Say Goodbye to the iPod Classic

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by paulisdead, Oct 10, 2013.

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  1. DreadPikathulhu

    DreadPikathulhu Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    You think iTunes 11 is bad? Just wait until you get 12! I've been using the beta for a month and am still frustrated with the changes they made to how you edit metadata.
     
  2. toptentwist

    toptentwist Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX

    Where it's a problem is when I rip a CD. Itunes somehow forgets what I specifically told it - and REPLACES the folder location with something else.

    Then without telling me (at least loudly telling me) Itunes puts the newly ripped CD into a spot where I'm not expecting it (in the new default folder location that I had gotten rid of when I told it about my NAS). It would be like telling Itunes that I want to rip using Apple Lossless - but it keeps saying "No, you REALLY need to use low bit rate AAC encoding" (and daring me to notice that it changed my preference).

    The problem is a computer application should NEVER just decide to eliminate a preference I have set (and replace it with a preference it believes is better).

    Apple computers seem to do this a LOT. I don't need a computer to try to out think it's users.

    No other computer on the face of the earth has that annoying habit. If I tell an app to look for something in a specific place on a other computer - it should always goes looking for it there - or give me an error message.

    I think someone believed that they were HELPING the user by putting it SOMEwhere - but that's a misguided decision on the part of the developer.
     
  3. DreadPikathulhu

    DreadPikathulhu Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    I do agree that it's frustrating that iTunes doesn't tell you when the default folder you've set is unavailable. All it would take is a little dialog to pop up; "Hey you, your default folder seems to be unavailable! Either mount the drive RIGHT NOW, or we're going to set it to the original iTunes location!"
     
  4. toptentwist

    toptentwist Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX

    In my case, I filled up the first one I bought in 2010, bought a 2nd one and continued to fill it in 2012, and then bought a third one in 2014 - and just bought my fourth one - to have as a spare.

    I didn't buy one classic and decide it was too big and never buy anything else...

    My argument is they KNOW how many happy classic users have Itunes synced to multiple Ipods.

    But my argument is they only want consumers who want to buy a new one every year...

    In my case, I fill one about every two years - like clockwork. Not because I can't rip faster - but because I'm very compulsive about metadata.

    But the recent decision seems to suggest that I should be happy to pay about double for a different device with about half of the storage - simply because they think I will start buying the new devices (at the less desirable price point) because I have brand loyalty.

    Show me ONE business that seems to think it's a good idea to continually displease customers who buy their products often.
     
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  5. Ham Sandwich

    Ham Sandwich Senior Member

    Location:
    Sherwood, OR, USA
    One issue with the portable players with expandable memory is that the internal memory and the expandable memory are usually treated as separate. Having 64GB built in and 128GB on a card doesn't give you 192GB where your library and browsing can span both with no division. It's annoying to have an interface with that distinction. Where you cannot seamlessly view your entire library. You get to browse what is on the internal 64GB and get to browse what is on the external 128GB. But not as if it is one library of 192GB. Some portables are better than others at managing that division and making it less seamless. Some do it poorly and make that division as annoying as possible.

    That's one of the things Apple gets right. Things work seamlessly. It's one reason I consider the Classic so good. I don't have much faith that the portables from Sony, Pono, Fiio, Light Harmonic, and all of the others are going to be able to get that part of the use and experience right.
     
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  6. numanoid

    numanoid Forum Resident

    Location:
    Valparaiso, IN
    I've never looked at it that way. I've never had more than one device. I want to put everything on one device, if I can't, I change compression settings or delete albums that aren't as relevant as they used to be. There are plenty of albums that even now, if they come up on shuffle I just skip them. I try not to put the "once every five years" albums on my iPod. Perhaps you don't have any of those, but with a collection as large as yours, it seems like you would.

    You are definitely in the minority I would imagine. Most people are one and done with an iPod until it breaks. I've never known anyone outside of this board with more than one.

    I'm actually happy they finally made the 128gb flash drive available in a phone. I will upgrade when I get a chance, load most of my library on it, and hook my 5th gen iPod up to my receiver permanently. It will be nice to carry around only one device.
     
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  7. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Yep, I've already glanced at it and am cringing.

    Don't rip with iTunes. That is a bad idea. There's been many, many, many discussions about this in the past.
     
