Say Goodbye to the iPod Classic

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

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  1. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Well, if the iPod Touch survives (big if), it'll soon likely have a similar capacity to the Classic, anyhow.

    The iPhone 6 already comes with a 128GB option. I think the iPad does as well, doesn't it?
     
  2. colinu

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

    No - I use the 30pin connector to USB. The solution would have been for Pioneer to make an extension cord for its non-standard multipin connector - long enough to reach to the glove box, where whatever correct connector needed could be easily swapped out.

    The problem with this is Apple's greed. 128GB - $220 for 112GB of storage. Comparable storage is less than half that at RETAIL. Frankly it enrages me. Apple is giving a big Fulgencio Umberto (see Jay - Modern Family) to each and every one of us with this pricing. Fortunately, the availability of Android products means I will no longer be dependent on Apple to supply my future music player needs.
     
  3. Kim Olesen

    Kim Olesen Gently weeping guitarist.

    Location:
    Odense Denmark.
    One thing is for sure. Iphone (and any phone) capacity will not be going down. Storage and cpu is a selling point in the marketplace.
     
    sunspot42 likes this.
  4. colinu

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

    Supposedly Apple has realized that its baseline products need more storage space - inadequate space = less App sales.
     
  5. JeffMo

    JeffMo Format Agnostic

    Location:
    New England
    I had never owned an Apple product before age 40 when I inherited an iPod Mini I believe it was called, and I was gifted a Classic and first generation iPad the following year. Bought my first iPhone the year after that and was then assimilated into the Apple ecosystem!

    But with this news about the Classic I'm feeling liberated to break out and may buy a Pono next year.
     
  6. Chris C

    Chris C Music was my first love and it will be my last!

    Location:
    Ohio
    Send in your iPod for them to do it or do it yourself ... seems easy enough for me, just a bit too expensive?

    http://www.rapidrepair.com/shop/3119-hard-drive-disk-mk2431gah.html
     
    JasonA likes this.
  7. Chris C

    Chris C Music was my first love and it will be my last!

    Location:
    Ohio
    I totally agree! When APPLE dropped the ball on delivering either a 250Gb+ iPod or iPad and basically tried to force the "cloud" on me, I started losing interest in EVERYTHING that they release. They can have 99.5% of the rest of the world waiting with bated breath for their "next big thing", but I've already decided that they don't care about my wants and needs anymore, so I'm moving on from them. My first purchase, thanks to a bunch of friends who own them, is the Samsung "Galaxy" phone, which I personally find "worlds" better than my iPhone 4S.

    And before all of you APPLE lovers start hammering on me, I want you to know, that I currently have sitting in my home and NOT working, thanks to them going "black screen" on me, just after the warranty died (thank you very much). A $2,000+ GMac tower with separate display, which was only ever used for iTunes and voice work production, which crapped out on me and an older model iMac which also "black screened" on me, out of the blue. At least I can say that I got to watch a little porn on that one, before it crapped out on me!

    I'm currently using a late 2011 model Macbook Pro, which likes to just freeze up, for no apparent reason, for exactly 30 seconds each time, when I'm only running one or two things.

    In other words, unless the APPLE product is still under warranty or you know someone you can trust, their products are for sh#$, because otherwise you're screwed when they fail and they shouldn't fail, especially considering all of the extra money that I paid for them in the first place!
     
  8. Pigalle

    Pigalle Forum Resident

    Location:
    United Kingdom
  9. toptentwist

    toptentwist Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    My previous Pioneer head unit did exactly that.

    There was a generic looking USB connector in the glove box that mated with a special 30 pin adaptor.

    I didn't realize Pioneer changed the design and extended the 30 pin connector all the way back behind the dash until after I bought a second Pioneer head unit.

    Only reason I bought the 2nd Pioneer head unit was the first one bit the dust when some bad driver T-boned into my passenger door and almost killed me. I survived without a scratch - but my car (and the audio hardware inside it) was lost.

    I honestly think one of the reasons the cable design changed from the previous design is they were trying to support three types of devices:

    1.) Apple 30 pin
    2.) Apple lightning
    3.) Android

    Each solution had its own little quirk - and I've never gotten the lightning connector to work properly with the Iphone 5.

