What you need to know

• The iPod Classic shipped with a miniature spinning hard disk.
• But it was slow and noisy and bad.
• So watch and laugh this Australian does the only logical thing – puts transplants an SSD into an iPod Classic.

The iPod Classic was officially killed off almost six years ago and I still mourn its loss. That click wheel, Dock connector, awful spinning hard disk. It's just all a reminder of the pre-iPhone age. And while Apple did have some iPods with flash storage, the Classic never got it because it was the iPod for those with huge music libraries. And flash storage was expensive, of course. That isn't really the case in 2020 so why not put an SSD into an iPod Classic?

Well, for starters, it'll probably draw blood for reasons you'll see in this video. But apart from that, it's a damned fine idea!

At a little more than 16 minutes long you might be forgiven for thinking that the idea of watching someone take an iPod apart isn't a fun way to spend your time. But you'd be wrong, thanks in part to the way the Australian doing the work keeps things ticking along. Maybe the Australian/British sense of humor won't translate – let me know in the comments – but I chuckled way more than I do when I watch most iPod videos!

Not that I watch a lot of them. Of course. I'm not that weird.

OK, maybe I am. Anyway, check out the video. It's awesome. When you've done with this video, check out the same person putting 1TB of storage into another iPod Classic – you know you want to.

Before I got my first iPod in 2003, I had some experience with Apple products. Our family computer had been a Mac for a couple of years before we switched to Windows for compatibility reasons, and my elementary school classrooms had Macs, too. But it wasn't until that first iPod that I would genuinely call myself an Apple fan.

And these days, I kind of miss using my iPod Classic. I know that there are still dedicated music players out there, but nothing comes close to what Apple offered in the Classic, not even Apple's own iPod touch. I miss having a device made just (or primarily) for music, even though there's a lot of convenience and practicality in making music just another feature of the iPhone.

I remember that I had some kind of odd, unintuitive MP3 player before I got an iPod. The only thing I remember about it is that it was small and hard to load up with music. Then I got my iPod, and everything changed. It was still compact, but it couldn't be easier to fill to the brim with every song I'd ever owned, which was something, especially back in a time when burning CDs to your computer was still a thing a lot of us did.

And there was something fun about using an iPod that modern devices just haven't been able to replicate. I wouldn't exactly call today's modern music apps joys to use. They work just fine, and everything is clearly labeled so I can navigate through my library or browse through available music. But it's all just functional. Conversely, the iPod was fun to use whenever I played music, even as the initial novelty wore off. The joy of using something can fade into the background over time, but I don't think I had a bad user experience with the iPod.

The iPod was just a perfect device for what it did, and frankly, it hasn't been matched since Apple discontinued it six years ago. While the first iPod I owned, the third-generation model, was definitely a departure from the previous iterations of the device with buttons above the click wheel, subsequent generations put the buttons back on the wheel, and I don't know that you could find a single better experience for both digging through your music library and controlling playback in one interface.

Click. Click. Scroll. Click.

That's all it used to take to start playing music. Now, sometimes it's that simple on my iPhone, but rarely. The closest I can get to that level of simplicity now is using Siri on my iPhone. For me, that's not nearly as reliable as the click wheel (seriously, Apple, why doesn't Siri default to searching my library for my request first?).

Do you want to pause music? Play again? Skip forward or back? I could just keep my hands in my pockets and thumb the click wheel. I always found it easy to click the right button on the wheel without looking. While clicking my AirPods or pulling my iPhone out of my pocket to tap the pause button isn't exactly a hardship, none of it matches the delightful simplicity of using the iPod Classic.

Speaking of delight, there was something about scrolling through my music collection that I just loved. The classic iPod's 'clicking' sound that played as you scrolled through your music collection added to the experience of the device, and it helped subtly orient you as you moved through your library.

There are many advantages to our modern devices, like internet connectivity, a nigh-infinite collection of songs at our fingertips, and even third-party apps full of music that don't require you to use Apple's built-in offering. But the act of listening to music used to be just a little more fun. Not a lot more, but a little more, and I miss that fun. I miss the simplicity.

I certainly wouldn't trade my iPhone for an iPod Classic. I'd lose too much in that exchange. But I would also probably jump at the chance to get a new, click wheel-based iPod.

