I suspect for most of the regulars on this site, the loss of the iPod Classic is the biggest (bad) news of all - by far, if you ask me. I guess we have to believe that once all the iPod Classics currently in store stocks are sold, someone will start making an alternative. Right now the closest thing out there appears to be the FiiO X5, which doesn't come already-equipped with the two 128GB SDXC cards required to give it 256GB capacity, but it's a steep price-tag even without those. I've been thinking of buying another iPod Classic just in case the one I have now crashes, but I hate to reward Apple for this kind of behavior. There's just no good option at the moment, and that's probably just how the music industry likes it too.
I must admit having just read the above news from Trunkler I am thinking of trying to get one fast. I do use my iphone for music, especially in my wife's car, with ability to paly it through Bluetooth, but it does have a limited capacity. I much prefer my ipod as I have a bigger, though restricted, choice. I can see me shopping for a new ipod very soon, if I can find one!
I must admit that I feel skeptical that it would be difficult to adapt to having, say, merely 64 GB of portable storage than double that. Most large libraries (I bet most here) are already larger than a big Classic (iTunes says mine's 337gb), so one has to (at least eventually) select what gets synced. A portable 64gb of music is a lot of music, though if one goes completely lossless it admittedly goes less far number-wise.
Mine's 'only' 30GB and probably six years or so old, I keep expecting it to go wrong anytime. I agree though I get quite a lot of music on it. My iTunes is currently 233gb but I am in the process of upgrading Cds that I originally put on Windows Music player before I had my ipod, so increasing memory demand. 180 gb would just suit me fine!
They can have my iPod when they pry it from my cold dead hands. I have a 6thGen 160GB, that is my second 160. I replaced a 30GB 3rdGen and an original Nano. I would buy a 250GB iPod this instant if they had one. (I still have my older 160, the HD failed and I am hoping to swap it out for a 250GB drive someday).
It's a shame about the iPod Classic. It was a pretty big deal when I got one. It's still the only one I have, actually. I've had that thing since, what, maybe 2003? I rarely use it anymore, actually, though I've been thinking lately about getting it up and running again.
I assume, by now, most of you have read that the U2 free album can't be deleted from your computer/device? If you try to delete it, the system keeps the files, but hides them.
The U2 album is like a music version of herpes... you will never get rid of the virus; all you can do is, well, "hide" it.
Need some U2 cover-up cream, eh? Could just as easily have been Katy Perry, then where would we be.
A friend recently expressed bafflement on seeing me with iPod. "Why don't you just put your music on your phone?" As much as to say, what more could you possibly need, besides a couple Dave Matthews albums?
Trying to resist the impulse to buy another 160 GB Classic, as mine is going along fine. They are still in stock slightly under list at some places. Hoping some enterprising manufacturer will jump into the breach before my battery dies...
There are a couple of things about this ipod classic thing that are in danger of making me a luddite that are not about the specific device. I fear that the assumption being created by the market is that (i) I stream music more than store it and (ii) I have a smart phone and use it for music. Neither of these is true for me. I do not have a smart phone and still feel no need for one - almost none of my communication takes place by phone, and when I am not near wifi I typically do not want to be reached. I have a prepaid phone for car emergencies. I also do far too much of my listening away from the net (walking to work, sitting on planes...) for streaming, useful as it is, to become my primary listening mode. And I do still care about owning and curating my music, the same way that lending libraries are truly wonderful things but I still like to own copies of my favorite books and go back to them whenever I feel like it. (I do have a number of music releases that have disappeared from the web since release due to netlabels vanishing.)
Having said that, the 64GB iPod Touch is adequate for me; my fear is it too will disappear and it will be phones all the way. I have wrestled a bit with the right iTunes algorithms to keep the rotation in sync with my listening trends, so it's some work, but it's big enough that I can generally find something I want to listen to, even if I sometimes have to wait a day when I feel a desire for a particular thing that is not there. Smart use of smart playlists is the key. At this point, while massive, affordable capacity would be nice, enhanced audio quality would at least as interesting, maybe more so if I were in the market for another device.
Could just as easily have been Katy Perry, then where would we be.
Indeed. I am still baffled as to why Amazon believed I needed Britney Spears in my library, though at least they made it far easier than iTunes does to delete it.
I'm skeptical it would go "phones all the way" - the Touch is the iPhone minus the phone, and frankly, I'd guess there will long remain at least a sizable kid-market (specifically, offspring-of-parents-not-wanting-their-kids-with-phones) for a non-phone smart device.
I hope so. The delay over a new generation of the iPod touch has had some speculators skeptical.
ETA, e.g. here (just a sample of similar conversations in various places)
I have two nephews who were pre-teens when they got iPod Touches for Christmas 5 few years ago. They are the only Touch owners I have ever known, besides Prof!
