What makes the iPod Classic the iPod Classic? Three things, really:
• A ton of capacity-enough gigs for nearly anyone to tote nearly all of his or her music collection, and/or copious amounts of video
• The iconic iPod click wheel interface and corresponding onscreen menu system
• The inability to run iOS apps
• The lack of any way to communicate with the outside world except via USB connection
MacDailyNews Take: That’s four things, not three, Harry (and it’s “iPod touch” and “iPod classic,” lowercase “t” and “c,” not “iPod Touch” or “iPod Classic.” Sheesh – sorry, pet peeve!)
McCracken writes, “Massive storage is unquestionably a pro, not a con. The classic iPod interface is a good thing, but it, like the original 1984 Macintosh design which went away in 1995, is a good thing from another era. It won’t be with us forever, and that’s okay. Inability to run apps? Definitely a con. And these days, not having a direct wireless connection to the Internet is also a con.”
Advertisement: Apple’s 160GB iPod classic. Up to 40,000 songs, 200 hrs video. Fast, free shipping and engraving at the Apple Online Store.
McCracken writes, “Apple could very easily respond to all this next week with one simple move: It could retire the iPod Classic as we know it and introduce an iPod Touch that packs all the goodness of the current Touch, cameras on the front and back, FaceTime capability, and…a 160GB (or larger) hard drive… The only real downside: this Touch would have to be a tad thicker than flash-based models.”
Read more in the full article here.
When we see a 160GB iTouch pod…
if they bump the 64GB touch to 128GB, then I’m sure the Classic will be discontinued.
Yes. Classic is likely living its final week as a current model. This time next week, it will be in ‘Clearance’ status.
If we follow the upgrade path so far, we should see the top-of-the-line Touch to get 128GB of storage (close enough to the Classic 160GB).
There is, however, ONE other (fifth) think that makes Classic classic: it is the disk storage mode. You can allocate part of your iPod disk space as USB external disk storage space. Same as the Nano and the Shuffle. But not available on Touch (or the iPhone). It is a great feature on those other devices, and I miss it on the Touch.
It will survive because its a massive storage device and the one product that started all this madness. Don’t be surprised if it goes to 250gig. I know a lot of people who still use it to bring huge video files. But won’t be upset if stays where its at or discontinued.
I tend to think there’s a place for the classic as there will always be those that want to carry their entire library, but ONLY in uncompressed or lossless format (because they only play their audio from high end equipment). For them, a “slightly better than carting around a hard drive filled with tunes” is a good product, but the question is whether there are enough of those people to warrant a modest capacity upgrade.
The last three reasons would kill the iPod nano.
And then there were two.
I think the classic has enough distinguishing features to make it worth keeping, but if sales numbers don’t support it, I can see it getting yanked from the product line. I still keep my iPod 3G because of the disk mode/capacity.
You just need an iPod classic in your car. Doesn’t need more functions than just store a lot music and play it.
Um, a SSD iPod could be nice and thin… or any size you want really.
If you can’t understand what I am saying – I think the mechanical hard drives are on the way out – perhaps a 64gb and 128gb and maybe more capacity – using an SSD or flash memory.
It’s not a “pet peeve” unless it’s about your loved one. In your case, it would just be a peeve. Get your sh!t straight, MDN, if you’re going to correct someone!
The new Classic will be pre-loaded with the entire Beatles catalog. Hence that Apple/guitar logo.
If Apple is selling enough of them, it will stay or be improved. If not, it will go.
End of story.
I wish I hadn’t given away my first iPod. Sure, it’s a clunker by today’s standards, a 10GB 1st gen model with the mechanical scroll wheel. But I wish I’d held onto it just so I could show people that I’d actually owned one. 🙁
——RM
@MDN Correction…(Correction)
According to Dictionary.com, the term is not limited to a “loved one.”
pet peeve
–noun
a particular and often continual annoyance; personal bugbear: This train service is one of my pet peeves.
I bought a new iPod Classic a few months ago before beginning a long overseas trip. It is velcro’d to the dashboard. I have around 1,000 CD’s stored on it – which I think is more than would fit on the largest iPod touch available at the time. My old Classic needs a new hard drive, but otherwise works well enough – and the click wheel on the old one works a lot better than the one on my new classic…
Does anyone see the iPod nano keeping the same form factor, but getting a touchscreen where it runs only the “music” app from iOS? I would really like to see it because i’ve gotten so used to the touchscreen that i feel stifled by clickwheels. (note: I’m not bashing clickwheels, but the touch was the first iPod i got, so that’s what i’m used to).
