iPod Nostalgia (2003 - 2007) - Or, feeling growing pains at 26.

With an iPod Touch (running iOS 9.3), you can use it as a full-fledged phone (make and receive calls to/from all numbers), even if your "real phone" is turned off/gone, you're on a Wi-Fi network and with AT&T.

 

Apple iPod service pricing - United States

Model Out-of-warranty fee Battery service
iPod shuffle
iPod shuffle 2 GB (4th gen) $39 $39
iPod shuffle 2 GB
(4th gen, Mid 2015) $39 $39
iPod nano
iPod nano 8 GB (6th gen) $65 $59
iPod nano 16 GB (6th gen) $75 $59
iPod nano 16 GB (7th gen) $75 $59
iPod nano 16 GB
(7th gen, Mid 2015) $75 $59
iPod classic
iPod classic 160 GB (Late 2009) $299 $59
iPod touch
iPod touch 8 GB (4th gen) $99 $79
iPod touch 16 GB (4th gen) $99 $79
iPod touch 32 GB (4th gen) $99 $79
iPod touch 64 GB (4th gen) $199 $79
iPod touch 16 GB (5th gen) $99 $79
iPod touch 16 GB (5th gen Mid 2013) $99 $79
iPod touch 32 GB (5th gen) $149 $79
iPod touch 64 GB (5th gen) $149 $79
iPod touch 16 GB 6th gen) $99 $79
iPod touch 32 GB (6th gen) $149 $79
iPod touch 64 GB (6th gen) $149 $79
iPod touch 128 GB (6th gen) $149

 

The FiiO uses Mass Storage Mode, as far as I know. You get an SD card, plop it in, and connect to the computer as though it were an iPod. No iTunes necessary.

 

That's the exact reason I don't like them as music devices. They get so decent at running games and going on Facebook and Instagram that they take away all the focus from the music. So the iPod Touch is a cool gizmo, but it's no mp3 player. That and the storage is too low. At least for me.

 

You don't need a lot of storage if you use iTunes match . I rarely listen to my own music on my iPod anyway . I take my iPod with me to the gym everyday and listen to my radio stations from Pandora ,Google music or Spotify . I've expanded my musical horizons this way .

 

Cool that it works for you.

Very much not for me. iTunes Match nearly destroyed my library, improperly tagging things and whatnot. And because I don't have unlimited data, streaming is no good option. I just prefer carrying all my files at once.

 

That's basically what I did to due to the iPod Classic, at 160gb, having the most available storage (I got tired of continually swapping out music on my 16gb Walkman). With that much storage I can put all of the songs I want to carry with me with room to spare. So I wanted to get one while they were still available although I had my misgivings, mainly due to battery life for audio (but they seem to have significantly improved it with the iPod Classic) and the iPod interface (I've never liked the scroll wheel).

Plus, the iPod Classic was one of the few players that still had tactile controls. Everything seemed to be going to touch screens, which I don't like when it comes to digital audio players. But since purchasing my Sony NWZ-A17 (with 64gb internal memory and a 64gb memory card), I've retired my iPod to a docking station in my bedroom.

 

The same here. I don't have wireless access at home and I prefer to store my files on my own computer and player.

 

YES.

Touch screens are horrendous on audio players. The only pro to using a touch screen device is being able to change volume in the pocket, something the Classic/Mini/Nano cannot do. I think my Sandisk players could.

 

Although touch screens have potential, my experience with my Sony Walkman NWZ-X1050 soured me on touch screens mainly because the interface wasn't well designed for touch screens. Some examples:

• In order to go to a previous song I had to pause the player and then hit the back button. Just hitting the back button just takes me to the beginning of the current song (unlike with the Walkman players with tactile controls).
  
• The small alphabetic slider at the top of the screen (used to jump around in lists) tends to jump around as I remove my finger (I'm on "J" but when I remove my finger the list jumps to "I" or "K").
• Scrolling through a long list takes a very long time with a lot of finger swiping (even after using the above alphabetic slider).

Many of the issues could be dealt with if the interface was specifically designed around a touch screen (as an example, if you tap the play button it pauses the current song but if you hold it for a moment it restarts the current song, and the back button takes you to the previous song).

 

I'm watching a review of the X1050...

Whoever thought this would work with a touchscreen has apparently never used one. What a mess.

 

I've got two iPod Classics, a 120gb and a 160gb. I also have a first gen iPhone that is perpetually in airplane mode for a bit of extra storage in a pinch. It's only 16gb, so it's not bringing much thunder.

Were I still listening to MP3 instead of lossless, this would be overkill. As it stands, it just about gets me by if I want to have a large amount of music on the road with me. I've yet to have decent enough connectivity via my phone carrier to want to bother with streaming (well, that and I have all those shiny discs at home, I'd rather stream my quality rips of THOSE anyway).

I have a 128gb iPhone, but I don't know that I'd want to bother with it as a media player while it's still my phone. I'll definitely second other posters on here who've not been sold on the multi-purpose device aspect of the iPhone. I would definitely prefer a dedicated device and it staggers the imagination that Apple discontinued the Classic when others were starting to get the formula right. That said, I'm wishing I'd followed my impulse to buy a second 160gb iPod when I bought my last one. It was less than 3 months before their announcement to discontinue the line.

But getting to the larger point of tech nostalgia, I'm 32 and I've been messing with computers in some form or other since I was 8. I remember 5.25" floppy discs holding gaming goodness, dial up internet (and the click of death when the connection was dropped), the advent of CD-Rom (and its brief use as a promotional device for music), and so on down the line.