More navigation links:

Techno-stalgia

• My First Mac
• Remembering arcades
• Love for LAN
• Lemonade Stand memories
• The classy iPod Classic
• Game manual memorabilia
• Nintendo Nostalgia
• Cassettes vs digital music

• The best Android tablet was the Pixel C
• Galaxy S Fascinate retrospective review
• HTC Inspire 4G retrospective review
• Why the Moto X was the best
• Honeycomb: The Android version we all forgot
• Nexus Q was super weird but influential
• NVIDIA Shield is timeless
• The first Android phones I loved
• Android 10 vs. Android 4.4
• Android phones with physical keyboards
• Admit it, Android sucked before 2017
• The wild early days of Android smartwatches

• The glory days of Windows Phone
• Remembering Xbox 360
• Legacy of the Pocket PC
• PC gaming changed my life
• Best video games of the '80s
• Why Zune was great
• 35 years of Windows

What you need to know

• You can watch as a YouTuber adds 1TB of flash storage to an iPod Classic.
• Not once, but twice.
• If this post doesn't get finished it's because I'm on eBay.

The final iPod Classic to be made came with 160GB of storage. It was discontinued in 2014 and I still mourn its loss. But if you still have an iPod Classic knocking around and want to give it a new lease of life, why not add a little more storage? Like, say, 1TB of the stuff?

That's exactly what YouTuber DankPods (via Reddit) did, and the result is just short of magical. But only just.

Throughout the video you'll see 1TB of flash storage added to two different iPod Classics. The storage is taken care of by four microSD cards and a board to hold it all. And yes, I'm now trawling eBay for the whole lot. I'm easily entertained, you see.

I don't want to spoil too much because I think you'll really enjoy watching the video. But this is a story of two halves, with one iPod Classic working, to a point, and a second one only being successful after multiple false starts. Be warned, if you're someone who had an iPod Classic back in the day you might shed a tear or two here.

Or maybe that was just me.

What you need to know

• Rewound is a music player that lets you easily control a variety of settings with one touch.
• You can skin it so it looks like an iPod.
• By changing the way the navigation works, you can even control it by scrolling.
• Rewound is available for free through the Apple App Store.

Updated December 16, 2019: Apple has pulled the app from the store. It doesn't work anymore either.

A few days ago, The Verge and other outlets highlighted an upcoming app called Rewound that let you skin your iPhone into an iPad. By downloading free skins — and changing the way navigation works in the app — you can convert your iPhone into an iPod Classic or even an iPod: U2 Edition.

Rebound is finally available on the Apple App Store and is free at the moment. The listing says that there are in-app purchases, but we were unable to access them at this time. Maybe they'll be added with a future update to remove possible advertisements. Only time will tell, and we'll keep you posted as soon as we know more.

Once you've downloaded the app, head over to settings and select Skin. This will allow you to superimpose an image onto the bottom half of the app and reorganize the navigation. If you search for the hashtag #rewoundskins on Twitter, you'll be able to download a number of them from users who have created them. Just save the images to Photos. Our favorites are the black, iPod Classic skin from Mike Crumbella and the iPod: U2 Edition skin from DonationBuilder.

If you want to go back in time to a simpler time, be sure to check out the Rewound music player. We've been playing around with it for a few hours now and absolutely love it. Hopefully, a future update will allow you to customize it even further, like changing fonts or adding a glass effect to top half of the app.

What you need to know

• The iPod Classic remains a modern great.
• A developer built an iPhone app that recreates the iconic click wheel.
• They hope to have it finished by the end of the year.

A developer has built an iPhone app that recreates the magic of the iPod Classic. Click wheel and all. Elvin Hu even managed to bring Cover Flow album art to the iPhone, too.

The project first came to prominence when Hu tweeted a video of it yesterday. And boy oh boy does it look cool!

Hu then spoke with The Verge and explained where the project came from.

Hu has been working on the app for a coupole of months now and the hope is that it will be ready by the end of the year. Whether Apple will let it through App Store review is another matter, though. Hopefully we'll all get to take a trip down memory lane soon enough.

While the pace of technology can seem sloggish when we're on the third year of similar smartphone designs, it sometimes takes a step back to make you realize just how much has changed. Fifteen years ago, I was in my first year of high school and the web was still considered more of a geeky fascination than mainstream success. It was the age of Neopets and Napster for those of us lucky enough to score fast internet connections and personal computer time, and if you wanted music in your pocket, you either were nerdy enough to have invested in a MiniDisc player, or (more likely) you shoved a Walkman into a bookbag.

That year, I was the first person at my high school to own an iPod. I can't remember why my father was gracious enough to gift me one of the plastic-and-steel music players — my birthday was months away at that point — though I suspect it may have been a result of constant hint-dropping. And, hey: My dad has always been an Apple enthusiast at his core. He may have initially bought the iPod for his own uses, only to have me reconfigure it for my own day-to-day life.

