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iPods now considered vintage tech– so of course sold out at Urban Outfitters

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Re: iPods now considered vintage tech– so of course sold out at Urban Outfitters

#11

Post by delecti »

slotrans wrote: post #5

Still using my 2006 iPod. I've replaced the battery (easy, $8) and replaced the hard drive with an SDXC adapter which bumped the capacity from 80GB to 256GB. Such a great device. My car knows how to control it so I mostly just leave it in the car. Also great on airplanes, with the card conversion it has many hours of battery life. Amazing how every comparable device made today is so much worse.

A 2006 iPod (probably the 5/video?) 80GB retailed for $350, and I bet an (inflation adjusted) $530 today could buy you something with a lot of advantages over it. A lot of the android ones I'm seeing from a quick google seem to have battery life around a day, if nothing else.

Not that I think it would be worth the money given you're already in a good place, just saying the situation isn't as bleak as you portrayed.

Re: iPods now considered vintage tech– so of course sold out at Urban Outfitters

#12

Post by wodenokoto »

Atreiden wrote: post #9
cmckn wrote: post #2

Aw, I wanted to flip through the product photos but UO and Retrospekt have taken them all down. I loved my first generation iPod Nano. It was such a beautiful little thing. Edit: this will have to do! https://web.archive.org/web/20060529192323/http://www.apple....

Hardware design never got better than this, IMO. Fullscreen capacitive touch seems like an improvement in theory, but iPod controls sit right in the sweet spot between digital and analog. Slap a DAC, BT5 connectivity with aptX, and 1TB+ SSD in one of those and I'd buy one. Honestly, battery life on modern phones doesn't lend well to them playing a full-time second role as a music player. This is what you'd want on a…

You’d be sad to learn that Apple built iPhone prototypes around the iPod and it wasn’t very good.

Re: iPods now considered vintage tech– so of course sold out at Urban Outfitters

#13

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

Standalone MP3 players are increasingly useful, now that:

1) Most smartphones lack a headphone jack

2) Most smartphones lack an SD card slot

3) Your phone is probably the most important thing you have on your person, and conserving the battery life is more important than listening to music

I unfortunately ditched my Sansa Fuse mp3 player after I got my first smartphone, because the Galaxy S2 felt like a straight upgrade to a standalone mp3 player at the time, whereas the modern smartphone is, shall we say...no longer fit for purpose?

There's definitely a market for such things, but having looked in the past, the middle-class seems to have fallen out. You either have the dirt-cheap $20 things you see sometimes at Wal-Mart, or you see the $1000+ specialty audiophile players. I kinda wish I had something with my old Sansa Fuse's form-factor, but had bluetooth support and USB-C charging (the proprietary charger being pretty much the only reason why I haven't bought an old Sansa Fuze on ebay).

Re: iPods now considered vintage tech– so of course sold out at Urban Outfitters

#15

Post by koolba »

slotrans wrote: post #5

Still using my 2006 iPod. I've replaced the battery (easy, $8) and replaced the hard drive with an SDXC adapter which bumped the capacity from 80GB to 256GB. Such a great device. My car knows how to control it so I mostly just leave it in the car. Also great on airplanes, with the card conversion it has many hours of battery life. Amazing how every comparable device made today is so much worse.

> Also great on airplanes, with the card conversion it has many hours of battery life.

How many?

> Amazing how every comparable device made today is so much worse.

Music devices are like cameras, the best one is always the one you actually have with you.

That said, nothing will compare to the tinny sound of a Rio PMP processing 128kbps mp3s that have been recompressed to 32kbps. Sounded like angels in your ears were playing the instruments.

Re: iPods now considered vintage tech– so of course sold out at Urban Outfitters

#17

Post by Shawnj2 »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #13

Standalone MP3 players are increasingly useful, now that: 1) Most smartphones lack a headphone jack 2) Most smartphones lack an SD card slot 3) Your phone is probably the most important thing you have on your person, and conserving the battery life is more important than listening to music I unfortunately ditched my Sansa Fuse mp3 player after I got my first smartphone, because the Galaxy S2 felt like a straight upgr…

The YouTuber DankPods has an argument that the last iPod Touch is actually a good device for this use case because has a then-modern A10 which is well faster than what you need to run an MP3 player, you can use it with music streaming services to download your catalog, it has a headphone Jack, and it’s not that expensive to get a high capacity one.

Re: iPods now considered vintage tech– so of course sold out at Urban Outfitters

#18

Post by yterdy »

I've been through many a music machine since my first true mp3 player (after a year of fumbling with a half-broken Sony MD player), but if I could shove a 512GB MicroSD card, new battery, and new screen into my old DAH-1500i MobiBLU Cube[1], I'd pick it up again and never let go. Even without playlists, it was perfect: tiny, but with a display (which I didn't even need to use half the time, as I could navigate its menus from my pocket, sight unseen), nicely clicky buttons, simple interface, quick startup.

So, you know, I could listen to music.

There was like a two-year period where these monochrome OLED jewels were offered (Sony's NW-E505/7[2] was another gem, horrible PC software notwithstanding), before ghastly full-color LCDs took over. And they topped out at around 4GB (32, if you include the Sansas that came later, which I don't). Damn shame.

[1]https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dah+1500i&iax=images&ia=images

[2]https://www.crutchfield.com/S-PPVgsomq9x6/p_158NWE505B/Sony-...

Re: iPods now considered vintage tech– so of course sold out at Urban Outfitters

#19

Post by chiefalchemist »

Atreiden wrote: post #9
cmckn wrote: post #2

Aw, I wanted to flip through the product photos but UO and Retrospekt have taken them all down. I loved my first generation iPod Nano. It was such a beautiful little thing. Edit: this will have to do! https://web.archive.org/web/20060529192323/http://www.apple....

Hardware design never got better than this, IMO. Fullscreen capacitive touch seems like an improvement in theory, but iPod controls sit right in the sweet spot between digital and analog. Slap a DAC, BT5 connectivity with aptX, and 1TB+ SSD in one of those and I'd buy one. Honestly, battery life on modern phones doesn't lend well to them playing a full-time second role as a music player. This is what you'd want on a…

Hardware today isn't worse per se. Back then we a music player, a phone, and a camera. Each form / UX specific to the problem being solved.

Now we have a single device that solves all three and more (e.g., biometrics) in albeit a least common denominator sorta way. A single form can't expect to complete with specialists.

I prefer a crap device that I use for comms (phone and SMS), and a second device with a better camera and more storage for media that only connects via wifi. There are plenty of instances I want a camera and/or music (often without even wifi) but not the temptation of being full connected.

Re: iPods now considered vintage tech– so of course sold out at Urban Outfitters

#20

Post by yterdy »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #13

Standalone MP3 players are increasingly useful, now that: 1) Most smartphones lack a headphone jack 2) Most smartphones lack an SD card slot 3) Your phone is probably the most important thing you have on your person, and conserving the battery life is more important than listening to music I unfortunately ditched my Sansa Fuse mp3 player after I got my first smartphone, because the Galaxy S2 felt like a straight upgr…

>I unfortunately ditched my Sansa Fuse mp3 player after I got my first smartphone

Stepped on mine. I don't leave anything with a screen on the floor anymore. I still have it, hoping I can extract some old files from it someday.

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