News - Apple has 'no plans' to scrap iPod Classic

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

If you have a very large library the larger amount of storage on devices like the iPod Classic will mean you can back it all up onto the device.

TBH,I actually don't mind iTunes and the high bitrate AAC encodes are pretty decent (it was also used for minidisc too). I probably should look at FLAC too but since a lot of my music are AAC encodes I cannot be bothered!

[aidanjt]

you would only be scrolling through an epic list of crap if that is your taste of music. i scroll through an epic list of fantastic music with ease, or use the search function

Apparently you completely missed the point of my comment, and proceeded to go on an anti-aidanjt rant. In the future, don't address me if you can't restrain yourself from personal attacks.

[Funkstar]

I have a Classic for two reasons. 1) an ipod is the only thing that will integrate with my JVC head unit and display details on the units touch screen. 2) it's the only iPod that will take my full music library of about 1,800 albums in MP3.

I know I don't need to take all my music away with me, but it does mean I can be away for weeks on end (up to 4 weeks at a time these days) and not think "oh bugger, i wish I had that album on my player". The spare capacity also means I have a half decent USB drive with me all the time. I don't need hundreds of GB or removable storage, but more than a pen drive is always handy (about 40GB free at the moment).

I won't be upgrading to a larger Classic if they released one in the summer, but I would be disappointed if they canned them as I wouldn't have anything to replace my current one with if it died or got stolen.

[jim]

"oh bugger, i wish I had that album on my player"

This.

Drives me absolutely mental - I always end up wanting the very last song I would have considered necessary.

[Unique]

Apparently you completely missed the point of my comment, and proceeded to go on an anti-aidanjt rant. In the future, don't address me if you can't restrain yourself from personal attacks.

so whilst you relate to yourself in the third person, it's okay for you to insult a majority of people, but you don't like it when someone answers back with the facts

you might want to avoid putting your foot in it the next time, and consider that not everyone things in your small minded way

as you clearly don't like apple products and appear to have no interest in ever buying one, avoiding articles on the internet about those products might seem prudent, as you simply can't respond in a mature manner in keeping with the intentions of this forum. there are lesser forums like digital spy if you want to post a load of crap and find someone to agree with you, but the members of this site are generally adult and knowledgeable about the items they discuss, and typically do so in an enthusiastic and positive manner. negativity gets you nowhere

if there were any real alternatives to the ipod classic the pros and cons of them could be discussed, but in this case apple have no competition. you either buy one or you don't. a simple choice. those who buy one are generally happy with them. if you don't want one there are plenty of other options out there. if apple were to cease production of the classic and no-one was there to produce a replacement product it would be a step backward for progress. it's going to take some time before flash based products reach the same capacity at anything near the same price range

[Terbinator]

if apple were to cease production of the classic and no-one was there to produce a replacement product it would be a step backward for progress. it's going to take some time before flash based products reach the same capacity at anything near the same price range

Which is sadly too much for me

[aidanjt]

it's okay for you to insult a majority of people

It's not my problem if you emotionally identify yourself with a group to the point where a perceived slight against the group is an attack on your person. I don't go about attacking your person and I thank you to not do the same, like you have here, yet again. Just don't waste people's time with ad hominems.

[Unique]

It's not my problem if you emotionally identify yourself with a group to the point where a perceived slight against the group is an attack on your person. I don't go about attacking your person and I thank you to not do the same, like you have here, yet again. Just don't waste people's time with ad hominems.

i have never had an emotional attachment to a non physical item in my life and probably never will. i never thought people could have emotional attachments to items, but i presume you have, thus you think others do too

i'm not offended by what someone i don't know on the internet says either. especially not someone who doesn't seem to have a clue what they are talking about, who is a hippocrite by flying insults to groups of people online, then feels insulted when those insults are replied with basic facts

you have some deep personal issues with apple products or something or another, it's not healthy for you or for these forums. for the sake of your mental health you would be best advised to stear clear of any articles or threads discussing products from a company you openly despise so much. you are just dragging this forum towards childish discussion and spoiling it for others

this forum isn't aimed at teenagers to spout senseless babble and troll and bait and flame, it's for the adult discussion of tech products in a mature manner. if you can't do so, come back when you are old enough and leave every one else to discuss things in peace without idiotic insulting comments. you already got a thread closed down a few days ago with your nonsense, if you are aiming to do so again, you aren't welcome here. if you don't like the product or company, steer clear of the topic and leave your negativity at home so others can enjoy the conversation

[mrochester]

There's definitely a small niche in the market where the iPod Classic fits like a glove, and kudos to Apple for continuing to serve that market instead of just adandoning it for more popular products.