Whatever the reason, that iPod quickly became one of my most prized possessions next to my iBook (also pretty new). I showed it off to anyone and everyone who would listen, proudly proclaiming its superiority over the Walkman and, to a friend's amusement, his paltry 32MB Rio PMP300. (We made a bet on the bus one day about which music player would end up a mainstay in five years which I never collected on — largely because him listening to at least three months of Apple braggadocio and remaining my friend was enough payment.)

As someone who loved music and scored soundtracks in her head, the iPod was a revelation: It made even the most mundane of tasks something special. It proved useful in school, too, letting me rehearse for plays by reading along to MP3s of recorded scripts. And, perhaps most importantly of all, it helped spur a growing interest in consumer technology and gave me my first avenue in educating and helping people with their devices.

I had many Apple devices before the original iPod and have purchased many more since, but it's perhaps telling that its 5GB steel shell remains in a cherished place on my desk, 15 years later. It wasn't just software that made the iPod successful — while dated, its design remains one of my all-time favorites. I'd spin that click-wheel to mitigate stress, or while thinking up something to write, or simply because it was there in my pocket and I wanted something to occupy my hands. Spoiler: It still spins today. It even boots up, though its battery is long past the point of holding more than a few minutes' charge.

But this little white rectangle is responsible for pretty much every pocket-sized product Apple has produced since. Jason Snell said it best in his (now ten year old) five-year-reflection on the iPod for Macworld:

The iPod amplified Apple's brand into the mainstream, giving many users a chance to enter the company's ecosystem for the first time. From there, the "halo effect" took hold — it wasn't hard to love a Mac once you got used to that simple little rectangle. (And for all the flack iTunes rightfully gets now, in the mid-2000s, it and the iPod made adding music blissfully simple, where other products felt clunky and complicated.)

Over the years, the iPod has ceded its position to the iPhone; in 2016, the idea of a device that only does music seems almost ridiculous. ("No GPS? No headphones-as-MP3-player? No step tracker?") But fifteen years ago, that idea was revolutionary enough to help bring about the modern age of portable devices. The iPod rightfully deserves its place on my desk — and in the cabinet of technology history.

Apple may have discontinued the venerable iPod Classic, but it still has its fans, for its click wheel design and capacious storage. Now you can keep yours going and bring it into the flash storage age, too.

This isn't a review — I can't find my iPod Classic at the moment, though I plan to tear my house apart looking for it, but a recent Twitter post from Other World Computing got my attention and I thought you ought to know. Turns out the company offers a DIY kit called the iFlash, which enables you to replace the tiny internal hard drive in your iPod Classic with an SDHC or SDXC flash media card.

Taking apart an iPod Classic isn't a simple job, but it's something a lot of iPod owners have done over the years, to replace batteries and hard drives and other parts that have worn out.

It's available with or without a card; without, it costs $49 plus shipping. With, it's $99.

Obviously you can get an iPod touch if you prefer, but Apple's still limiting capacity on that model to 64 GB. You can double that with an SDXC card. Larger cards than 128 GB are available, of course, but some iPod Classics have software limitations that will prevent larger ones from being used. Either way, you'll end up with an iPod that works even better than the original.

Apple discontinued the iPod Classic earlier this year, and now Tim Cook has revealed the reason behind the move. Speaking at the Wall Street Journal Digital Live conference, Cook stated that Apple had to cease production as parts were not available.

Cook also mentioned that the team could have come up with a new design, but ultimately decided to not pursue undertaking a redesign.

Are you sad that the iPod Classic is no longer available?

Source: Wall Street Journal

Yesterday Apple quietly put to rest the device that singularly got the company moving in the direction it is today: the iPod classic. It's not hyperbole to suggest that the iPod helped turn Apple into the business it is today: The most successful consumer electronics company on the planet.

Apple introduced the original iPod in 2001. It had been four years since the company grabbed headlines and rescued itself from the brink by introducing the iMac. What's more, Apple was pivoting to become a much more directly consumer-focused company; earlier that year, it had begun opening its own retail stores. The iPod gave Apple customers another reason to check out the stores.

You could store 5 GB of music on that first iPod — 1,000 songs in your pocket, as Apple marketed it. The iPod was clad in white plastic and equipped with a black and white display and a mechanical click wheel. It connected to the Mac (Mac-only, at first) using a FireWire cable, and interfaced with Apple's iTunes app, which Apple had only released at the beginning of 2001. Digital music was still a novelty. It'd still be two more years before the iTunes Store would be available — for now, people were loading iTunes with music they'd already purchased on CD.