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  8. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Apple doesn't make the hard drives; Toshiba makes the hard drives. And they've had a 240GB 1.8" drive for at least four or five years now, though Apple never updated the Classic. Several third-party companies will swap out the drives in existing iPod Classics and keep them going.

    Funny, I said that five years ago and it didn't happen. You gotta wonder why...
     
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  9. PTgraphics

    PTgraphics Senior Member

    Apple has been known to blow out old products through a eBay store front - the store is not called Apple though.

    Pat
     
  10. Yesterday they were available at Best Buy, Sam's Club and I thought I saw one at Costco. Getting rare though. Buy 'em while you can
     
  11. head_unit

    head_unit Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles CA USA
    Yeah, I rather wonder that as well. Trying to keep the price down? OR at least flat, with cost going up for the display portion?

    iPad mini with 256GB could be very nice to stuff a ton of music into.
     
  12. toptentwist

    toptentwist Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    My Itunes library doesn't even make a dent in my music collection.

    Most of the stuff on my Ipod(s) is music from box sets. I haven't even gotten around to just starting at "A" and ripping to "Z" or needle dropping vinyl that was purchased new between 1977 and 1990 (and continued for years after that as I scoured used vinyl bins).

    My son was going to do all my ripping FOR me - but he gave up after a few days - when he realized not only did I have a LOT of music, I wanted accurate metadata. My first "problem" when my son started ripping was I told him I didn't want the "Citizen Dan" box-set by Steely Dan to reside in my library as one big box set. I wanted the songs broken out into the albums because that box set is basically "every album by Steely Dan plus one or two new songs. My son gave me a puzzled look... "Dad, why do you care?"

    Next problem for me was the "Message in a Box" set by The Police box. Similar kind of deal. Why put it in a digital library as a disc box set when its basically five album plus various singles and b-sides. I told my kid to stop trying and let me do "just the box sets". Five years later, I think I only have one box set left untouched. Single disc albums - are more less added when they are purchased - but that's ONLY stuff I bought in the last five years or so... Everything I bought in the 35 years prior is sitting around waiting for me get the TIME in my life to rip and add metadata.

    My motown playlist includes 7,125 tracks. That's not even me reloading the same title. I try to only have ONE copy of each song released by Motown. Trying to deal with individual Motown releases was always messy - I don't believe in buying and rebuying the same thing to get the same music. Just being able to trim all the fat from various bloated Motown re-issues was a great thing.

    My Bob Dylan playlist has 1,290 songs in it. I'm not even a big Dylan fan... that was just a kick I got started on about a year or so ago when I thought to myself "Hey, wouldn't it be interesting to put all of the 'bootleg series' tracks into a proper spot?" (like out-takes from Infidels sitting next to the proper songs from the same album)...

    My "British Hit Parade" box sets add up to 64 compact discs - each with about 25 to 30 songs per disc. That's about 1,800 songs.

    The whole attractive thing about an Ipod is that it's a way to listen to music DIFFERENTLY than was possible on something else.

    The canvas is radically different than anything that came before it.

    The fact this "big canvas" idea seems to be lost on the maker of the product is supremely disappointing (to me).


    And for what it's worth, I don't consider my library as a dumping ground for crap that I rarely listen to. I consider it as an incredible playground that will let me find things that fit together in ways I've never experienced. The stuff I don't care to listen to doesn't even make it on to my PC.

    No metadata - or bad metadata? It's no fun and I don't even worth bother pulling the music off the shelf.

    I've literally sat at a computer for hours searching for a photo of a rare picture sleeve - or a discography that explains every record ever pressed by Chuck Berry or Patsy Cline or George Jones or Frank Sinatra or Peter Sellers.... I'm not even picky about pressings or masterings... just tell me what day Willie Nelson wandered into a studio and recorded "Night Life" and I'm happy.

    Call me crazy, but my big dream is that one day, I could just say "Hey... computer... sort my Motown into the sequence it was recorded - and play it back that way...."

    Not HAVING precise release date metadata fields that I can populate, prevents me from even TRYING to do this. With respect to Apple's software... it would take like all of 4 days for one of their software developers to add some extra fields that would keep me busy for YEARs filling in the data (or better yet, allow some sort of amazing data retrieval tool to go somewhere on the internet and FIND that information automatically).


    They really should be sending me emails saying "Hey, we notice you filled up three classics... noticed any bugs in our software ?"