Many people assumed that the reduction in price of flash memory to make reasonably sizeable solid state players affordable was the death knell for the iPod Classic. This just goes to show!

When you consider the amount of music you fit in a GB, you really don't need large capacities to avoid changing CDs on long car journeys. In just under 25GB I have over 17 days of music. Most of it 128kbps MP3s, but you get the point.

I'm guessing the 2 main purposes of the iPod Classic are to either:

a) be able to have your music stored in high quality
b) be able to have access to all of your music, not just a selection (assuming your collection is larger than 64GB).

or a combination of the above.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Flash memory is still relatively expensive ATM when compared to hard disks.

[mrochester]

Flash memory is still relatively expensive ATM when compared to hard disks.

Very much so. An 8GB iPod with flash memory is either £131 or £193 vs. £197 for 160GB hard disk based iPod. It'll be a while yet before the balance tips in favour of flash memory.

[Unique]

Very much so. An 8GB iPod with flash memory is either £131 or £193 vs. £197 for 160GB hard disk based iPod. It'll be a while yet before the balance tips in favour of flash memory.

not only that, but it's easy to pick up an older classic on the cheap that still has more space than most if not all flash based players. the price of flash based players is ridiculous, especially the higher capacity versions

for example only the other week i saw a 120gb classic in the window of cash converters for £80. you would be lucky to get a decent branded 16gb flash based player for that money

i got a "second hand" albeit brand new, never used completely sealed and boxed 120gb classic for £100. that's £50 cheaper than my old 20gb archos player

the guy in the shop was saying that most people want an ipod touch or similar these days as they prefer all the extra options instead of just playing the music. i already have an iphone4 so already have the options, it's just that even the biggest capacity iphone4 or touch doesn't come close to capacity

even if you shop around for a new classic, you can usually get them closer to £180 or even less for the biggest 160gb model, so you get a lot of bang for your buck. you can stick your music on in high bitrate mp3 or even lossless without worrying about running out of space like on smaller flash based devices

[crossy]

If you have a very large library the larger amount of storage on devices like the iPod Classic will mean you can back it all up onto the device.

I know I don't need to take all my music away with me, but it does mean I can be away for weeks on end (up to 4 weeks at a time these days) and not think "oh bugger, i wish I had that album on my player". The spare capacity also means I have a half decent USB drive with me all the time. I don't need hundreds of GB or removable storage, but more than a pen drive is always handy (about 40GB free at the moment).

These two posts from fellow Hexus'ers pretty much sum up my feelings too. It means that you can (easily!) go from "The House At Pooh Corner" audiobook and a selection of Bach, Beethoven, etc on the outbound trip, to Bob Marley, Status Quo and Motorhead on the way back. No need to look sheepish when you get asked for something you've not played in months, or when someone says "Do you remember that song by X?"

My thoughts exactly. Even at 320kbps CBR, the average CD should be compressed down to about 120-130MB, so a 32GB PMP should be able to store over 246 CDs, or over 10 days of music.

Which is far more quantity than is needed to store quality music. And I never just dump my whole library onto my PMP because one thing PMPs all share in common, is their absolutely god awful library navigation. I want to listen to beautiful music on the move, not having to scroll through an epic list of crap with rubbish controls. PCs have the interface and screen space to handle long lists of useless junk, not embedded.

I was going say that you must have a lot of short albums - I just checked two of my collection at random: Kiss (Live at Glasgow) 20 tracks = 305MB; This Is The Life (Amy MacDonald) 19 tracks = 190MB. Then I had a look at my current library (571 albums = 48.67GB) and that works out at roughly 90MB per album - I must have a look later and find out what's bringing the average down ...

I'm going to (politely!) disagree with that second paragraph to an extent. I find the search and "OnTheGo" playlist capabilities of the old iPod actually pretty good. And while I'd be an idiot to disagree with you about the desirability of using a PC to do any playlist admin, (so I'm not going to disagree), that's the whole point - with a large HDD-based player you just splat the entire library on there. Guess it's just down to personal preference again - the time spent searching on the device v's the time you would have spent organising playlists and getting them transferred. Plus, with the entire library there, you can just switch on shuffle, and perhaps be treated to that weird-but-liked track from that dust-covered CD in the back of the closet.