Really, if there's anything I'm nostalgic for it's a time when everything didn't feel so damn ephemeral. Everything from music on down has not only been devalued economically, but personally. Most people treat music like window dressing when it wasn't so long ago that this was the soundtrack to life. It made some people think differently, some read differently and even a few people started bands of their own for reasons other than YouTube stardom. Nobody engages with the art or media they consume. It's just files in "the cloud" accessed via a free app they probably didn't even have to exert themselves to install because their device came with it and a trial membership to the service. Add to that the changeover in internet culture when any mook with a mouse and keyboard could be an anonymous Richard Head on the web vs. what it was like when you actually had to know something about something to be online... Yeah, I don't think it's nostalgia goggles to say that we've definitely sacrificed a bit more than we've gained with the advances of technology - and I'm speaking as someone who is massively invested in and pleased with some of our developments.

I mean, compare my first MP3 player - a Rio PMP500, which had a generous *ahem* 96 MEGABYTES of storage space to the fact that I could put the Plex app on my iPhone and stream from my home server all of my lossless rips... That's astounding progress and an amazing tool (if only my phone carrier would keep pace with their LTE coverage). But everything else that's kind of gotten crap about the internet and how dismissive people are about music and other art... Put it this way, I'm not sure it's worth the trade.

 

@Runicen

 

Did I just win an internet?

 

You win 9 internets. And an invitation to hang out if you ever happen to find yourself in the weird village I've moved to.

This hurt. So much truth in those words.

 

Mine is almost always on shuffle. That's my preferred method while relaxing before sleep.

The other night I wanted to hear Bob Dylan's She Belongs To Me so I let the entire album play through. What a treat.

 

Thanks!! Is FiiO a brand or a model?

 

Both, actually. They do a series of players, and their earlier model is quite affordable (X1) on Amazon now.

Here's a good review: Fiio X1 Review - Portable High Resolution Audio Player

It uses mass storage, so it should have no trouble on a G4 computer. According to the manual, it should work on machines dating back to Mac OS 9, so that's something. The only downside is that it has no syncing capabilities, as far as I'm aware. It's all drag-and-drop. But it can clearly read ID3 tags.

 

Fiio is a company, much like Oppo, that produces products at a reasonable price point with superior performance quality. But for the 'portable' device-loving music lover! DAC's, HP amps, and players primarily.

 

I don't necessarily agree about the loss of the soundtrack of one's life. And I see this specifically with my own children.

Now one could argue that their music-obsessed father had something to do with that, but honestly they are all very different than me. No vinyl heads, no gear heads and their taste in music is different in many ways. They are the YT and streaming generation that we all love to bash here.

However...I'll catch them upstairs on their headphones singing along to whatever song they are currently addicted to. Or if I put on the local Top 40 station in the car, they magically sing along to that song I've never heard of. So they may not be buying CD's and LP's like I am, but they are building a musical soundtrack to their life. It's just not the same soundtrack I have.

 

I hope that is the case, but I'm wary. Musical consumption has become so disposable since streaming became the medium. Of course, one could easily argue the mp3 player was the first step in the decline, I suppose. I like what streaming offers like I like what the Amazon Kindle and other e-readers offer, but to me they aren't replacements. I wish others felt the same, but that's life.

 

True that it's life. Some things change, some for the better and I suppose some for the worse, but we don't have much say.

Back to the actual thread topic, I had to do some surgery on my iMod recently and brought an old Cowon device back to life as well. Not sure how long I'm going to keep these old dinosaurs going, but I still prefer a dedicated music device over my phone.

When these all eventually die on me, I'll probably purchase the latest FiiO device available.

 

This is incredibly promising stuff to hear, but I do still suspect it's the minority approach to music. What I've observed is a sort of goldfish memory approach to music. Sure, all the words are known and the song is sung when it's on the radio, but then it's never listened to again once Youtube or Top 40 have abandoned it. That's more the "loss of soundtrack" I'm referring to. I'm pretty sure if I asked for a show of hands on the board here for people who had that one guilty pleasure earworm from a few decades ago that still resides in the prerequisite soft spot in the heart, I'm pretty sure most of the people here would have at least one. I'm not sure if most of the members of generations presently in their teens or early 20s have that or will have that.

Streaming seems much more a contributor than MP3 Players simply because it's so passive. I'd be curious to know for sure, but it wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that most free Spotify users are simply taking in what they're being fed via curated playlists rather than seeking things out on their own. The process is passive like radio, but it doesn't drive sales in any way like radio did. Again, the "window dressing" effect. MP3 Players, by contrast, were closer to the advent of cassette - a sonically imperfect medium that allowed for greater durability and portability.

 

I use Spotify and streaming service to help augment my listening. I've got Apple Music for the next two months, and I'm using it to listen to albums I don't already own. Kind of like a preview mode. But that's really all it is. A music discovery tool, and I question its place otherwise.

 

That 'goldfish memory' approach probably says more about the music rather than the listener - easily digestible and popular when on radio but no longevity. So much of the stuff on commercial radio is like this. I do get the impression that songs people really like do tend to stick with them though.

I do loathe the algorithmically curated playlists of streaming services though. We are told that they are 'based on our interests' but I find that they bear little resemblance to my interests. I do, however, like the real person curated playlists of 8 Tracks though. There's much more to discover and enjoy in there. The likes of Spotify or Deezer are hopeless for discovery is what I have found; they are better for checking out an artist or band that you have already discovered elsewhere.