I love coming back to the iPod. It’s great having almost all of my music on one device that only does one thing: playing music.
My listening habits are much better when I listen to downloaded music than when streaming. On streaming services I tend to listen to lots of lists and I end listening to the same songs for long periods of time. On my computer and the iPod I usually listen to full albums, in order. It’s a different experience. I listen to the songs as the artist intended when publishing the album.
It’s an iPod gen 7 with the the HD replaced by a 128gb microSD. The firmware is the holy rockbox.
I love my iPods enormously, to the point that, while I have an Apple Music sub, most of my proper listening is done via one of these three little beauties.
The Mini and the 4G are flash modded to 128gb, both have new batteries. The 5G is a stock 30gb spinning HDD, partly because it still works fine, and partly because I currently lack the disposable income to mod it.
The 5G is actually two broken ones combined. I was lucky enough to score the 4 and 5 together from Facebook for about £12. The HDD in the 4 was cooked, so needed replacing anyway, but I couldn’t get the 5 to do much of any use, because the click wheel wouldn’t register any touches. Took it apart and found it was slightly water damaged.
So I eventually picked up another 5G with a shagged battery and broken screen off eBay for £20. Turned out the battery in my original one was actually good still, so I transplanted that and the good screen into the ‘newer’ 5G, and am now the proud owner of a perfect working 30gb iPod for the grand total of £26.
The 4G refuses to charge via USB for reasons it won’t share with me. I thought the original battery was toast, but it seems that it was actually probably fine, just wasn’t charging properly. Picked up a FireWire brick and cable for £35, and the 4G has been a solid device ever since. Purely because of the charging issues though, I’ve been pondering selling the 4G. I’ve spent about £50 on it, so if I can recoup that, then I can happily mod the 5G to 512gb and have my foreverPod. But the 4G is just so pretty, that I can’t bear to part with it…
Oh man, I haven’t thought about my old iPods in forever. I need to go dig them out and give that a shot. Times certainly were simpler back then.
My listening habits are much better when I listen to downloaded music than when streaming.
I find this too. If I listen on my iPods, I listen. If I have Apple Music playing, it’s just audio wallpaper. I break out The Good Headphones and choose something from a finite selection of music that I’ve curated, and I’ll sit there and enjoy it properly, without the temptation to scroll the internet while I’m doing it.
I’ve never seen that OS on an iPod classic… looks dang cool. Too bad mines got a dead battery and a mechanical hard drive…
