Say Goodbye to the iPod Classic

They didn't say the bold part, you did

I still think you are missing the point. Let's say your favorite burger joint in MI closes down, because the owner moved to Dallas to open up the same restaurant. Are you really going to get in your car/airplane and travel 1200 miles just to eat your favorite burger? Hopefully, you'll find a new place and move on. And when your kids cry because you took them to a similar place (instead of paying $2K in airfare to fly the family to Dallas), you hope they'll understand. The $2K in airfare won't bankrupt you, but it's sure a pain in the ass. For a burger.

 

And they'd have another product to design and support, that only a handful of people would even be interested in.

I expect the iPod Touch will be the next to go, since most customers have a phone or a tablet at this point, and soon will probably have a watch, too...

Of course it applies to Apple. Yeah, they have enough market clout to get someone to make the parts for them, but why go to the effort? The Classic is a niche product now, at best. Apple isn't interested in niche products.

I'm somewhat surprised the Mac has survived this long. My assumption is they're keeping it going until they can merge it with their iOS devices in some fashion...

 

Does Toshiba still make the 1.8" hard drives that were used for the Classic? That's probably what he was referring to.

 

They might have stopped. I don't think they made any larger drives, which was probably another consideration for Apple - if they were gonna keep the Classic any longer, they'd probably want to double the storage...

 

Some of you guys are being far too kind to Apple, I say F*** 'em and let's have some great "tech" guy or gal on this forum design and build us a new portable player. Jesus, by now, we've all already said everything that we all pretty much want ..., more gigs, great DAC, doesn't trust on WiFi and is portable. I'll add that this device does NOT need be approved by some old guy who sometimes, (for arts sake ..., whatever?), records his albums in a telephone booth to sound like a 1920's phone call home and is super easy to navigate and use!

 

You see, that's my entire problem with buying a new iPhone, as it doesn't address the huge issue that I'm currently dealing with and that is, not being able to take my entire iTunes library with me, wherever I go. This gizmo has to be and should have no problem with, being a 250 to 500Gb solid state drive, in my opinion!

 

Toshiba already has a 250Gb drive out there!

 

Because this bugged me too I began thinking of building my own app to do exactly this. Then I thought I can't be the first person to have had this thought and I was right.

http://appcrawlr.com/ios-apps/best-apps-shuffle-by-album

I can't vouch for any of these as I haven't tried any of them but it does seem shuffle by album is possible on an iPhone but not just using the Apple supplied music player.

 

You know it's possible to convert an iPod Classic to a SSD. If you can, seemingly, do this at home how hard would it have been for Apple to replace the hard drive with SSD.

 

You know, until a few weeks ago, I had no idea this function existed on the classic! Now after reading about it (from you?) in these threads, I've been primarily using this mode instead of the song shuffle so thanks for beating the drum so loudly on this feature.

 

Are they truly plug-in-play replacements, or would they require changes? My guess is they'd require changes, which requires engineering. They'd also have to be recertified and go thru testing etc. etc.

Not worth it to Apple for a niche product. They probably sell 10 iPod Touches for every one Classic. Hard to justify spending any money making any modifications to a low-volume product like that.

 

My vote would have been for a "headless" classic - with no screen, no user interface, and no headphone output.

Just basically a flash memory stick that could act like an Ipod in tandem with a car headunit would have filled a need.

The primary attribute was storage - everything else about the classic was nice - but not necessary. I always carry the classic and
my phone in tandem - and anything "fancy" is done with the phone.

Why can't I use a memory stick ? That's what I was trying to do before I bought my first Ipod classic. I couldn't manage where the files were (a problem that quickly grows as your library grows) but the bigger problem was (and still is) when I connect a flash stick into my car headunit, the only thing that came along for the ride to my display are the song titles and artist names... the artwork was never displayed, and I couldn't search for things on a menu stick while driving - or have ANY sort of random playback.


In the end, Apple can say my Ipod classic is meaningless - but it's kind of odd to assume that all of the other atuff I purchased from Apple is meaningless. Basically I bought 3 extra Ipod classics, two Ipod touches, three appleTVs, an Imac, four Iphones, and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting - BECAUSE - they sold me my first 160 gigbit Ipod classic.

Eliminate the Ipod classic, I'll start trading my Iphones for Androids, and I'll eventually replace my Imac with a windows PC as I wait for my four Ipod classics to die. Basically all of that other "stuff" was to complement my Ipod.

The only Apple product that still has me interested in the Apple brand is the AppleTV - and that's only because it's a useful way to get a digital file into a receiver/amplifier.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/why-apple-killed-one-most-beloved-iconic-gadgets-123517432.html

Seems like Tim Cook actually said "not anywhere on earth" - if this yahoo report is accurate.

