iPod - Say Sayonara - Dead at 21 years old

[Cyclops]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Phones are why Apple is discontinuing and why mostly you can only buy the pmps online.

What are they discontinuing?

[ApK]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

How did the sound quality suck? If you stream your MP3s
through headphones or to a Bluetooth speaker, isn't the quality of the speaker and the MP3 files more important than which device is playing it? This is a real question rather than a counterpoint to your argument.

The sound is only as good as the weakest link. Great source file + great headphones + bad player = poor sound. Move the greats and bad around to any position, results are the same.
(Bad player can be any combination of bad DAC, bad amp, bad electronics, bad software, etc.)

Originally Posted by Cyclops

What are they discontinuing?

Welcome to the thread, check the title and the first couple posts....

[hobnail]

Speaking of old mp3 players, even though I damaged the socket on it for charging it (and can't charge it), I still have my old Microsoft Zune player. That thing was the perfect mp3 player. The ergonomics and UI were perfect.

We could have a contest for who has the oldest handheld gizmo; I still have some ancient Palms and a Dell Windows Mobile, along with several Game Boys. No worries about the Palm batteries going bad since they use regular AAA or whatever batteries. And I even have my old Creative (remember the Sound Blaster cards?) mp3 player. Heavy and built like a tank.

[DuskyRose]

Originally Posted by Quoth

There are 100s of pmps with small dimensions in last 15 years. Most better than Apple, and cheaper and with SD card slot. No-one is suggesting you have to have an 8" tablet or a phone.

Some names and brands would help.

They only ones I can seem to find, on-line and in person, have horrible interfaces, larger sizes, and the screen resolutions suck.

I'm usually the one in the family playing with the demos in the electronics departments, and know for a fact that what looks good in advertising is a below-par experience in person.

You saying that they exist doesn't fill me with much hope that they actually do exist.

[olderTechnology]

Nobody mentioned that Android, like Windows, becomes slower and slower every month you use it. iOS products tend to run at the same speed as when you bought them. Long time owner of both.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by olderTechnology

Nobody mentioned that Android, like Windows, becomes slower and slower every month you use it. iOS products tend to run at the same speed as when you bought them. Long time owner of both.

Apple device do indeed tend toward high performance, no doubt, but that problem with Android in this context can be significantly mitigated, because presumably you'll install the player software you like, then stop messing with it. Not as much need to upgrade or patch an inactivated device that you're only using as a PMP.

Stay off the net, side load your media and it should run the same til the hardware fails.

[Dazrin]

You say that but Apple was sued over intentionally slowing down old iPhones a few years ago.

https://www.techradar.com/news/apple...one-on-purpose
https://www.npr.org/2020/11/18/93626...hone-slowdowns

Maybe Apple has "better" code to keep things from getting bogged down from clutter but I don't remember Google intentionally slowing your phone down as it ages.

Edit: This wasn't towards ApK if that wasn't clear.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

Maybe Apple has "better" code to keep things from getting bogged down from clutter but I don't remember Google intentionally slowing your phone down as it ages.

Google doesn't have to, it slows down all by itself.

[JSWolf]

I have a Fiio X3 2nd gen and as a music player it blows away the iPhone 6s, 8, and Se 2020 as well as the iPod 7th gen and it cost less then all of them and it uses microSD for storage so I don't have a fixed amount. I've compared the same music on all of these and yes, the Fiio sounds better.

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by olderTechnology

Nobody mentioned that Android, like Windows, becomes slower and slower every month you use it. iOS products tend to run at the same speed as when you bought them. Long time owner of both.

That was definitely the case with Windows but doesn't seem to be happening any more. I remember reinstalling windows from scratch every year, but I don't remember when I stopped needing to do that.

None of my Android devices have gotten slower. The operating system is Linux which is very good these days and the apps are running in a Java virtual machine, which is very good about reclaiming memory. My main complaint in this area is that when you remove an app you can never be sure if all of its bits and pieces have been removed.

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by DuskyRose

You're still missing the point. The iPod Touch is NOT an iphone. It's a tablet.

It's like you comparing a Kindle Fire to an Android phone. It doesn't work.

The iPod touch is not a tablet. It's much closer to a phone than a tablet. Early versions were literally just that year's iPhone with a worse camera and no cellular radio. Later revisions kept the smaller screen and got worse processors.

It is completely fair to compare an android phone and an iPod touch because they are roughly the same size, cost roughly the same amount and do pretty much exactly the same things. If you don't need the phone part of an adnroid phone you just don't put in a SIM card and it'll work just fine.

Apple is killing the iPod touch because it doesn't make much sense these days. Most people have a smartphone and most people don't want to carry around two devices especially when one literally does the same thing as the other but better in every conceivable way. I imagine most people would rather get more storage in their iPhone than buy a separate iPod touch.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by hobnail

Speaking of old mp3 players, even though I damaged the socket on it for charging it (and can't charge it), I still have my old Microsoft Zune player. That thing was the perfect mp3 player. The ergonomics and UI were perfect.

We could have a contest for who has the oldest handheld gizmo; I still have some ancient Palms and a Dell Windows Mobile, along with several Game Boys. No worries about the Palm batteries going bad since they use regular AAA or whatever batteries. And I even have my old Creative (remember the Sound Blaster cards?) mp3 player. Heavy and built like a tank.

I also had a Zune and preferred it to the iPod. It would automatically add new music, from my music folder. Apple required me to manually choose what to add. It was also more intuitive and easier to use than the pods.
Apache

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

How did the sound quality suck? If you stream your MP3s through headphones or to a Bluetooth speaker, isn't the quality of the speaker and the MP3 files more important than which device is playing it? This is a real question rather than a counterpoint to your argument.

As far as I recall, his main complain was that the highs were mushy and the overall sound using his Koss headphones was more like listening to a cheap transistor radio than anything you'd care to attach the label quality sound to. Okay for podcasts but for music, forget it.

Comparing the output from his iPhone audio out to the Android phone audio out, at the same output levels, the distortion numbers were a lot higher for the Android phone which suggests it's DAC was scraped off the bottom of the figurative barrel. At one point, he was also the owner of a Sony MiniDisc player and he is still a bit of an audiohead so your mileage may vary.

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

As for getting a cheap Android phone, yeah, maybe don't scrape the bottom of the barrel. But you can get former flagships or mid-tier phones for pretty cheap.

One of the reasons for getting the Android phone was to replace his older music player with one that he would not be too afraid of forgetting in his car. Essentially, a throwaway device so cost was rather important.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by hobnail

We could have a contest for who has the oldest handheld gizmo; I still have some ancient Palms and a Dell Windows Mobile, along with several Game Boys. No worries about the Palm batteries going bad since they use regular AAA or whatever batteries. And I even have my old Creative (remember the Sound Blaster cards?) mp3 player. Heavy and built like a tank.

How about a HP 100LX DOS computer from 1993?

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by DNSB

How about a HP 100LX DOS computer from 1993?

How about an HP-35 from 1973?