I think phones have generally taken over MP3 players because you can do everything an MP3 player does on your phone.

But I recently bought one because I just like a single device having that unique purpose of playing music.

  • pixelscript@lemmy.ml
    ·
    1 year ago

    I keep my 160GB iPod Classic on life support.

    I think the clickwheel design is, in my view, the single best one-thumb no-looking-required input scheme for an MP3 player I think anyone has ever made. Plug it into, say, my car stereo AUX port and I can pick it up with a free hand to control volume, select tracks, and even navigate mostly by memory without having to look at the thing. I can just tell where I am based on the feel of the control. Infinitely better than a featureless flat slab of a touch screen that gives you no sensory feedback.

    I like its solid build quality. Full metal chassis with that sexy anodized aluminum finish. I miss that. Despite having a spinning disk hard drive, it never skips, and I've never had read or write issues. Though I'd probably try to mod it over to some kind of flash NAND storage someday. There's also a USB-C mod available that I'd like to do someday, since Apple 30-pin connectors are an endangered species now, and even then, carrying around an outdated proprietary cable for only one device is something I'm eager to never need to do again.

    I'm also pretty heavily conditioned to not have tens of gigabytes of music stored on my phone eating up all the precious space. But that's mostly a holdover from my previous phone, which had a 32 GB onboard memory limit and no SD card expansion slot. I guess now that I have a proper memory expandable phone and, and now that half terabyte microSD cards are relatively inexpensive, that's no longer a huge concern...

    Also, Rhythmbox can sync to it. Maybe other software too. So I don't even need iTunes to use it.

    • em2@lemmy.ml
      ·
      1 year ago

      I have one that's dead. I think I accidentally broke it by setting it on some desk piece that I had no idea was magnetic. Rip chunky buddy.

    • sooper_dooper_roofer [none/use name]
      ·
      1 year ago

      I think the clickwheel design is, in my view, the single best one-thumb no-looking-required input scheme for an MP3 player I think anyone has ever made. Plug it into, say, my car stereo AUX port and I can pick it up with a free hand to control volume, select tracks, and even navigate mostly by memory without having to look at the thing. I can just tell where I am based on the feel of the control. Infinitely better than a featureless flat slab of a touch screen that gives you no sensory feedback.

      can't most of these things be achieved easily by physical buttons too? of course everything is better than touch screen buttons