    Properly means "with artwork" displayed on the head unit. Blue tooth is an option.
     
  10. toptentwist

    toptentwist Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    One of my big problems with a cloud solution is that the metadata is boring.

    Consider the following example. Yesterday I purchased a three disc set for "Brain Salad Surgery" by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer.
    Two compact discs and a DVD-A disc for $14.99. Not a title I needed, but it seemed like a good value for that price. Bought the
    set in an actual brick and mortar store (Hastings) on my lunch hour.

    Disc 1 is the original album mix. Disc 2 is a bunch of bonus tracks. Disc 3 has a hi-res version of a new stereo mix - and a hi-res
    version of the original stereo mix.

    I ripped all three discs to Itunes last night.

    I went to discogs.com and grabbed a photo of an old LP for disc 1.

    Disc 2 I split up. The two tracks that were originally found on a flexi disc supplied by NME, are now sitting there with a photo of that flexi-disc (as found on discogs.com). The two tracks that were released as the a-side and the b-side of a 45 rpm record - are now sitting
    there with photos of the picture sleeve for that 45 (for the a-side) and a photo of the actual record label (for the b-side).

    The tracks unique to this release - are now sitting there with a photo of the six disc box (which has three CDs, two DVDs, and an LP).

    If I had purchased the same thing from a cloud service - every one of these tracks would have the same boring artwork - and when
    they came up on my player I couldn't look over and instantly see where the track came from - because someone assumed all I cared
    about is they came from the same "deluxe album"

    I'm a little annoyed that the DVD disc in my set - isn't the same DVD in the six disc "super deluxe" box set (which has a 5.1 mix in addition to stereo).
    I don't care about the extra vinyl or the extra DVD (which I think is a making of documentary) or the extra CD (which I think is
    the stereo mix I ripped from the DVD).

    Hopefully someone can tell me that it's the same 5.1 mix that I bought in 2001 on a DVD-A disc (which has no stereo mix).

    The DVD in my set also has flac files for the new and old stereo mix - but not sure what resolution they are - and not sure if I will
    do anything with them. I did look at the raw folders on the disc and verify they were there.

    In any case, I was a busy boy last night as I organized my purchase.

    There is no way to organize a cloud match - it is what it is - and if it changes - it will be what it will be.
     
  11. gloomrider

    gloomrider Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Hollywood, CA, USA
    Is Pono even saying when mass market availability will happen? I'm not sure something that can't actually be purchased is a good option for anyone...
     
    toptentwist likes this.
  12. seed_drill

    seed_drill Senior Member

    Location:
    Tryon, NC, USA
    My iMac, purchased new in May, is sitting in the back of my truck, waiting for it's second trip to the iStore. It has NEVER functioned properly, the senior tech I was supposed to be working with is ONLY available 9-5 PST, and I don't usually get home until 8:00 EST. How or why he was there on the weekend to become my "go to" guy, I don't know. But I'm marching my computer into their store without an appointment, and am prepared to use the "I'm a lawyer" card, if need be.
     
  13. toptentwist

    toptentwist Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    About a year ago, my kid bought an apple laptop (macbook?). He was wanting to do it for a LONG time - and it represented a LOT of money from his 19 year old piggy bank.

    He returned it within a few days because he thought the hardware was flakey. The Apple support people told him he was running it "too hard" using a game that was very graphics intensive.

    This is what happens when a company starts thinking of certain parts of its business as "chump change" - blaming the user for wanting to use the product in a way that exceeds the average consumer.

    In my case, I've been told that I own "too much music" and it's not worth their time to care about me.

    I sincerely hope your "I'm a lawyer" card helps.

    My experience with the Apple store in the local mall is that they are extremely rude. My son had an issue with his first Iphone one time and he sent me in to "deal with them" because he was out of patience. I walked in, provided them with a reference number that the Apple support people on the phone had instructed me to provide to them, and they said "No. You need to forget what they told you and start again from zero with me - because I need to trouble shoot your problem from scratch."

    When I tried to say in a low volume using a warm tone of voice "I'm confused... I just want my problem to go away" they said I need to "drop the attitude" and threatened to call mall security.