    Ummm... yes.


    Or... "Hey, we notice you have a lot of tracks - are you happy with how we allow you to organize your stuff ?"


    Ummm... no.


    But despite all of this whining... I've always had faith that they were doing a reasonably good job - maybe not perfect - but better than anyone else.

    I don't feel like that any more.

    The suits have taken over. They might as well go back and find the old CEO of Pepsi and tell him to run the company into the ground one more time - just for old times sake.


    No. I'm not a disgruntled ex-Apple employee. Just someone who understood that sometimes it takes a stubborn person to tell developers... "no, don't force fit what you find easy to DO into someone else's life... make it EASY for others to USE the product... developer difficulty isn't an issue... simple and powerul to USE means everything. The extra thought you invested figuring out HOW to do it, mean nothing... that's what engineers are PAID to do..."

    Everything I've read about Steve Jobs was HE was that voice.
     
    Last edited: Sep 15, 2014
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  13. cdash99

    cdash99 Senior Member

    Location:
    Mass

    He was also famous for saying that if you don't cannibslize your own products then a competitor will do it for you.
     
  14. toptentwist

    toptentwist Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    And I was dragged into the Itunes world kicking and screaming... confident that I could create a "home brew" solution that was better - or confident that the market would develop one.

    I've never seen anything that lets me do what I can do with Itunes... as imperfect as it is.


    I said this earlier in the thread but I honestly believe the reason the Classic was kept alive as long as it was - is because Jobs owned one.

    And I also believe that the reason it never grew larger is Jobs never filled one.


    Yes... the only damn reason the thing even exists was because one person WANTED one.
     
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  15. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I have sorta/kinda done that with my iPad since I have about 12,000 songs available in the cloud. As long as I have a solid WiFi connection, I can access over 150GB of music. It's not the same as having the content immediately inside the device, and there is a slight delay when I hit the button, but the quality is fine and it's kind of like having a "virtual" player.

    I agree 100%. One of my fondest idle dreams is to use De Lotto money to develop a perfected iTunes that would basically combine iTunes, Tag & Rename, and dBPowerAmp into a single product. (dBP is trying to do it as "Perfect Tunes," but there's some issues there.) Making it truly easy to use and totally reliable is a huge challenge, and the fact that nobody's done it yet gives you an idea as to the level of difficulty involved. iTunes is a deceptively simple program: a complex database that masquerades as a music/video player.

    There could be truth in that. Remember, Jobs doubted that anybody would ever want to see video on an iPod-sized device. He was floored when, a year or so after the video iPod came out (long before iPhone or iPod Touch), somebody gave him photos of about 25 people standing on a Tokyo train, all watching videos on tiny screens.

    I think a lot of stuff Apple screws up happens became of the "not invented here" factor. As one example, I've complained for 7-8 years that the biggest single flaw with Apple TV is that it does not record. And the reason why it doesn't record is that Steve Jobs didn't see a need for it and never owned a VCR. Making a device that does everything a Tivo does, only within the Apple universe, has been doable for more than a decade... but for reasons we can only guess at, they don't seem interested in doing it.

    My biggest beef with them discontinuing the iPod Classic is that they didn't replace it with something as good or better. If they had said, "hey, no more Classic, but by the way, now we have the 128GB iPod Touch, which is even better!", I could've lived with that. But iPod sales are like maybe 2% of their entire bottom line. A whopping 66% of Apple's profits come totally from the iPhone. They're a smartphone company that makes a few computers and music players on the side. :shake:
     
    Last edited: Sep 15, 2014
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  16. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    That's a big playlist! I'm very impressed.

    Exactly. The genius of it is the playlists. It took me about a solid week of pounding on the iPod back in 2004 before I realized, "ah... 99% of it is just understanding iTunes and playlists. Got it."

    The day will come. "Play the Supremes, Hal!" "I'm not authorized to do that, Dave!" :eek:
     
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  17. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Apple has always aggressively curated their product lines - this is no different. The Classic iPod is completely obsolete. Only a tiny population of users are interested storing more than 30 or so gigs of music at one time on a portable device, and Apple has never, ever been about catering to the whims of tiny populations of users. In fact, Jobs adopted a "my-way-or-the-highway" attitude toward product design decades ago and has never really deviated. Tim Cook obviously learned a lot from that, and I'm surprised the Classic held on as long as it did.

