This is dedicated to the iPod Classic.
The first iPod was announced in fall 2001, several months after the announcement of iTunes that spring. It was Apple’s way of trying to combat music piracy after the rise and fall of Napster in the late ‘90s, and over the next few years continued building iTunes into a legitimate online music store. (Naturally, you can learn more about this in Steve Jobs’ biography by Walter Isaacson, and “How Music Got Free” by Stephen Witt.)
As the iPod’s popularity grew, its design changed and became easier to work with and more user-friendly with its tactility. It also increased its gigabyte size, enabling it to store more songs, photos and videos (and podcasts as well, as the mid-2000s saw a podcast boom which continues to this day.) Its heyday was somewhere from 2004 through the early 2010s, but it was discontinued in 2014. They came in black and white, but for some reason, unlike most other iPod variants, did not come in any other colors.
A friend of mine showed me a video in around 2015 or so, the year after the Classic was discontinued, about kids reacting to it and being somewhat puzzled by it, being seemingly antiquated by that time when the iPhone, having been introduced in 2007, simply had far more features. None of them knew how to use it. It actually bothered me, up until a few of the kids in the video, seemingly somehow aware of how I was feeling, apologized.
Personally, as someone who frequently takes it out of the house and uses it often, I have found it to be a fun conversation starter. Once while flying home from Chicago, a man told me he couldn’t help but notice that I had been listening to it and we chatted for a few minutes about his work in the music industry.
Wikipedia’s article on it sums up well why there are still people like myself who prefer it to the now much more common “use streaming platforms through your phone”: Long after its discontinuation, the iPod Classic continues to have significant ongoing appeal. While some of it is attributed to nostalgia, many prize the iPod Classic on a purely utilitarian basis due to its unique features and functionality, such as the click wheel, form factor and software, finding that the larger, touchscreen-only iPod Touch or a smartphone does not make an adequate substitute. Other continued iPod users dislike music streaming, preferring to not pay costly subscriptions, own their music, download tracks in high-resolution, and play it while offline. While Apple ignored the 20th anniversary of the iPod in 2021, a large modding scene has emerged to extend their operational lifespan and upgrade them with modern hardware, adding features such as Bluetooth capability and flash memory.[32]
While Apple had been revitalized by the early 2000s, the iPod helped build it into a company that expanded beyond its original focus of computers.
It’s nice to know I’m not the only one who still has a major affinity for the Classic. There are major benefits to still having one. Cheers to all those who do.