“One of this year’s hottest Christmas presents is no longer available in the shops,” Paul Gallagher reports for The Guardian. “Two months after Apple announced the demise of its iPod Classic MP3 player, the model is selling secondhand for up to four times its original price as aficionados clamour to get their hands on one.”
“With a storage capacity double the size of any current iPods still being made, versions of the 160GB Classic – which can hold around 40,000 songs – are being sold as new via Amazon for up to £670,” Gallagher reports. “More than 3,000 of the models – the seventh, final version came out in 2010 – have been sold on eBay since the Classic was retired in October, most for between £350 and £500.Even refurbished older models now cost far more than the £229 for which the later generations retailed.”
Gallagher reports, “After Apple quietly pulled the Classic from its website, chief executive Tim Cook said the company no longer had access to the components and a redesign would have been too demanding.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Tim Cook explains why Apple killed the iPod classic – October 28, 2014
R.I.P. Apple iPod classic – September 9, 2014
When the Classic got canned I went to 4 stores before I found one. There were 3 and the clerk asked if I wanted them all….guess I should have taken her up on the offer. They were priced at retail.
I’ve got 3 – 160 GB and one 120 GB iPod classics that I’ve held onto.
None for sale.
My modified car sound system will charge the iPod Classic but not my iPhone or iPad. I’ve repaired my old iPod Classic twice so far. Looks like I’ll either have to keep repairing it or get a new car.
There is a huge market for music players that will play “HD Music”. Apple! Just give us better players and give us large HD 24bit files!
They could still possibly do that with the touch. Give it 128 GB of storage and a more recent processor and I think I would be happy with that.
Agreed. Current iPod is basically an iPhone 5–two years old now. And the 128gb option is a no brainier.
Do you honestly think it would revive the iPod line if Apple gave it a faster processor and more storage? I have my doubts about that. iPod sales losses might stabilize for a while, but I don’t see a resurgence in iPod use to warrant even a slight effort on Apple’s part. I say slight effort, but can 128 GB of memory even fit into that skinny thing.
Nah, it wouldn’t revive it, but would certainly keep it going.
1. Doubling the RAM is a super-low risk, high margin option for Apple.
2. Updating the rest to at least iPhone 5S gets all iOS devices in the 64-bit game.
3. iPod is still an important “gateway drug” for the iOS ecosystem–although the iPod mini could take its place.
Apple has done away with rotating components in mobile devices. Never going back. A Touch with 256 GB, modern components and TouchID (for ApplePay) would be a killer.
The iPhone is the new iPod, but I find file storage is way too limited. I have to maintain two iTunes libraries – one with uncompressed audio for the home system and one with compressed audio for the iPod. My 160 Gb iPod classic is full to the brim with compressed audio.
For my purposes (old fart who’s a musical and photographic pack rat), 256 Gb would be minimal for an iPhone, and 512 Gb would be ideal. I’d more than happily pay the freight for a 512 Gb or 1 Tb iPhone. I find 128 Gb suffocating.
iTunes will compress your music to 128kb on the fly when copying to your device. You do know that don’t you?
CitizenX is right, Zuno. Look for the checkbox the next time that you connect your iPod, iPad, or iPhone to your Mac. iTunes will down sample theApple Lossless on the fly as it syncs your music to your mobile device.
As I wrote, I maintain a compressed audio library that fills my 160 Gb iPod. In other words, a 128 Gb iPhone does not have enough room to hold my compressed music collection.
I have never had luck with the on-the-fly compression check box. iTunes will not fill the available space on my phone – it just bricks the Music app until I reset the phone to factory settings and rebuild from scratch. This is one of many reasons why I still maintain a separate library for compressed audio. I apparently have too much music for iTunes to compress in this way.
Probably the easiest thing to understand it that you have so much music you have to have 2 copies of everything and that one copy is downgraded so much to fit on your iPod with 160GB worth of storage space. Do you take anything for that OCD? Do you even attempt to listen to all that music or is it all just for show?
The fact is, iTunes will do that for you. That was my point.
Yup, I listen to pretty much all of it.
Thanks for being so polite and understanding, CitizenX. I’d just like to have all the music I’ve accumulated across many decades on my phone. And I know many people with music libraries that dwarf mine.
I use 256 kb compression, since it isn’t so lossy, but that’s beside the point.
I understood your post, and no, iTunes won’t do on-the-fly compression from my master library, All I get when I try is a full iPod or iPhone that can’t find its files. Why? I don’t know. It just doesn’t work for me.
I’m glad a got one of those 160 GB Classics last year. I figured what the heck after I’d seen them for such a long time and they weren’t being updated. I thought that Apple was going to go to solid state drive models of the Classic eventually but it would likely cost a lot more. I now have one in pristine condition because I bought a Rearth case and glass protector for it at the same time. I keep it by my exercise bicycle to listen to it there. My iTunes library is only about 65 GBs in size so there’s plenty of free space left. It’s really a nice player and it’s a shame Apple didn’t want to bother redesigning it with new components. The iPod Touch only goes up to 64 GB so it falls short of holding my entire library. That’s OK, but a 128 GB Touch would have been nice.
