Comment by nubinetwork
5 days ago
The iPod was a product in an interesting time... if you ignore the screen, a modern mp3 player could be made as small as a SD card... as soon as you add the screen, you need a full operating system to manage files and run the screen. Nobody wants to put the effort into something that's going to be as basic as a mp3 player.
> as soon as you add the screen, you need a full operating system to manage files and run the screen
More software? Sure. An operating system? No. There were (are?) plenty of cheap MP3 players that had screens but just drive it with some budget microcontroller.
And they're all e-waste nuggets sitting in dankpods' storage closet... :)
It barely needs a screen. I adored my minidisc players and they were all basically calculator displays
I adored my MiniDisc too but the limited storage of a single disk makes it easy to find the music you want
Given how much we can store in solid state not sure I’d want to navigate my library without a screen
Would you still adore it as much today, though? I know I don't adore my iPod classic as much now as I did in 2006, and that's inclusive of the nostalgia kick. It's just not very practical and usable in today's world.
I still adore the hell out of my 512GB (SD) iPod Classic/Minis
You can buy new shells, colors, storage adapters, batteries, etc.
https://github.com/jmonster/podhnologic
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I don't use it daily, but I enjoyed rediscovering and using my MiniDisc stuff that I was inspired to build a pretty popular website around it :)
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Hard to be objective through the nostalgia tbh. I would expect more today I guess
So like the original iPod Shuffle? Just buttons, a clip and a headphone jack, no screen.
(I do think they need a minimum size to be usable but companies can be creative with the form factor)
I find this seriously underestimates what jackets 6 will undertake for fun, even unpaid.