I'm glad to see that the bad vibes are reaching him.

 

The changes look minimal. Have a look here: http://www.tarkan.info/20080115/tutorials/iflash-ipod-compact-flash-mk2

 

And that's exactly the reason why I have no reason to eat Apple products.

Tim Cook made a decision that he didn't want to spend the money on his product, and I've made a decision that I don't want to pay a lot more money (per song) to listen to music on the products he hopes I will accept as a suitable replacement.

He hasn't offered me a choice.

What does an Iphone 6 cost off contract ?

I think I've read $600 for 128 gig.

Assume 28 gig is consumed by phone 'stuff' - so that's 100 gig for a device compared to a classic (which I'll estimate has 140 gig of actual storage).

So my four Ipod classics cost me about $250 each. That's $1,000 for 560 gig of music storage.

To get the same, I would have to buy 5 or 6 phones. Let's say 5 phones will do it. That's 5 times $600 or $3,000 total compared
to the money I've spent so far on four Ipod classics.

He tripled my price point - and assumed that I would just say "Yeah, sure ! Apple is wonderful !"

 

Can we have a show of hands by people who still buy Ipod Touch products ?

I bought my first one in 2009, and it's been sitting in a drawer since 2010.

 

Not I. We've gone with iPad and passing our old iPhones w/out service to the kids instead of getting them a Touch.

 

The world would not have blinked if Cook said he was eliminating the Ipod touch.

My Ipod touch has been in a drawer for four years now, and the other one I purchased was a gift for my 70 year old mother - who doesn't own a cell phone.

I bought the 2nd Touch as a christmas gift in 2011 but I'm not sure she's done much with it.

I have been in the habit of buying a new Ipod classic about every 18 to 24 months - when I run out of space.

The fact that I never bought myself a 2nd Ipod touch is because it never met a need.

 

I would be all over an iPod touch with capability to store 160gb+ worth of music. I've said before my biggest disappointment with upgrading to a 64gb iPhone 5 earlier this year was that I could never figure out a way to satisfactorily use it as my primary music player because ~45gb worth of music just wasn't enough. So now I still carry along my 240gb classic in addition to the phone.

 

I have a son in college who is taking a computer science class called "analytics".

It's basically a fancy word for data mining... or the ability to extract useful information from a sea of data points.

Comments that start with a phrase like "probably" aren't really useful when talking about money.

If Apple was paying attention, they would know exactly how many Ipod classis are synced to Itunes, how often they are synced,
and how much money is spent on Apple products by people who use them.

Those are meaningful statistics.

I just remembered I bought a third Ipod touch for my ex-wife, before she filed for divorce.

I'm fairly certain she doesn't use her Ipod touch - because she prefers to use Pandora.

I think she purchased maybe 5 or 6 CDs for her listening use during the 15 years we were married. I realize there's probably a lot
more of her in this world than me, but I wouldn't want to assume that I could sell her music (or hardware for listening to same)
very often.

 

That would be fine with me.

It would just basically be trading the click wheel for a touch screen.

I'd even pay a little more for it.

Problem is - they don't want to match the price points established by the Ipod classic.

I would bet the profit margins are a lot higher on a 64 gig Ipod touch versus a 160 gig classic.

 

I have two ipod classics. One of the has a busted battery. I think i am going to put a new battery in it AND an ssd in it. That'll make it an ipod Classic with fresh battery, no mechanical parts that can fail and, since ssd uses less electricity, longer battery life than any ipod classic has ever had.

 

I just checked the AT&T Wireless Store, they list the retail price of the 128GB iPhone 6 as $999.99, $649.99 with a two-year contract.

 

Analytics is a reason I don't do cloud music and don't do things like DRMed ebooks. What I listen to and what I read is none of their business. And you better believe they are data mining that data. I graduated with a computer science degree. I know what they are doing and what they are capable of doing.

My iPod Classic hasn't been connected to iTunes in years. I have never synced music to it using iTunes. I sync it using JRiver Media Center. Which is one of the awesome things about the Classic. It is possible to sync it using third party tools. Can't really use third party tools to sync a Touch or iPhone. For that reason alone a Touch or iPhone is useless to me. The Classic was the last iToy that had any value to me.

 

They likely outnumber iPod Classic customers 10 to 1.

Which should give you an idea of how unimportant the Classic became to Apple. It's not even a rounding error in their sales numbers, and even if they sank money into revising it, would still not amount to a rounding error in their sales numbers.

I'm sure if there's actually a market for such a gadget somebody will produce one. But my guess is there isn't much of a market, and the various high-res, high-capacity players in the pipeline are doomed on arrival.