iPod New iPod Classic for its 20th anniversary in October 2021

[subjonas]

The click wheel was indeed a great interface input. It combined the speed of touch and the satisfaction+comfort of physical buttons in such an elegant, intuitive, and fun way. I love that it came back to the Apple TV remote (but I had to disable the touch wheel because it didn’t work quite right on all aspects of the atv UI). I agree it’s not a good input for music streaming services because you’d have to scroll through countless artists and songs that you don’t know to find what you want—though maybe a siri button could help with that—but if you’re just navigating a local library with all music that you hand-picked, then I think the click wheel is still superb. Even the largest hand-picked library is going to be orders of magnitude smaller than a full streaming service catalogue (full of mostly music irrelevant to you), so it wouldn’t take forever to get to the song/album/artist/playlist you want. It may not be quite as fast as typing to search, but the touch wheel is pretty fast, plus it lets you skim your library and be reminded of what you have on the way to what you’re looking for. And for browsing (without any specific song in mind), I think it’s just as fast as a touch screen, and more fun.

But another disadvantage of the click wheel is it’s probably too cumbersome to create playlists on the fly. For all music management, you’d have to use another device. But I think it’s still a great interface for local music playback, possibly still the best.

 

[fluxtransistor]

But another disadvantage of the click wheel is it’s probably too cumbersome to create playlists on the fly.

On my iPod Classic, it's dead simple: just scroll to a track and hold the centre button to add it to the On-The-Go playlist, which you can also use as a queue. It's singlehandedly the best interface for music (library) listening.

 

[subjonas]

On my iPod Classic, it's dead simple: just scroll to a track and hold the centre button to add it to the On-The-Go playlist, which you can also use as a queue. It's singlehandedly the best interface for music (library) listening.

Ah a play later queue is easy, but I was thinking more like saved playlists since those tend to require more search/typing, which is easier on touch screens, as is reordering songs. Smart playlists would especially be tough with just a click wheel, though I don’t think those are yet possible in the stock iOS music app anyway for some reason. But other than that, I tend to agree.

 

[fluxtransistor]

Fingers crossed? The upcoming keynote is excitingly close to the iPod's 20th anniversary on Oct 23. Now or never!

 

[Apleeseed84]

Fingers crossed? The upcoming keynote is excitingly close to the iPod's 20th anniversary on Oct 23. Now or never!

OMGG good eye!!! To be honest i’ve been dreaming this device ever seen I saw this post.

Not going to lie but if Sony can still evolve the walkman into a digital music player with streaming capabilities I feel that Apple could pull this off!! I am patiently waiting to be honest, if they plan to release something I would buy it in a heartbeat, since it’s kind of why I’m holding off on getting a Sony or Fiio PMP.

 

[GMShadow]

The funny thing is Apple knows people are expecting it - they put iPod into the keywords on the YouTube stream announcement.

I don't expect one though.

 

[Apleeseed84]

I mean they might refresh the iPod touch but I wouldn’t expect a classic. To be honest I’ll have extremely low expectations in regards to anything iPod at this rate everyone’s more hyped about the new MacBooks that the side chatter on iPods is almost nil but hey

 

[Walrus Man]

Er, so nothing happened to the iPod.... except that I can no longer find it without searching on the Apple store, UK at least.

 

[kerr]

I can no longer find it without searching on the Apple Store

Apple website, home page, scroll to the bottom, expand Shop and Learn section, iPod Touch is there

 

[Walrus Man]

Apple website, home page, scroll to the bottom, expand Shop and Learn section, iPod Touch is there

Thanks, just not available from the top menu then.

 

[Apleeseed84]

Thanks, just not available from the top menu then.

They rearranged the menu big time To focus on their new devices as usual.

 

[*~Kim~*]

Now that all iPads but the base and basically anything that isn't a budget phone has lost the headphone jack, I'd LOVE one of these.

Sigh.

 

[iRock1]

Well, it didn't happen ??‍♂️

 

[applesque]

Well, it didn't happen ??‍♂️

Great signtaure!

 

[fluxtransistor]

Absolutely gorgeous! I've got a few too many iPods myself, heh.

Right now I'm working on restoring an '01 Snow iBook which matches your 1st gen quite nicely.

 

[el-John-o]

I fully support this. Unfortunately I just don’t see how it’s possible since music is all cloud based (excluding myself from this, still keeping things local on principle against subscription models but that’s a separate discussion).

With everything going to subscription models I don’t see an easy way to type to search what you’re looking for. Every bit of music, ever, could appear in the list using the click wheel but it would take ages to narrow down what you’re looking for.

Most of the cloud services support downloading to a local device. In fact, this works great with the iPod touch. I use an old iPhone in my motorcycle with Spotify playlists downloaded. The phone lives in the motorcycles glove box, it never comes out. Whenever I pull into the garage, it's connected to Wi-Fi. That's enough to "reauntheticate" it. I'll go for trips that are a couple weeks long and it'll chug along just fine. Streaming isn't always reliable on long trips, especially through remote areas. So I love having all of my music stored locally. And if I want to add something, all I have to do is bring that old phone into a restaurant with me when I stop, and either connect to Wi-Fi or tether to my phone and download whatever album I want.

As long as you connect to the service once a month or so, it'll continue working. So a potential future iPod classic would just need Wi-Fi to occasionally connect to those streaming apps. With the ability to both stream on Wi-Fi and download locally.

 

[Apleeseed84]

Recently, I’ve noticed something that’s irritating me a lot using my iphone, whenever I’m listening to music no matter what the app, the music completely cuts out, wired or wireless headphones, no matter if it’s Apple Music or another streaming app, if I’m playing games or using facebook, or using safari, some websites, some apps just pause my music. I miss the iPod, i never had to worry about this.

 

[Traverse]

Recently, I’ve noticed something that’s irritating me a lot using my iphone, whenever I’m listening to music no matter what the app, the music completely cuts out, wired or wireless headphones, no matter if it’s Apple Music or another streaming app, if I’m playing games or using facebook, or using safari, some websites, some apps just pause my music. I miss the iPod, i never had to worry about this.

Currently iOS and iPadOS can only handle one audio source. I've found that scrolling Reddit, Twitter, or even just a "sneaky" web ad can play media (even if no sound) and the system focuses on that that. I don't use Facebook, but I know at one point the app was playing a soundless looping "track" to keep it running in the background that would take over device audio, but that was several years ago.

 

[Apleeseed84]

Currently iOS and iPadOS can only handle one audio source. I've found that scrolling Reddit, Twitter, or even just a "sneaky" web ad can play media (even if no sound) and the system focuses on that that. I don't use Facebook, but I know at one point the app was playing a soundless looping "track" to keep it running in the background that would take over device audio, but that was several years ago.

I’ve been listening More to my library ever since they upped them to Hi-Res/Lossless. Usually I never had that problem but now with technology so sensitive, granted the iphone and ipad can simply and do everything but the fact that they can only handle one audio source is mind baffling to me. This calls for a modernized iPod, i am seriously still interested in buying a Sony Walkman but an apple support tech told me to turn the accessibility feature that Automatically mutes the background noise whenever a conversation is going. He mentioned that it can be sensitive.

With that said though it’s highly irritating sometimes un pausing said music. I never remember having this much troubLe in the past.