I think that such a long screen (if they extended the screen) would be a great way to display a large playlist or coverflow.
If Apple decides to keep the iPod Classic, it really needs to improve the reliability/lifespan of these devices (or, if this is not feasible, get rid of them entirely). I had an 80 GB (5th gen) that I really loved. I treated it well; never dropped it or anything. then, a little over three years after purchase, it would display the sad iPod icon and wouldn’t boot up — just produced a clicking sound. I took it to the Genius Bar at my local Apple Store — the guy took one look at it, listened to my description of the problem, and said matter-of-factly, “Yeah, it’s gone.” WHen I asked him, he was honest enough to admit that the lifespan for the hard drives on these things is no more than 3 years — in my opinion, far too short for a $320 device. The lack of reliability and longevity in the iPod Classic does not live up to Apple’s generally high standards.
I’m sticking with flash devices from now on, and expect the iPod Touch to fulfill the job. I just hope it gets more storage space.
I don’t want one device that is a phone and another device that has enough storage to hold all my music. I want one device. Not two devices in two pockets.
As a spoiled Apple fan I have these high standards and expect them to be met.
I was thinking, I do love my iPhone. And I intend to get an iPad. If there were a competitor out there that would make a phone that held all my music (and I assume it would run Pandora) then I could see myself owning an iPhone competitor and the iPad too.
That would be really strange but without the storage this is a possibility. And I know apple is aware that there are customers like me and I’ve got to believe increasing storage in the standard iPhone is a concern. Streaming not so much. I don’t like the idea of having to use data up on the go just to listen to the songs I already own on my hard drive.
iPod started as a music lovers toy. It wasn’t for normal people. It was for people who loved music enough to pay a little extra. And for years it was enough. Now they have to improve it to catch up to what it used to be for music lovers.
rjcylon:
Vast majority of iPod owners don’t put more than 6GB of 128kbps music on their iPods. The only reason capacities keep growing every year is video. It seems that more and more users sync their video clips, shot with their digital cameras, via iPhoto, down onto their iPods. These videos tend to be unnecessarily large (640×480 pixels, with most recent models going to 1280×720 pixels, and even 1920×1080 pixels, at 30 frames per second, using some MPEG-4 compression flavour). This stuff takes up massive quantities of storage.
In other words, it isn’t music that clutters those iPods, and users aren’t really all that concerned with the space. If they run out of storage, they simply trim down on the volume of pictures, so that their music can fit. Which explains why the most popular iPod models are the 8GB nano and 32GB touch (smallest capacity current models), although the 8GB touch (previous generation) is a solid seller. The 64GB touch sells just a bit better than the Classic.
One cool use of a classic would be as wirelessly connected iTunes library so that just by having it near any of your other iDevices or Macs, you can listen to the music on it.
Predrag
Either way, I think the previous iPod was fine for my music needs. Now the “new” iPod (which lives in my iPhone) doesn’t. Not everyone is a music nut like me but there are I think enough of us that would like to have a product that is like our old iPods but has the iOS and phone.
I don’t know… Apple probably still sells enough iPod classics to make it worthwhile, and its profit margin is probably much higher than for an iPod touch.
I believe Toshiba has a one-platter 1.8-inch hard drive that goes up to 200GB (or more) now, so Apple can increase the storage capacity and keep the price the same. Then, even with a very expensive 128GB iPod touch, a 200GB iPod touch provides unique value.
And there is one other characteristic of iPod classic that is valuable to some people. It doubles as a mini USB external hard drive for general storage of computer data.
I don’t think Apple should put a hard drive into an iPod touch. There are things such as durability and ruggedness (or lack of) to consider, which will cause greater issues with warranty coverage. Also, there is a need to spin down the hard drive to save battery power, which causes an access delay when it spins back up. The hard drive-based iPods use a memory cache and spin down the hard drive when possible to save power. That may work OK for the relatively simple OS and functionality of the iPod classic, but it may be annoying with iOS on an iPod touch.