Farewell To Apple’s iPod - Why I'm Sad To See You Go - Part 2

 

The Music Lives On (Apple Photo Link) 

In my previous post, I talked about iPods — past and present. In this post, I will talk about storage issues I've experienced with iPhone compared to iPod, plus my wrap-up.

When you have a mobile device that’s portable, one that “does it all” like smartphones and tablets, that’s great! However, there’s one thing people forget — storage shared between apps. Your music library has to share storage space with a Photo library, various saved/downloaded Documents, a Calendar, Reminders, Emails, iMessages or SMS messages, Web browsing data and History. It all adds up, along with the system data that those apps may need or create. On a laptop or desktop computer, this made sense as they were designed with a lot of storage and, until the last decade depending who makes your computer, are mostly upgrade-able.

If you're an iTunes/Apple Music user and you store your music in iCloud Music Library and you don’t download, even if you stream via Spotify, those songs you listen to are still most likely being downloaded in the background as you’re listening to them. Otherwise you’d probably get a lot of buffering - stopping and starting. When you finish listening, you’d hope that the system would clear out those temporary files from your device.

In iOS 15, Apple renamed in the iOS/iPadOS storage area's Other as System Data - system caches, logs and other things currently needed. I’m fine with that but, how can that be taking up almost half the device storage which it was doing on my iPhone 8 Plus? I now have a 256GB iPhone 12 Pro that I’ve had for a year and I hope I don’t see the Storage Full message for another four or five years at least because I use my iPod for listening to music.

At the moment, the only thing I know that can clear that clutter is a Factory Restore.  Who wants to go through that every time they run out of storage? I certainly don’t fancy it. That's also a temporary solution as it starts building up all over again and quite quickly. A way for the user to clear out unnecessary caches, logs and other things would save a lot of headaches.

That is why I feel Apple should bring back a dedicated hardware audio/video player, so that those of us who want to keep our music & video collections separate from our multi-purpose mobile devices can do so. I'm not saying they should take music/video playback from their other products as they're still good for people who don't constantly utilise music or video libraries.

The Musis Lives On (Apple Photo Link)

I think Apple could do the following, if they launched an iPod replacement audio/video player: 

• Re-program the iPod nano 7th Gen’s operating system for today’s usage and rename it musicOS or mediaOS or any other name they fancy (the 7th Generation iPod nano was the only dedicated music/video player that had a multi-touch touchscreen like iPod touch).
• Incorporate Siri (for music, TV, Podcasts search only), Apple Music and Apple TV+ while still keeping the flow and design of that system.
• Keeping Photos support like the old iPod would be okay,
  
• Add Wi-Fi and hotspot capabilities so you could add music in the vicinity of Wi-Fi networks. Cellular would need a plan so that wouldn't be ideal - why pay out for a plan when you can use Wi-Fi or hotspot to your phone/tablet?
  
• Make the screen over 5” and give it 256GB or 512GB storage.
  
• At least bring it up to the CPU power of iPhone 11 or 12 - the current and outgoing iPod touch has the power of iPhone 7 and feels very sluggish and under-powered.
  

That’d be great! The benefit of that, over iOS, is you wouldn't need a security login as the only data that should be on the device would be your music, videos or chosen photos. There'd be no need for cards or passes. I guess the only private thing you'd really have a passcode on an iPod nano based OS is your Apple ID and password, which would be in Settings. This would be so the built-in apps could access iCloud and purchases. However, I realise that Apple of the past and current decade focuses heavily on the App Store, so I think that even if they could just:

• Slim down iOS to just audio/video apps — maybe rename it as mentioned above.
  
• Filter the App Store to just focus music and/or video apps (this would also appease those who enjoy 3rd party music apps like Spotify, Tidal or other players),
• If the device just contains downloaded/purchased content and streaming content, you shouldn't have to worry about security or privacy as there wouldn't really be anything to protect other than music or other content.
  

I think it'd be just as good because they'd also be able to keep all the accessibility features, which mostly weren't in the iPod nano operating system (you had a few, but not as much as iOS). I do think that people like me would be a niche market and Apple want to get their popular devices into as many hands as possible. I can keep dreaming but I doubt that product will ever exist — unless Apple don't mind at least one niche product.

The way I look at it, iPhone and iPad are both great communication and productivity devices. It's great that they — along with Apple's other products — also play music and video but, why not just have a device similar to iPod for today’s world? Why not call it something like Apple Media Player or Apple Music Player? At least it’d give Apple something to compete against Spotify’s hardware players they appear to be coming out with.