Mac users responded enthusiastically to the iPod, and Apple followed up with a PC-compatible version in 2002. Adoption of that model was hampered by its continued reliance on FireWire, a peripheral interface that was gaining popularity on the Mac but never quite got off the ground on the PC, except for some speciality systems like Sony Vaio computers.

2003 was a big year for Apple and the iPod. Apple revised the design of the iPod to incorporate the 30-pin dock connector — a standard on its consumer products for the next nine years, until the introduction of the iPhone 5, and one that made the iPod squarely platform-agnostic in terms of hardware connectivity.

What's more, the company introduced the iTunes Music Store, making it painfully easy to pay for and download music. Apple also introduced a Windows-compatible version of iTunes in 2003, making it easier than ever for people to buy and use iPods regardless of what computer platform they had (Apple had been selling the iPod for PC bundled with a third-party software app called Musicmatch).

Many more successes followed. By its fourth generation the iPod was squarely recognizable as the same one that you could buy from Apple up until yesterday. A color screen would eventually be added, and the original iPod would be rebranded as the "classic" beginning in 2007. The device has gone unchanged since 2009, when it was updated with a 160 GB hard drive, making it the single largest music-carrying device in Apple's iPod arsenal.

The success of the original iPod spawned the enormously successful iPod mini, the even more successful iPod nano, and even the iPod shuffle, all of which implemented the same familiar circular click wheel interface to make it easier to discover and listen to your music everywhere.

Of course, times and tastes have changed. The world changed irrevocably in 2007 when Apple introduced the iPhone, and later, the iPod touch. The iPod nano would eventually adopt an iOS-like touch screen interface, too. So the iPod classic was left to lumber along, the only one of its kind still in the wild.

And so, quietly, without fanfare or ado, Apple changed the iPod classic's status from extant to extinct. What's a shame about it is that there isn't a flash-based device in Apple's arsenal with the equivalent storage capacity of the iPod classic; 128 GB is as big as the new iPhone 6 gets, twice the capacity of the largest iPod touch. Hopefully we'll see a new iPod touch soon, but I don't have high hopes that it'll have 256 GB or anything. Apple's banking too much on seeing customers transition to technologies like iCloud and iTunes Match to bother with making iOS devices with tons of internal capacity.

There are still iPod classics available in the retail channel; the store I work in still has a couple for sale, and I see them available on web sites too. This isn't the first time I've lamented the end of the iPod classic, but Apple's removal of the device from its web site and web store is an unmistakable indication that the device has been put out to pasture once and for all.

Are you sad like me that the iPod classic has gone away? Or was 13 years a long enough run for one device? Let me know your thoughts.

"Let no old yet still functional technology go to waste" is the motto of any good McGyver-class geek, which is what makes the idea of using an abandoned but still capable iPod classic as an emergency boot drive for the Mac so appealing. Chris Breen of Macworld:

Again, it's not for the faint-of-nerd, and you will also have to wrestle an OS X installer out of Mountain Lion to complete the job, but when you're done you'll have a potentially very big lifesaver in a very small package.

Check out Breen's article for complete instructions, and if you decide to give it a try, let me know!

Source: Macworld

The iPod classic; loved the world over by folks who have the overwhelming desire to keep their whole music collection in their pockets. But how long is it for this world? iMore community member sdreelin asked himself the same question, to the point where he ended up buying another while he still can:

He hit a pretty solid point there, too. Along with the iPhone 4 and 4S, the iPod classic is the last of the 30-pin devices, Even the iPod touch range has now been completely upgraded to Lightning. The much rumored 'budget' iPhone if a legitimate product could spell the end of the 4S – that's assuming the 4S would have been reduced to the role of 'budget' option as the 4 and 3GS both have been before it. This along with the expected retirement of the iPhone 4 would leave the classic as the last of the dying breed. If it even stayed alive at all.

Also, as much as those who love the classic, love it a lot and for very specific reasons, Apple is moving away from this 'old' way of doing things. With iTunes Match and iTunes in the cloud – even the forthcoming iTunes Radio – we're seeing where the future of Apple's music offerings lie – somewhere the classic can't join in. There's still a lot to be said for having an iPod that just plays music, and lots of it, but the chances of it receiving a Lightning upgrade like the rest of the range are pretty slim at best.

Hopefully we'll see other high capacity options in the future; 128GB iPod touch and iPhone models would be great. But to some, there will be no replacing the old 160GB iPod classic. If you're going to ever want one though, it's maybe not a horrible idea to think about picking one up sooner rather than later.

What do you think about the iPod classic? Think it'll stick around for another term, or be put out to pasture at the next batch of product refreshes?