I still see some Nanos at the health club, but otherwise it's all phones. There's one guy who carries a portable CD player with a fanny pack of CDs; he is my hero.
Re: U2 - I have never immediately liked a U2 album, but I always end up playing them a jillion times and learning to like them (exception: Zooropa)
Re: the death of the iPod Classic - time for a Pono? Looks like 128 GB, but half is from an SD card, so (I assume) multiple SD cards can be used (a Jazz SD, a Grateful Dead Live SD, etc.) 64GB is about $25 right now, very affordable expansion. It says only 64GB SD cards, but maybe 128 will be supported eventually.
I admit I have not followed this as closely as I should, mostly because I thought it would end up as "Neil Young's folly."
I assume, by now, most of you have read that the U2 free album can't be deleted from your computer/device? If you try to delete it, the system keeps the files, but hides them.
I think this may be a false rumor, to some extent - it's true you can't delete it from iCloud, and maybe not if you have an iPhone and you downloaded the files to it (I have an Android phone), but it can't stop you from deleting the files via Windows Explorer or the OS/X Finder on your desktop/laptop machine. Once I did that, I got rid of the items in iTunes with no trouble, and later I was also able to replace all the stored images of Bono's face on the machine with pics of his daughter, The Knick star Eve Hewson. Obviously this is very creepy, but then again, so is Bono's face.
I did listen to the album though, and it wasn't bad, and nice of them to give it away... but it sounded a bit too Coldplay-ish to me.
I don't know Coldplay enough to make the comparison (I have listened to one song that borrowed from Kraftwerk) but I am finding much of the U2 album too glossy and anodyne on first couple of listens. A few tracks sound as if they will grow on me. NOthing is reaching out and grabbing my lapels the way Sunday Bloody Sunday or Still Haven't Found...(Rattle & Hum version) or even Love and Peace did.
@Doofy, being a Touch owner = having all the apps in your pocket with paying for a cellphone contract. That's actually the biggest thing I don't want to lose. Otherwise I'd be right in the market for a Pono.
Articles like this and this make me fear for the Touch, which has an ambiguous spot between phones and classic players. Phones are booming, Pods declining dramatically.
Thanks Plong42 for mentioning SD cards. I am about to buy a new car that has two SD slots. A few SD cards would be a much cheaper option than trying to get a new iPod classic before they disappear, especially as I do use my iPod most in the car. I use my iPad more for music on trains, planes etc.
Does anybody know anything about the iBasso DX50 ($250) or Fiio X3 ($170)? I found them on amazon under FLAC player - they both play a wide variety of lossless formats (and mp3's) and both take SD cards; if I was in the market I'd look at them; just curious if anybody knew anything about them.
LOL, all those people with a virus called U2 on their phones now. That was one of the funniest tweets I saw.
Of course, I was DELIGHTED to see the splash screen about it in the iTunes store when I logged in to get my free download of the week. Kept telling me I'd already downloaded it and I was getting quite perturbed at Apple, since it was clearly not on either the PC or Mac. Finally got it to download a day later. I never thought to look on my iphone. Apparently that's where it was put first.
Haven't listened to it yet...a bit disappointed with the artwork.
Lemon might be the very song that made me "break up" with U2.
That was my breaking point, too. Both the song and the video made me nauseous.
Nauseous is one of the most consistently hard words (for me) to spell on the first try. GREAT Scrabble word, though.
I was never a big U2 fan in the first place, but I really liked New Years Day and the live album, Under a Blood Red Sky back when I was in high school. I couldn't stand Joshua Tree. I really liked Achtung Baby, though I understand why a lot of true blue U2 fans despised it. And then Zooropa & Lemon came around and I stopped caring about them forever. I gave that Horizon album a listen and it was totally lame... not quite as lame as where Sting ended up, but definitely on that path and sufficiently shameful that U2 should have quit right there.
The fact that they need to force feed their newest album to the public is pretty damning evidence at how lame they've become and how irrelevant. Same goes for Rolling Stone magazine, which raved about U2's newest. File under "what-EVER."
In a karmic swirl of weird, Zooropa is $5 at Amazon this month. Go get your Lemon.
I really did enjoy All You Can't Leave Behind, although not until it had been out for a few years. One of my students was raving over it, so I gave it a listen. Hit me at the right time and place in life I guess. But each album after that was 10% less interesting than the previous. I have been through Songs of Innocence maybe five times now, and I really think it needs Brian Eno. It isn't lame, but it limps.
Apple's force-feeding, I think - not U2. U2 likely chose this route under cost-benefit analysis (I'm assuming they didn't "give" it to Apple), and Apple is trying a new delivery mechanism for big pop bands, possibly as an investigative loss-leader. I make this cheap analysis partly on the comparison of U2 vs. Apple's cash hoard and revenue blanket.
Apple is trying a new delivery mechanism for big pop bands
Now that is interesting Kargatron. I'll do a bit of delving next time I see my daughter in law in a couple of weeks.