Other Apple products I love to use for music are HomePod (original 2018 version), my iMac and Airpods Pro. I will miss my iPod when it eventually stops. My only other thing when that day comes would be to buy the current cheapest 256GB iPhone and just use that for music only. I doubt Apple would have wanted people to do that. That's why I feel there's a need for a dedicated iPod replacement from Apple. 

Farewell iPod brand. I'm sure there'll be people who are sad like me but I know there are also people who are glad to see it end which also makes me sad. Those people tend to be the ones who have given up on iPod the day the iPhone was launched. It's not about nostalgia to me — it's a device I use and love.

Sorry for yet another multi-part post. Hopefully next one will be short. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! Take care. 

Farewell To Apple’s iPod - Why I'm Sad To See You Go - Part 1

Hi everyone! I hope you’ve all had a great week. I had a nice week. Some days were spent working on some music while other days just doing various computer things. 

Speaking of music

Apple officially announced on May 11 that their iPod touch - the last of their great iPod music player range - will only be available while supplies last. This means they’re discontinuing their iPod brand after it changed the way a lot of people listened to music back in 2001 when the first iPod was released. In a lot of ways, iPod and iTunes both changed how music was enjoyed and in a legal way and to stop piracy.

When the iPod touch sells out, there will be no more dedicated music player from Apple.  No doubt with this news, there will be people who will buy up as many as they can and sell them at higher prices when the iPod touch is no longer sold by Apple. I think it’s ridiculous that there’s people out there would do such a thing, but that’s the way it is.

I sadly wasn’t an early iPod adopter at all as I was still very much into my beloved CD collection. If I had been, maybe I wouldn’t find the transition to digital so sad and hard now. After all, I still love reading the booklets and sleeves of CDs and vinyl albums, even using a magnifying glass to do so.  One of my Uncles introduced me to the click wheel iPod probably around 2007. He showed me how it worked — how to go back and forth between songs and how to use the click wheel to navigate the menus. It even had photos stored on it. I was hooked from then on and couldn’t wait to get one of my very own.

I bought my first iPod, an 80GB iPod Classic in 2009, which I put my own music on using iTunes. I didn’t even start buying music from the iTunes Store until 2012. Early 2012 was when that iPod stopped working. I’ve had a few iPods over the years since then, some were even with smaller storage right up to a 160GB iPod Classic. It lasted until early 2020. 

  My iPod Touch on the left and my iPod Classic on the right

When Apple released the iPod touch in 2007, that was the beginning of the music player’s decline in sales and popularity as too many people - Steve Jobs included - wanted a device that did more than just play music. They were minimalists and wanted to cut down on dedicated tools. That was the idea behind the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad later on. The iPod touch was the first and only iPod that connected to Wi-Fi networks. It allowed music and other things to be transferred to and from the device wirelessly. You could also download directly from iTunes Store and iCloud Music Library.

I have to admit, as much as I love my iPhone and iPad, I’m a fan of the dedicated single use device. If you love to read, you probably have a dedicated ebook reader like Amazon’s Kindle. I’m not talking about the Kindle Fire, as that’s basically a multi-purpose tablet. With any of the other Kindle devices, you can read and read and have that storage dedicated to your book collection. Not only that, you can read without getting pesky notifications every 5 or more minutes.  Photographers probably prefer a dedicated camera too.

This is why I’m a fan of the iPod and use my 256GB iPod touch that I purchased in 2020 as a music and audio only device — sometimes even music videos via Apple Music. Apart from the native Music app, other apps I use are Shazam, Signia app (for my hearing aids) and the Boom app for UE (Ultimate Ears) MegaBoom portable speaker. With my 256GB iPod touch, I have notifications for other apps, except those ones I've disabled.

Two other apps that I’d use if I had the iPod nano 7th Gen would be Podcasts and Audiobooks — because the screen is ridiculously too small to read print.

The thing that makes my iPhone and iPad more superior and better than my iPod touch is they both support Dolby Atmos Spatial Audio.

The reason I got my iPod touch is because I kept running out of storage space on my iPhone 8 Plus. Even when I didn’t have much on it, it felt like storage was always an issue. It is a 64GB iPhone. When I go into the iPhone’s storage section, the part of the graph that says Other would be quite large, but yet I couldn’t find a way to shrink it.

More on that in part 2 which I will post this Friday.