No, not my iPod Classic!

[wshaffer]

Nooooo! It's not exactly a surprise that Apple is discontinuing the iPod Classic. But I'm still dismayed at the lack of any suitable replacement. I have hopes for the Geek Wave when it comes out.

Tackling the problem on the other end, I might be willing to be less fetishistic about carrying my entire audio collection on one device if there were software that made it easier to ensure that the things I actually wanted to listen to were on the device at any given time. (I suppose I could probably manage this with a collection of smart playlists in iTunes - ideally I would like something like: fill up the iPod with a) music I've purchased recently, b) stuff I've been listening to a lot lately, c) unplayed podcasts, d) the next few unplayed Doctor Who audios from Big Finish productions, e) fill any remaining space with a random selection of music. I think that most of those could be done in a smart playlist, although I don't think that iTunes really understands the concept of a sequence of audio plays.)

Of course, my current iPod Classic is still going strong, despite my having partially backed my car over it some time ago. So it may be some time before I have to worry about replacing it.

Comments

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Oh, crap. I like my Touch, but I still use the Classic in the car, because I can do things like skip songs without needing to look at it. I hope that by the time it dies, somebody else has made a non-touchscreen device.

(Or I guess really, the answer will be that by the time it dies, my car will be communicating wirelessly with my home computer and operating via neural implants.)

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not quite neural implants, but my new car connects to audio devices using either USB or bluetooth, and it has controls on the steering wheel for skipping songs. And I think that similar controls are increasingly standard on new-model cars.

Still, I think there ought to be room in the market for a high-capacity non-touchscreen device, probably based on solid-state storage rather than a hard drive. I know of a few in development, mostly aimed at the audiophile market. It'll be interesting to see if anyone manages to produce something that successfully competes with Apple for ease of use.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Our car has the steering controls, but only for CDs. I figured there were better versions out there, eight years on.

[azurelunatic]

There are some cables with pause/play/skip controls, which is nice ... although not all of them are placed sensibly.