The iPod Classic in 2021: Can a single purpose gadget hold up to smartphones?
The iPod may possibly be Apple’s greatest product of all time. It perfectly embodied their philosophy of taking something that already exists, and refining it down into an artform. Minimalistic, easy to use, yet surprisingly powerful. Of course personal stereos, and indeed MP3 players, had been around a while by the time the first iPod came out. However, Apple’s take not only made them cool, but established the entire ecosystem surrounding digital music as we know it today.
Yet as much as the iPod is this cultural icon for the Millennial generation, it really wasn’t around all that long. I mean, it did have a very successful nine year run. But by 2010, they had largely been replaced with smartphones. Nowadays, Apple doesn’t even make dedicated music players anymore. The only iPod left, the Touch, is just an iPhone without a cellular modem. Even then it’s a few generations behind hardware wise. Other players have been mostly relegated to either the high end audiophile market, or bargain basement Chineseum products sold on Alibaba.
Of course, one could argue that smartphones are really just better versions of the same thing. They can do a lot more too, including stream music and movies from paid premium services. Something very few dedicated MP3 players today are capable of, even on the higher end. Yet I still find myself coming back to the simplicity of the iPod. There’s something alluring about devices that were designed to do one thing, and one thing well, compared to the jack-of-all-trades products we get today.
Surprisingly though, I never actually owned an iPod during their heyday. Though I was right in their target demographic, I wasn’t a huge music listener in my teens. Then into my university years, once they had become ubiquitous, I was using a cheap Creative Labs player, then my PSP.
About ten years ago though I manage to acquire one through non-standard means. At the time, I was working at this car rental company. Now, as you’d expect, lots of stuff got left in the vehicle, which for one reason or another, people just never came back for. Most of it was pretty humdrum. Sometimes you’d get lucky and find a tenner under the seat. Sometimes you’d get unlucky and someone would leave a bag of milk in the trunk over a holiday weekend, or coffin rollers. (Yeah, that last one happened more than once.) One day though I came across an iPod Video. The 5th gen model from 2005. It had been sitting in the lost-and-found for well over a year. It was scratched up and didn’t turn on. So I guess the original owner figured it was trashed. However, I took it home and decided to have a crack at repairing it.
Turns out there was actually quite a bit wrong with it. It needed a new battery, and a new hard drive, and a new headphone jack. So basically everything that wasn’t the screen and logic board. Fortunately those parts were cheap. Cheaper than buying a brand new iPod Classic at the time. But I did get it working, and from then on it became my burner. Something that I could take when traveling without worrying about it getting lost or stolen. I took it with me on road trips and to Cuba. Loading it full of podcasts I could listen to along the way. And it was great.
A lot of time has passed since I last used it. In that span, the new-old-stock hard drive I purchased for it seems to already be on the verge of failing. Music skips occasionally. So my next project will be to upgrade it to use an SD card. Which also means I can load it with far more storage than the 30GBs it originally shipped with. So what is it like using in 2021?
Well, thankfully iTunes, ahem “Apple Music” still supports it. Which is odd considering how Apple loves to bake planned obsolesce into most of their products. But hey, you can’t look a gift horse in the mouth. The hardest part is finding a 30-pin dock connector for them. The original OEM cables were prone to fraying. Fortunately, I still have a few third party ones I can use. It’s a good thing that proprietary connectors are finally becoming a thing of the past. Even Apple is (slowly) moving to USB Type-C.
Beyond that, using it is the same today as it was 15 years ago. It’s an MP3 player that can also display photos or videos. Though I don’t know why you’d want to do the latter on a screen the size of the original Gameboy’s. As for music, this thing really isn’t going to perform any better than a modern smartphone. It doesn’t seem to sound any better than my Galaxy A71. So right then and there it’s also not going to outperform something like Sony’s higher end Walkmans (Walkmen?). It also doesn’t have Bluetooth, so you’ll absolutely have to use wired headphones for it.
Where it does win out is size and physical buttons. It fits easily in a pocket without feeling bulky. Which cannot be said for today’s jumbo sized phones. Plus you can easily change tracks without having to dig it out and look at the screen. Something which is a huge bonus while driving or exercising. And it’s going to sound a lot better than the bargain players you usually find today.
That said, I don’t think you should be running out to get an iPod. Mine was a dumpster find, back when they were still on the market and still pretty expensive to buy brand new. I probably wouldn’t have bought one otherwise. Nowadays, a used 5th gen costs anywhere from $50-$100 on eBay depending on its storage capacity and condition. If you want a dedicated player, and don’t mind spending what an iPod originally cost, you probably want to look into the “A Series” Walkman. These include modern features like Bluetooth, digital noise cancelling, expandable storage, and those glorious clicky buttons to go alongside the touch screen. Or you can go up to the WM1Z, if you’re ballin’ and have a spare $4000 lying around to drop on an MP3 player. Audiophiles are weird people with deep pockets. Sony still has great audio gear though across their entire price range, so they may be worth checking out.
This doesn’t dismiss the greatness of the iPod though. It’s still darn close to the perfect portable player, even some 20 years after it first hit the market. And it still has more space for music than the current base model Touch. But the industry has moved away from ripping CDs and buying individual songs off iTunes. It’s all about streaming today. So if you want a cheap Apple music player, the Touch is the way to go. But if the iPod has one last thing going for it, it is nice to at least be able to listen to music without having all your personal data gathered and sold.