Everyone kept saying how iPods are useless nowadays but I don’t see it that way. Maybe they’ll never sell like iPhones but they’re certainly not useless. I know iPod sales were continually dropping so I guess it’s not worth Apple’s effort to do anything about improving any of the iPods. The iPod was such a signature Apple product so it’s kind of sad to see it be put to pasture.
I’m not doubting Tim Cook about how much effort it would take to redesign the iPod Classic, but the company has so much money (but maybe not enough manpower) to do anything it wants. It’s likely the small profit margins weren’t feasible. Besides, Apple already has enough stuff to do than to try to turn back the hands of time.
This is evidence that Apple is not going in the right direction. They are not giving consumers what they want. This is a bad trend.
Why? Because they no longer offer a digital music player with behemoth memory, in an era when everyone plays their music with their phones and uses streaming services? If any company knows “what the consumer” wants, it’s Apple. Unfortunately, not all consumers want the same thing, and Apple can’t cater to everyone.
——RM
“Everyone” doesn’t stream. There are a number of us who listen to music that simply isn’t available on a streaming service. We may also prefer to rip CDs or BluRays at highest possible quality.
Add to that that we may listen in places where there’s no connectivity. There’s still a good reason to have a music device.
I never said there wasn’t. But you have to understand that “a number of us” is not the same as “a profitable market”. The number of people who buy and use dedicated high-capacity digital music players is not and never will be zero. But it’s simply a number too small for Apple to waste its time on.
Choosing not to spend time and money redesigning the iPod to sell it to a market that has shrunk to insignificance is not an indication that Apple no longer cares about its customers. That was my point, in case you missed it.
——RM
Miley, Might I suggest a portable wifi hard drive. Seagate has a 2TB model for $200 with a 10 hour battery life. If you want to carry your life with you this is what you need.
“not giving consumers what they want”
How many are necessary before such a statement is valid? George, numerous technologies have gone the way of the dodo. It is not up to Apple to produce product for every little group of people with their own particular desires.
We don’t know what Apple has in store regarding future products or updates. To say that they’re going in the wrong direction I believe is premature. I’m sure as time goes by the iPod touch increasing to a 128 GB storage option could happen.
I, too, have two 160 GB iPod’s as well as an older 80 GB fourth or fifth-generation model. My 10-year-old iPod photo recently died. I had planned to buy another 160 GB model as soon as I heard they were being discontinued but I guess I missed the boat on that one, having never gotten around to it!
I suspect the iPod Touch will be upgraded to 128Gb next year. No reason not to. I still use my 2004 60Gb iPod and 2007 160Gb iPod (before they went back to 120Gb). The larger iPod has mostly Apple Lossless stuff on it. Sounds amazing hooked up to the Harman Kardon sound system with the new Pioneer Carplay unit in my 2015 Subaru Forester 2.0 XT.
I am intrigued though by using the SD slot with another 64Gb worth of music. Certainly a $35 64Gb SD card is cheaper than a $300 64Gb iPod Touch. But dunno how bad yet the interface will be using the card.
Do you know if car play is backward compatible with 2014 or earlier subarus?
If you buy and install a CarPlay compatible audio/nav unit such as Alpine & Pioneer make yeah. The 2015 cars aren’t ready for CarPlay yet either but I drove straight from the dealer to a car audio place to replace the Harman Kardon unit it came with as part of the Eyesight package. 2016 will be the first year Subaru will make CarPlay compatible head units available straight from the dealers. Good luck and go git yer CarPlay unit installed! I installed the Pioneer AVIC-8000NEX for about a grand but there are less expensive options.
If you need to carry 40,000 songs around with you, you don’t have a life.
But you DO Have choices. :). And music is actually the soundrack to your life.
My only playlist has less than 500 songs.
15k songs on my iMac at home..
99% of the time i’m listening to a podcast instead of music anyway. When i’m in public, I don’t listen to anything.
Or perhaps music is some people’s life. It’s unwise to imprint your personal range of experience on others.
I’m glad the Classic is finally dead.
You had 4 years to buy one. I don’t feel sorry for it, or you.
So, can Samsung and others finally copy the click wheel now? 😉
Does the new iPhone come with a backpack?
That thought aside, I am pissed that the iPod Classic is no longer available. Really. I can go buy a 256gig Flash card for a few bucks (well, OK, less than 300 bucks) but I can’t buy a phone from Apple with that much storage. That sucks. Really.
As a long term user of Apple products (I missed Lisa by THIS MUCH) I hope that Apple with soon release phone with more storage onboard. Maybe I’ll replace my iPhone when that happens, especially if the phone isn’t so large that I need a backpack to carry it around. I still have a luggable from Compaq in my inventory. Don’t make me get it out.