    The "I'm confused.." tactic was something I had been instructed to use by a lawyer one time and I've learned it helps in MOST situations. The lawyer told me that MOST people are calmed by the simple statement "I'm confused"... and to always keep it in the back of your mind and use it when you need to. At the time, my wife was in the hospital very sick and I was told that if I tried to DEMAND things, the hospital would just stop talking to me and think of me as a "problem" to be avoided (at best), or a person to be banned from the floor (at worst).

    The Apple store was the first place I saw where this tactic failed.

    They're just snobby kids who are pretty close to the "IT guy" in the old SNL sketch.
     
    Last edited: Oct 30, 2014
  14. seed_drill

    seed_drill Senior Member

    Location:
    Tryon, NC, USA
    If it were a "local mall" I'd be less angry. The nearest is the next city over, in Greenville. The smug "genius" sure had some egg on his face when my computer wouldn't even link into their system, it was so ****ed up.
     
  15. Chris C

    Chris C Music was my first love and it will be my last!

    Location:
    Ohio
    Good luck, I wish you the best!
     
  16. SamS

    SamS Forum Legend

    Location:
    Texas
    Well, that's the thing. If you want to listen to "your" music on the go, then you need to set up your own cloud solution from your home computer. This is free, and relatively easy. I use Logitech Media Server, and an app on my iPhone. All my tags, mastering, etc. are maintained because it's my music, just on the go.

    If you want to use cloud services more like "listening to the radio", then you can use Pandora, iTunes Radio, etc.

    Two different solutions, depending on your needs. Not really any different that things were 30 years ago. Bring your mix tapes with you in the car (stream from your home server to your phone), or just turn on the car radio (i.e. Pandora/Spotify).
     
  17. toptentwist

    toptentwist Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    That's a good suggestion.

    A bit of a technology challenge - but seems like it could work.

    I'm wondering if I would have to tunnel back into my home LAN (i.e. trick my phone into thinking its in my house) or if I would have to use something like DLNA. I have a "readyNAS" in my house but I never attempted to set it up as available from the external world. Mostly because it seemed difficult to do - and kind of risky... but I did recently wonder if some unfriendly bloke has already taken control of my NAS (against my knowledge) and started using it to serve up things I would be horrified to learn about. The NAS used to be chatty and send me emails all the time, but it stopped - and that's usually the first thing a hacker would do.

    I'd prefer a "private cloud" to work with the "remote" application on my Iphone. I noticed last weekend that seems to have gotten better. It seems to talk directly to my PC now - my PC sees it when it does thing (like create a genius playlist).

    I've never really been too happy with using the DLNA stuff. I have a Sony Blu-Ray player that can see my NAS and serve up files - but it ignores artwork.
     
  18. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    My Western Digital external network attached drive allows for remote login and DLNA. You could play media files off of it remotely.

    Most of my music library in MediaMonkey is FLAC. I have a full AAC copy of the library that I keep synchronized on a virtual drive on my PC, which I upload to Amazon for cloud streaming. Kind of a hassle, but works. I also have a copy of all the AAC files synchronized to the WD drive, which I could access remotely from an iPhone or iPad or even another desktop using a web interface. I haven't actually tried using the library remotely that way - I've just been going thru Amazon - but its an option if I ever decide to pull the plug on my Amazon service.

    Which I'm considering, because Amazon Music is buggy as heck on the iPhone (and Android, based on the reviews I've seen). It works OK from a browser on a desktop or laptop, but does a poor job synchronizing to the library on the source computer. It doesn't really synchronize at all - so if you change a file on the source PC, you have to upload a new copy of it, and Amazon doesn't automatically get rid of the old copy in your cloud account. Annoying...
     
  19. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Apple hired the idiot who ran Dixon's in the UK, John Browett, to run their stores. Why I don't know, but the quality of the service declined pretty rapidly.

    They finally came to their senses after about six months and showed him the door, but I don't think the quality of their service has fully recovered yet. Angela Ahrendts, the former CEO of Burberry, was brought in to clean up the mess. She was a rockstar at Burberry, so I expect the quality of service at the Apple stores to rebound, and then some.

