The iPod

[ZedLeg]

Aye

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... r-21-years

I didn't know they still made them tbh, they were a game changer back in the day but music streaming must've made them less relevant.

[dinny_g]

Aye - game changer alright...

Never owned one - they were too expensive for my tastes when they were released and never really had the use. Then ultimately, music went on my phone but they're iconic for sure

[DeskJockey]

I've had a couple over the years. Last one is a nano, but it's been in a drawer for at least the last five years, probably longer. Once streaming services came on, it was inevitable I think.

[mik]

I didn't know they still made them tbh, they were a game changer back in the day

That, and that.

Still have one, but hasn’t been powered up for a loooong time. I remember Mrs mik leaving her 5th gen (I think) in the pocket of the seat in front of her on a holiday flight…. Never saw that again.

[Mito Man]

The click wheel iPods are a lovely device but I just remember how shite iTunes was in the early days. A combination of all computers being slow and shite, plus iTunes being slow and shite, and copying CDs to them being slow and shite and then transferring them back to the iPod being slow and shite.

Too many hours of my life spent doing that.

[ZedLeg]

I just had a look back, it looks like I had a 3rd gen and 6th gen original iPod before I started using my phone.

I used to just download gigs of stuff from irc chatrooms rather than rip all my cds

[DeskJockey]

The click wheel iPods are a lovely device but I just remember how shite iTunes was in the early days. A combination of all computers being slow and shite, plus iTunes being slow and shite, and copying CDs to them being slow and shite and then transferring them back to the iPod being slow and shite.

Too many hours of my life spent doing that.

Also this. And then they added DRM and made it even worse. Although iTunes was an improvement on the software that Sony supplied with my MiniDisc player. That program won the bingo by being slow, buggy, inconsistent and awful to use.

[ZedLeg]

Aye, like we all like to bitch about iTunes but the efforts from other companies were even worse.

I briefly had a philips MP3 player before my first iPod and the whole user experience was so shit that I formatted the hard drive and returned it as damaged so I could get my money back

[nuttinnew]

It's finally shuffled off.

[Ascender]

I sold a couple of original ones this year as I finally admitted I had no use for them. Lovely bits of design and were such a leap forward compared to anything else out there in terms of how the software and hardware worked together. And the fact you could just rip all your music, load it up and away you went. Transferring songs took a bit of planning though thanks to the transfer speeds unless you were just updating a playlist here and there.

Things like the iPod Shuffle were amazing for listening to music while running - totally transformed how you could listen to music.

[Jobbo]

I didn't get an original iPod because I still bought CDs. Only really started ripping them in late 2005 by which time I had a Sony Ericsson W800i Walkman phone and used that to play music. Then I got an iPhone in 2008 so had effectively an iPod Touch with more features.

The last iPod looks like a stripped down iPhone 6/7/8 anyway, but I guess if you want a headphone socket it's got that.

[DaveE]

RIP

I had a couple of the early ones (had to buy a FireWire card for my PC as they weren't yet USB)

Looking back they were clunky and slow (iTunes and hardware, not really the iPod itself) but we forget how bad everything else was at the time

They totally changed how we consumed music - i.e. no more taking a 'wallet' of MiniDiscs with me on holiday, or deciding what discs I wanted to listen to in the car (and then having to take them back into the house if I wanted to listen to them there)

A revolutionary device and an incredible piece of design

The later, big HDD ones still cost a lot second hand, and I think there's quite a modding scene too (installing SSDs and faster transfer tech)

Actually, that reminds me, I modified one of mine so it could run a third party OS alongside the Apple one, so it could play FLAC etc and I could just drag/drop files and not have to use iTunes

Forget what that 3rd party OS was called...

[DaveE]

Just remembered, it was RockBox

https://www.rockbox.org/

[Beany]

Rockbox also ran on the iRiver H320, and let you play Doom on the device - I assume it let you do that on the iPod too.

I have a Frankenpod, a 160gb iPod made from the guts of two broken iPods, it still works, I just haven't had a chance to use it for anything.

[DaveE]

Rockbox also ran on the iRiver H320, and let you play Doom on the device - I assume it let you do that on the iPod too.

I have a Frankenpod, a 160gb iPod made from the guts of two broken iPods, it still works, I just haven't had a chance to use it for anything.

Ha! Yes!

We had an iRiver H320 too

I'm pretty sure we used that + RockBox for the music in the evening of our wedding (I think the iRiver had a line level output as well as a headphone)

[Beany]

Yeah, it had both, and the hardware could do FLAC but not on the default iRiver firmware - Rockbox sorted that.

It also had a decent headphone amp built in so could drive pretty hefty headphones without an external amp, which was nice.

[Mito Man]

I can't remember much about it now but didn't iTunes have its own Apple lossless format - I recall using that. There was also a software alternative to iTunes which let you drag and drop music without having to change the OS on the iPod.

[Delphi]

Never owned one (primarily because of the dumpster fire that was iTunes). I had several MP3 players - in fact the last one I bought I still have. I came across it the other day. I turned it on and it's still on 35% battery after being sat in a drawer for almost 3 years too.

[DaveE]

I can't remember much about it now but didn't iTunes have its own Apple lossless format - I recall using that. There was also a software alternative to iTunes which let you drag and drop music without having to change the OS on the iPod.

Those drag/drop alternatives to iTunes never really worked (and still don't)

Main issue is that you have to tell iTunes that tracks on a compilation are part of a compilation (it can't work it out based on them all having the same album name) so you get one album per artist, containing one track each

The other is that iTunes analyses and adds tags for gapless albums like DJ mixes, classical etc. Without this, you end up with gaps, which totally ruins the experience.

Even now, the iPhone is the only phone/music player I've come across that doesn't just handle this kind of thing on-device.

Some software comes close, Waltr Pro (not a typo) is the best, but still not quite 100% yet (or wasn't last time I tried it a couple of years ago)

[dinny_g]

Main issue is that you have to tell iTunes that tracks on a compilation are part of a compilation (it can't work it out based on them all having the same album name) so you get one album per artist, containing one track each

Or alternatively, and equally annoying, if dealing with a series of compilations, 1 album containing 90 or 100 songs with 10 track 1’s, 10 track 2’s etc

See: Back to Mine