iPods
iPods are simple and effective music players, which don’t have a high cost yet are probably the best music player you can buy. They are products that give you freedom over your music and control over your device.
Why are old iPods so great?
- Higher sound quality with a built in DAC for the shockingly rare included headphone jack.
- Supports high sound quality formats, like FLAC and ALAC.
- Mods - you can repair them, upgrade them, mod them etc.
- No internet connection - you won’t suddenly loose your music if Apple or Spotify goes down.
- Less distraction - just plays music with some games you probably won’t play again anyway.
- You own your music - you can buy music and put it on here (this is also better for artists.)
- Piracy - you can rip music off youtube and take it anywhere. You’ll still be able to listen to it when the music on youtube is taken down.
Rockbox
If you don’t like the proprietary Apple iPod operating system, there’s an alternative called Rockbox. However devices without an internet connection (as long as your not syncing to iTunes) can’t communicate back to apple or the internet, so I’d say there’s no privacy concern here. With rockbox you do get more features and themes, but I prefer how the original operating system looks.
My iPods
I have a collection of iPods, for different reasons, and I have only actually bought one.
iPod Shuffle
This is probably my favourite and coolest iPod, it’s a simple, small device that you can literally fit anywhere and play your favourite music playlist on (the storage is pretty limited.) There’s no screen, no messing about, just press play. It even has a cool voice feature, where it can tell you the name of the song, battery level, etc.
iPod Mini (Gen 2)
Even though the storage is also kind of limited, it’s enough for me. I love the screen, the old iPod design, and how easy it is to use. The UI is so simple and effective. I don’t need album art. I don’t need fancy graphics to look at. It’s so minimal and yet does the job so well.
iPod Classic (Gen 6?)
This has the most storage, but I’m not a fan of this iPod because it’s a bit too new, with a modern display and games and such. The UI also looks terrible, a lot worse compared to the iPod Mini.