Based on asking around here, I'm also unusual in that I only transfer entire albums across - never bother with making "mix tape" type playlists with the "best bits" cherry picked from a couple of albums. Maybe that's why I don't tend to get on as well with smaller, flash-based, players (although my Sony is pretty good - perhaps because it doesn't require access to iTunes )

I guess Apple will kill the "Classic" shortly - mainly because it's not really a platform you can either sell apps on, nor use as a conduit for advertising. I'll have my black armband on when that day comes.

[aidanjt]

I wouldn't worry too much, according to Moore's law, flash memory capacity should double approximately every 16 months. The primary reason why flash memory is still expensive is because demand has exploded more rapidly than capacity and production has managed to increase, (and I wouldn't be surprised if a bit of good ole fashioned cartel action is going on) and the earthquake in Japan hasn't helped matters.

In a few years 128GB and even 256GB flash-based PMPs should be affordable. Well, maybe not from Apple, but there's plenty of alternatives out there.

Me? I'll carry on knowing what's worth taking with me.

[Unique]

These two posts from fellow Hexus'ers pretty much sum up my feelings too. It means that you can (easily!) go from "The House At Pooh Corner" audiobook and a selection of Bach, Beethoven, etc on the outbound trip, to Bob Marley, Status Quo and Motorhead on the way back. No need to look sheepish when you get asked for something you've not played in months, or when someone says "Do you remember that song by X?"

I was going say that you must have a lot of short albums - I just checked two of my collection at random: Kiss (Live at Glasgow) 20 tracks = 305MB; This Is The Life (Amy MacDonald) 19 tracks = 190MB. Then I had a look at my current library (571 albums = 48.67GB) and that works out at roughly 90MB per album - I must have a look later and find out what's bringing the average down ...

I'm going to (politely!) disagree with that second paragraph to an extent. I find the search and "OnTheGo" playlist capabilities of the old iPod actually pretty good. And while I'd be an idiot to disagree with you about the desirability of using a PC to do any playlist admin, (so I'm not going to disagree), that's the whole point - with a large HDD-based player you just splat the entire library on there. Guess it's just down to personal preference again - the time spent searching on the device v's the time you would have spent organising playlists and getting them transferred. Plus, with the entire library there, you can just switch on shuffle, and perhaps be treated to that weird-but-liked track from that dust-covered CD in the back of the closet.

Based on asking around here, I'm also unusual in that I only transfer entire albums across - never bother with making "mix tape" type playlists with the "best bits" cherry picked from a couple of albums. Maybe that's why I don't tend to get on as well with smaller, flash-based, players (although my Sony is pretty good - perhaps because it doesn't require access to iTunes )

I guess Apple will kill the "Classic" shortly - mainly because it's not really a platform you can either sell apps on, nor use as a conduit for advertising. I'll have my black armband on when that day comes.

i've never been a mix tape fan for mp3 players either. i've always preferred listening to full albums. in fact what i like about mp3/flac based playback is i can create my own extended versions of albums by adding b sides and other sessions to the end, and not be bound by the constraints of an 80 minute disc. i usually do this by adding the files to folders on my pc, so when i drag them to my ipod i have the whole lot. i can always skip a song if i don't want to, but i've never been one for just playing the "best" tracks on an album, nevermind random play. my music taste is far too varied for random play. if i had everything tagged properly by genre and sub genre and random play could play via genre then it might make for interesting listening, but i'd rather just stick an album on and hear in full

i also like the nature of finding albums i've forgotten about on my ipod. when listening on the iphone i'm more restricted in what i can have due to the smaller flash based memory so i usually just put on the latest albums, but with the larger capacity i can fill up the classic with a lot of stuff and sometimes when scanning through it you come across some great music you haven't heard in a while. that's the only downside to having huge collections of music, you forget about those great albums from a few years ago that perhaps were from lesser known artists, and there's just never enough time in the day to listen to it all

i'm the same again when it comes to someone asking me do i have something, i usually say yeah, and a lot of the time it will be on my ipod, or at least i'll have something on it that everyone i know would listen to, whether it's rock or hip hop or something more commercial. you can't just listen to lou reed all day or you would slit your wrists