Re U2 - Whilst aware of their music beforehand, I first really 'got into' U2 after seeing them at Live Aid (now that dates both me and them). For perhaps 5 years I bought all their new LPs and much of the back catalogue; there was one I didn't like, so far ago I can't remember which, and that was it. I've got a few things on iTunes, but most are unticked and not played in years. I quite liked the free album but I have not been back to play it a second time.
Comments
I know, cloud blah blah.
I assume, by now, most of you have read that the U2 free album can't be deleted from your computer/device? If you try to delete it, the system keeps the files, but hides them.
The U2 album is like a music version of herpes... you will never get rid of the virus; all you can do is, well, "hide" it.
Craig
A friend recently expressed bafflement on seeing me with iPod. "Why don't you just put your music on your phone?" As much as to say, what more could you possibly need, besides a couple Dave Matthews albums?
Trying to resist the impulse to buy another 160 GB Classic, as mine is going along fine. They are still in stock slightly under list at some places. Hoping some enterprising manufacturer will jump into the breach before my battery dies...
Having said that, the 64GB iPod Touch is adequate for me; my fear is it too will disappear and it will be phones all the way. I have wrestled a bit with the right iTunes algorithms to keep the rotation in sync with my listening trends, so it's some work, but it's big enough that I can generally find something I want to listen to, even if I sometimes have to wait a day when I feel a desire for a particular thing that is not there. Smart use of smart playlists is the key. At this point, while massive, affordable capacity would be nice, enhanced audio quality would at least as interesting, maybe more so if I were in the market for another device.
Indeed. I am still baffled as to why Amazon believed I needed Britney Spears in my library, though at least they made it far easier than iTunes does to delete it.
ETA, e.g. here (just a sample of similar conversations in various places)
I still see some Nanos at the health club, but otherwise it's all phones. There's one guy who carries a portable CD player with a fanny pack of CDs; he is my hero.
The album is apparently "a triumph of dynamic, focused renaissance."
Whatever.
Craig
Re: the death of the iPod Classic - time for a Pono? Looks like 128 GB, but half is from an SD card, so (I assume) multiple SD cards can be used (a Jazz SD, a Grateful Dead Live SD, etc.) 64GB is about $25 right now, very affordable expansion. It says only 64GB SD cards, but maybe 128 will be supported eventually.
I admit I have not followed this as closely as I should, mostly because I thought it would end up as "Neil Young's folly."
I did listen to the album though, and it wasn't bad, and nice of them to give it away... but it sounded a bit too Coldplay-ish to me.
@Doofy, being a Touch owner = having all the apps in your pocket with paying for a cellphone contract. That's actually the biggest thing I don't want to lose. Otherwise I'd be right in the market for a Pono.
Ironic, since I always thought Coldplay was a U2 Cover band....!
Of course, I was DELIGHTED to see the splash screen about it in the iTunes store when I logged in to get my free download of the week. Kept telling me I'd already downloaded it and I was getting quite perturbed at Apple, since it was clearly not on either the PC or Mac. Finally got it to download a day later. I never thought to look on my iphone. Apparently that's where it was put first.
Haven't listened to it yet...a bit disappointed with the artwork.
My favorite from that album is "Lemon".
That was my breaking point, too. Both the song and the video made me nauseous.
Nauseous is one of the most consistently hard words (for me) to spell on the first try. GREAT Scrabble word, though.
I was never a big U2 fan in the first place, but I really liked New Years Day and the live album, Under a Blood Red Sky back when I was in high school. I couldn't stand Joshua Tree. I really liked Achtung Baby, though I understand why a lot of true blue U2 fans despised it. And then Zooropa & Lemon came around and I stopped caring about them forever. I gave that Horizon album a listen and it was totally lame... not quite as lame as where Sting ended up, but definitely on that path and sufficiently shameful that U2 should have quit right there.
The fact that they need to force feed their newest album to the public is pretty damning evidence at how lame they've become and how irrelevant. Same goes for Rolling Stone magazine, which raved about U2's newest. File under "what-EVER."
/monies
I really did enjoy All You Can't Leave Behind, although not until it had been out for a few years. One of my students was raving over it, so I gave it a listen. Hit me at the right time and place in life I guess. But each album after that was 10% less interesting than the previous. I have been through Songs of Innocence maybe five times now, and I really think it needs Brian Eno. It isn't lame, but it limps.
Re U2 - Whilst aware of their music beforehand, I first really 'got into' U2 after seeing them at Live Aid (now that dates both me and them). For perhaps 5 years I bought all their new LPs and much of the back catalogue; there was one I didn't like, so far ago I can't remember which, and that was it. I've got a few things on iTunes, but most are unticked and not played in years. I quite liked the free album but I have not been back to play it a second time.
What's that word expressing pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others? Oh yeah, LOL