short, thick and the smallest screen I think is even possible for a mobile device. I have to squint my eyes to see the screen. It’s pretty remarkable how much of a game-changer the iPod was compared to every other MP3 player of its time I proudly owned every iPod that was ever released from the first 5GB FireWire model that had a click wheel that actually spun. The 3rd Generation iPod with the touch sensitive bright red buttons as my all time favorite iPod. I never got into the Mini \/ Nano models. My iTunes library was always too huge for those devices. Even now, the 160GB iPod Classic can’t hold my iTunes library.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Of course, when Apple renamed the iPod app on iOS to “Music”, we all knew what that meant. iOS is bigger than the iPod ever was. You no longer needed an iPod app on iOS to make it appeal to people. The iPod has a music player, not an iPod and that’s all that matters.<\/p>\n
I kept using the iPod for music until 2011 when I purchased the iPhone 4 in San Francisco which had access to 32 gigabytes of storage and Pandora. I relied on those to get buy and only stored my music playlists on it. Yes, only the playlists in iTunes fit on that iPhone. Disappointing but I was tired of carrying multiple devices.\u00a0Since the iPhone 4, I’ve had the 4S and 5 and each of those have 64 Gigabytes of storage. Paired with a 64 gigabyte iPad, I can keep a lot of my music on them so that’s what I’ve dealt with. When I bought a car, it had a 30-Pin Apple connector that works with the stereo. So, on the day I bought my car, I picked up an iPod Classic. It’s been a great experience but I experienced the same unfamiliarity as I did when getting my first iPod back in November of 2001. I was lost.<\/p>\n
The first thing about the iPod Classic I had to overcome after 6 years of iOS is the lack of connectivity. I forget how being disconnected feels. It wasn’t scary, but my habitual behaviors had me expecting to have access to streaming music or at least iTunes Match. I’d grab the iPod Classic and go for a run and when I started the run, I’d go to start my running tracker application and realize the iPod didn’t have that. It couldn’t even link up with my Nike running shoes and, if I really wanted some Beastie Boys, I couldn’t rely on iTunes Match to stream it because what was on the iPod is all you can listen to. There’s no other way around it unless you connect to the Mac and load up Beastie Boys.<\/p>\n
Where does the Classic fit in 2013? The iPod Classic reminds me of an external hard drive. Sure, there’s cloud storage which is portable, flexible and never gets corrupted or fails but the external hard drive at home is cheaper, accessible and feels more rugged. It feels like something you can trust. There’s no delay to your files due to Internet access and the price per gigabyte is insanely cheap. Accessing those files from your iPad while you’re in Amsterdam isn’t very easy though so cloud storage is obviously the winner. The connected iOS devices I own (iPhone 5, iPad 3) are greatly superior to the iPod Classic. They’re more expensive, you can’t really work on them to replace individual parts and there’s a new one every year but the Classic is that external hard drive. Affordable, reliable and useful. It can’t play rented 1080P videos or iBooks but it plays podcasts just fine just as long as I remember to sync the podcasts before I leave the house.<\/p>\n
For a device that goes into my glove compartment in the car unseen and out of sight, the iPod Classic is perfect.<\/p>\n
As for what my headphones plug into, well the iPhone wins that battle. I can use Pandora, Spotify, iTunes Match and YouTube. It has my books and I can stream podcasts. The iPod Classic wins because 80% of my iTunes library is in my car at all times. It’s fast and gets the job done.<\/p>\n
It’s no surprise that iPod is called ‘Classic’ at this point.It still has it’s place. I had 5 external hard drives at home and I keep a USB keyboard around for diagnosing problems when Bluetooth is not available (such as the BIOS) and the iPod Classic is sort of like that. It’s a lot of fun to own though. The battery life is insane!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last month, I bought an iPod Classic at Best Buy. 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Apple is probably mostly trying\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Linked"","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":436,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2009\/07\/20\/ipod-classic-and-the-death-of-hdd\/","url_meta":{"origin":3942,"position":1},"title":"\u2605 iPod Classic and The Death of HDD","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"July 20, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"HDD stands for Hard Disk Drive which, in my opinion, all storage drives are hard but only one uses disks and this is what we'll be talking about today. Most of the people that read this post know exactly what a hard drive is so I'll save my breath and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Ideas"","block_context":{"text":"Ideas","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/ideas\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"hdd","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.trustedreviews.com\/images\/article\/inline\/3951-HDD.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2718,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2011\/07\/16\/could-the-ipod-be-on-its-deathbed\/","url_meta":{"origin":3942,"position":2},"title":"\u2605 “Could the iPod Be On Its Deathbed?”","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"July 16, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"via Wired: If sales of Apple\u2019s iPod are any indication, the heyday of the MP3 player is over and done with. UH-OH iPod sales have been\u00a0steadily declining\u00a0since their peak\u00a0at\u00a022.7 million\u00a0in December 2008, and analysts estimate another 7.2 percent drop over the quarter that just ended. but then Apple still commands\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Linked"","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7047,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2017\/09\/05\/linked-apple-kills-off-ipod-nano-and-ipod-shuffle\/","url_meta":{"origin":3942,"position":3},"title":"Linked: “Apple Kills Off iPod Nano and iPod Shuffle”","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"September 5, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"via Daring Fireball: I\u2019m sure there are still tens of millions of these iPods in use, and will be for years to come. They\u2019re great for working out. The hardware form factor isn\u2019t what did these in \u2014 it\u2019s the antiquated notion of having to sync audio files to them\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Linked"","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4368,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2014\/12\/07\/linked-fans-scramble-for-ipod-classic-the-music-player-apple-killed-off\/","url_meta":{"origin":3942,"position":4},"title":"Linked: “Fans scramble for iPod Classic, the music player Apple killed off”","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"December 7, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"via The Guardian: With a storage capacity double the size of any current iPods still being made, versions of the 160GB Classic \u2013 which can hold around 40,000 songs \u2013 are being sold as new via Amazon for up to \u00a3670. More than 3,000 of the models \u2013 the seventh,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Linked"","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6384,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2016\/11\/25\/linked-an-ode-to-the-ipod-classic\/","url_meta":{"origin":3942,"position":5},"title":"Linked: “An Ode to the iPod Classic”","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"November 25, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"via The Ringer (a medium blog): Sure, our phones might hold some of this sentimental junk, but unless we\u2019ve sprung for one with a massive amount of storage space, we\u2019re constantly having to clear them out to make room for the new. And in a larger sense, we\u2019re now fully\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Linked"","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3942\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}