    I got the best customer service I've ever had in my life at the Apple store about 3 years ago, when my 1-year-old iPhone 3GS started acting up. They looked at it for a couple of minutes, determined there was a problem, and replaced it no questions asked with a brand new phone. It had registration problems. I brought it back, they tried to fix an internal cable, didn't help, and they gave me yet another new 3GS. That one still works...

    Compare and contrast with Verizon, which wouldn't do anything about a crappy defective el cheapo Nokia phone I had, and in fact accused me of having dropped it (even though there wasn't a scratch on the POS).
     
  20. toptentwist

    toptentwist Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    I've had some good results with the customer support to go along with the bad.

    There are moments when they do the right thing. The apple store in the mall is kind of a freaky place - tries to be different - and succeeds on that score.

    My son always had nothing but good things to say about the people who answer the phones at Apple - they clearly knew the products well - and weren't reading from a script. I'd give them very high marks on that score.
     
  21. toptentwist

    toptentwist Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    I've been struggling to figure out where Itunes hides the basic stats about my library... stumbled across a different way to view things in Itunes 11 not too long ago and just noticed I could provide these stats.

    Total songs in my library: 34,593

    Total number of artists in my library: 2,334

    Total number of albums in my library: 3,641


    Using a calculator, I see the following averages:

    Average number of songs per album: 9.5

    Average number of songs per artist: 14.82

    Most popular genre ("motown") : 7,219 songs spread across 686 albums

    I don't count "rock" since most of the songs just inherit that descriptor until I find something better to describe a given song... But for the record, rock accounts for 10,487 songs spread across 1,457 albums for the rock genre

    Most popular artists:

    The Beatles (1,201 songs spread across 157 albums)
    Bob Dylan (1,031 songs spread across 125 albums)
    The Grateful Dead (718 songs spread across 123 albums)
    Marvin Gaye (630 songs spread across 82 albums)
    The Rolling Stones (619 songs spread across 74 albums)
    The Supremes (498 songs spread across 59 albums)

    Keep in mind an "album" can be a two song single - or a 60 song box set.

    I went a little crazy with the Grateful Dead in the last few months. I used to own about 5 albums by them.


    Most popular playlist: "Class of 1969" (a smart playlist that includes the years 1965 to 1969) 8,034 songs


    I may be wrong, but I think my artist count (2,334 different artists) is probably pretty high (or my average number of songs per artist is pretty low).

    If I put the thing on random, the artist with the highest song count (The Beatles), rarely shows up. Assuming a uniform distribution for random (which I'm not certain Apple does with their shuffle), the Fabs only have a 3.5 percent chance of coming up.

    Clearly with this many artists, I've got a big problem trying to set up some sort of "home brew" schema to find stuff. I figured that out fairly quickly (about two or three weeks into my ripping project).

    My guess is I'm about 15% percent complete when I look at the CDs and LPs on my shelves.
     
  22. toptentwist

    toptentwist Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    I think I tried MediaMonkey based on a suggestion from someone here.

    It was maybe the closest thing I've found to Itunes - but it was having a huge problem trying to chew on my existing library. I got a little scared that it might try to copy everything - or even worse - start mangling my existing library - so I chickened out and got rid of it after about an hour.

    I'm thinking it didn't understand a "smart" playlist... that's an absolute requirement for me.
     
  23. motownboy

    motownboy Senior Member

    Location:
    Washington State
    The only Apple product I have ever owned has been an iPod Classic 160GB. It is portable and does the job of having a big music library at your fingertips. The sound is acceptable for a portable device and helps if you match it properly with the right headphone or quality buds. No one else has provided anything of comparable capacity and portability that I am aware of. The Apple brand is generally for "followers", but this item is more of specialty item than a mass appeal product. Should they discontinue the iPod Classic and they clearance price them, I will buy a few.
     
  24. Ozric

    Ozric Senior Member

    They already have discontinued the iPod Classic and all Apple stores have shipped their inventory back to Apple. You will have to find them from another retailer who still has some in stock.
     
  25. Most likely Apple didn't want to have to deal with waiting for a further warranty period to end.
     
    sunspot42 likes this.
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