    Lightning was an absolute necessity, and the 30-pin iPod connector is another artifact I'm surprised lasted as long as it did (over a decade I think). It was simply enormous - way too big for the increasingly thin portable devices Apple is making. The reversibility of the Lightning connector is another huge advantage - it "just works".

    This by the way is classic Apple behavior and absolutely nothing new. They abandoned overnight their proprietary Apple Desktop Bus for connecting keyboards & mice - along with any other ports - in favor of USB with the introduction of the iMac. They simultaneously dropped the floppy drive from their new product line. Everybody bitched and complained, but iMacs flew off the shelves.

    On the contrary, they seem to know exactly what made their products great. Although this shouldn't come as any surprised, since Tim Cook is hardly "new" to the company, having come onboard at Apple in 1998 to run their trouble-plagued operations, which he smoothed out remarkably well, setting the stage for Apple's incredible renaissance the next decade. They would never have been able to pull of the iMac, iPod, iPhone or iPad without his operational genius.

    I'm sure they do. And I'm sure they KNOW that number is utterly irrelevant to their business. And guess what? Steve Jobs woulda made the exact same decision to kill the Classic, only a couple of years ago, if he hadn't been preoccupied with dying and everything. Because killing marginal products was always Steve's thing - he wanted Apple to be focused on the future. That's how they got where they are today, by carefully curating their product lines.

    Given the size of your library by the way, I think you're the perfect candidate for a cloud streaming solution running off your home computer. I utilized Audiogalaxy briefly before it got shut down, and even over 3G I found it pretty effective. Right now I'm streaming with Amazon Music because it works well over a browser at the office, but there are effective mobile streaming options as well you can use with iPhones or Android.
     
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  18. RoyalScam

    RoyalScam Luckless Pedestrian

    Question...why would you turn off "Keep iTunes Media Folder Organized"? That's a feature that's always served me well, personally. Your music gets organized into a folder for the artist, a folder for the album, and the track's filename is formatted as "01 Your Track Name Here, 02 Next Track Name Here, etc."

    What I do do, however, is uncheck the "Compilation" flag in each various artists set I import from, so the respective tracks get organized under the artist's name as above, and not in one separate "Compilations" section.
     
  19. toptentwist

    toptentwist Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    I see a place where the cloud is helpful...

    I was messing around a lot last year uploading songs from library to the google cloud.

    Seemed to be a little more under MY control than Apple's "match" solution (which sounds like a good idea - but scares the hell out of me - because it has the potential to mess things up)... so I was happy with the process.

    I was getting frustrated because the upload process was pretty random with respect to what artwork got uploaded and what didn't... it seemed kind of buggy and I invested a LOT of time plowing through uploaded songs and putting back metadata that was somehow lost in translation from my PC to the cloud.

    It was also annoying because google was going to force me file "Bob Dylan" under "B" and not "D"...

    I have a fair amount of "sort" fields populated in Itunes and google doesn't pay attention to them.

    I didn't consider that a major flaw.

    What did become a major flaw was when I finally got to the 20,000 song limit and google said "No - you can't upload anything else"

    I opened a new account and got the raw storage... but there was no way to easily COMBINE the two accounts - kind of like what someone was saying above about how some non-Apple products think about "regular" memory and "slot" memory as different and you don't just get to combine them.

    The "all access" service MIGHT work for me... but not because I want the access... but because it might let me keep uploading beyond their limit... I haven't tried. If I go back to it, it's still months and months and months of putting back metadata (mostly artwork) that somehow sometimes comes and sometimes doesn't... the stuff that google seems to replace the artwork with is puzzling... like it might put a Zamfir pan flute album on a Beatles song... stuff that just really makes me go "huh????" It would be funny if it only happened like 1 out of 1,000 times - but I would say google's error rate is around 30% and that's very high for someone with a large collection of music - AND - a compulsion to make the music LOOK a certain way. For example, when I put an album from 1961 in my library - I want to see artwork from 1961 with it... which might me there is a company logo on the front of the album (as there was in 1961) or a big word STEREO across the top of the sleeve (as there was in 1961)... those small details are important to me - and when I go through the trouble to find something - it's annoying to see it disappear because "Hal" thinks I want to see a "Sundazed" logo as its found on a CD reissue.

    It all seems to stem from that idea that somehow "Hal" thinks he knows more about a song I've uploaded than I do.
     
  20. toptentwist

    toptentwist Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    If they want to go with microUSB - fine.

    I'd be curious about the technical argument for ignoring the microUSB standard and creating an alternative.

    Lightning was a move to put something proprietary in the market because they were unhappy that their previous proprietary interface had become a defacto standard.

    The end result is I have a car radio that had THREE frigging wires in my glove box:

    One wire for my middle son's android phone.

    A second wire for my Ipod classic and my Iphone 4.

    And a third wire for my youngest son's Iphone 5.

    That's a lot of heartache for one headunit vendor - and even bigger headache to the consumer who wants a headunit that is nimble enough to deal this with chaos.
     
  21. colinu

    colinu I'm not lazy, I'm energy saving!

    And all are USB at the other end. Apple's walled garden is really just a pretty prison.
     
  22. toptentwist

    toptentwist Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    My Motown playlist grew by three Smokey Robinson & The Miracles albums last night - LOL

    I just realized that three old albums from 70/71 were released as "download only" products.

    I have them on vinyl - but I think these were titles that were never released as compact discs.
    If they were, I never spotted them (and you don't get that much Motown without doing a LOT of looking).

    I think there might be some Stevie Wonder also in this category - I have to look tonight.

    I still don't even have all of the "singles" box sets !!!

    I'm missing 1965, 1967, 1970-a, 1970-b, 1971-a, and 1971-b.

    I think the problem is the rare tracks on those sets were much less rare than some of the other boxes (making the payoff more questionable). The 70s sets were after the fire started to go out... I'll get them at some point - just not sure when...


    And here's the fundamental problem with owning THAT much Motown... there are plenty of moments when I want to hear something ELSE... maybe some punk from the 80s... or some country from the 50s...

    The musical universe is extremely wide...
     
  23. toptentwist

    toptentwist Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    Try listing the number of car headunits on the market that support all three of these "standard" USB interfaces.

    Seems like it SHOULD be simple - but it's not... especially if the portable device tries to send video through it.

    Apple did support video to my headunit using a 30 pin connector - but they dropped support for passing video along to my headunit when the new modern lightning interface emerged.

    I forget the excuse - but it didn't hold water.

    Less features - under the guise of technical advancement.


    Meanwhile - my son's android keeps doing things that aren't supported by an Apple product.

    It's funny to drive up to the pickup window at Starbucks with a live baseball game being played through an Android phone connected via a HDMI cable (that is adapted from a microUSB port on an Asus phone).

    I don't believe this capability it matched with an Iphone 5... which is why I'm questioning the need for a proprietary connector. I'd appreciate some focus on innovative software and less focus on creating incompatible hardware. In theory, the Iphone should be able to do anything the Android can do... but its starting to become obvious that it can't.

    When my Iphone4 dies, I won't be replacing it with another. I have no reason to favor it.
     
    Last edited: Sep 16, 2014
  24. toptentwist

    toptentwist Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    Absolutely correct. It's a database - and that's what sucked me in - and got me buying other Apple products.

    Itunes is the glue holding the Apple ecosystem together.

    But without a set of portable devices that I find attractive, they will simply become the company that sells me an AppleTV because I need to move music across the room from the desk where my PC sits to the HI FI that feeds sound into my speakers..

    That puts them in the same category as the company that sells me a little $25 adaptor.

    I *rarely* use the AppleTV to watch television. I think I purchased exactly one streaming movie on it - like four years ago - when "Wall Street 2" was a new movie (as a way to test out if the thing works).

    Sometimes I use AppleTV as my front end to HBOgo, or MLBtv... but I completely ignore all the video content Apple is selling. And I can do the same thing using other adaptors (i.e., the PS3, or PS4, or chromecast)
     
    Last edited: Sep 16, 2014
  25. DreadPikathulhu

    DreadPikathulhu Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    I've been buying Apple products since 1982. I'm perfectly happy in my pretty prison.

    My main iTunes library is about 3TB in size. About 3/4 of it is apple lossless, and the rest is aac with a handful of mp3 thrown in. Even if I set iTunes to automatically compress the file size of the lossless files when I load up my phone, there is no way I'd ever fit the entire thing on one portable device in the near future.

    I do have the 160GB Classic, which I purchased specifically I could carry a particular subset of the library with me.
     
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