I can't believe no one I've seen has called out the secret game! Go to Settings>About and then hold the center button for 5 seconds. I used to play so much of this bricks game in college when procrastinating from studying in the library.
Digging into it just now, an important distinction I initially missed is that they worked on the original arcade cabinet (all game logic implemented directly in hardware), which predated the 2600 and its software version by several years (by which time they had already founded Apple).
I saw an interview where someone asked woz about getting screwed out of a lot of the Atari money It was apparently new information to Woz, and he simply deflated a little, and muttered "not again, Steve..."
Really is heartbreaking that the click wheel is such an incredible and satisfying user interface but technology has evolved such that we have no need for it anymore.
We do still need it. Any time to need to scroll through any extremely long list in order to find a single particular item, the scroll wheel beats the manual binary search of scrollscrollscroll... too far... scrollscrollscroll back... too far... etc.
I would, unironically, use a device that had that iPod interface as a music device until my dying day. Make it only able to stream from Apple Music, make me load up songs through USB -- I'll do it.
That's basically how Apple TV works and it drives me nuts.
And miss me with the "but you can use your iPhone", because that's exactly what is wrong with Apple products. I don't want an iPhone, and there is absolutely no technical reason to not have a better virtual keyboard or supporting non-Apple devices as remote controls.
I have a logitech mouse that allows you to unclick the scroll wheel so you can scroll at tremendous speed (the scroll wheel has a bearing). I highly recommend this both because it's surprisingly useful and because it's incredibly satisfying.
I’ve used G502 mice for a decade now and the scroll wheel is central to how good they are. The MX Master mouse also has this but instead of a mechanical clickclack it has a button that switches an electropermanent magnet or something to enable/disable the free spin mode. It’s witchcraft.
Once your music library gets to hundreds of artists and albums, scrolling through all that with a scroll wheel is so much slower than an interface where one can just type in a few characters and get the desired artist/album/song.
Just before Covid I got nostalgic for the iPod and got a used one and put in bigger storage and Rockbox, but it was precisely the cumbersomeness of the scrollwheel that caused me to give it up and go back to my phone.
We have evolved to iPhone dark pattern updating to suddenly starting Apple Music in my car bulldozing Spotify and me almost getting in a fucking car accident every time.
My car plays "Africa" by toto every time I plug in the iphone to charge. It was a trifling inconvenience, then over years it became rage inducing, and now it's reached all the way back around to funny.
It's not the phone deciding to do it, when the device connects the car is telling it to play. Check your infotainment settings to see if there's a way to turn it off.
Apple doesn't have an official way to prevent it, but I think you could do it with Shortcuts and an automation to pause music triggered by "When CarPlay is connected."
If it's tricky to get it to trigger at the exact time it starts playing, you could even do like:
- Store media volume to a variable
- Set media volume to 0
- Wait 3 seconds
- Stop playing
- Restore original media volume
Yep. My old Honda Fit did this way before CarPlay. I believe it’s a holdover from external mp3 devices using track numbers in their filenames.
It was always a stupid decision to start playing your music alphabetically, but it became a more stupid decision when music libraries were no longer carefully curated folders in the filesystem.
Mine was A-Punk by Vampire Weekend. Used to annoy me to no end, but it turned out it was a "feature" of the car stereo to just default to playing alphabetically. Buying a new car fixes that little issue. Easy!
Yes! "Aaron Burr, Sir" starts in Apple Music. "Hey, Siri shuffle liked songs on Spotify." Queue "Aaron Burr, Sir" again until I pick up my phone and tap Spotify. Make it stop.
That's a "feature" of the vehicle's infotainment system. Some of the vehicles I've driven run Music the moment I connect my phone. Others are more respectful and wait for me to tell them to play something.
The aftermarket CarPlay adapter I installed in our Toyota is in the latter group. When I climb into the car, the CarPlay UI pops up on the vehicle's screen, ready for me to ask it to do something. Until I do, it does nothing other than show the homescreen with icons on it. A Ford I rented would fire up Music the second I plugged my phone in.
You know that ring around the main button, that kind of functions like a D-pad with four arrows?
If you're paused while watching something, you can drag your finger clockwise or counter-clockwise around the ring to seek forwards or backwards. It's really nice, much finer-grained control than normal skipping forwards or backwards.
The wheel doesn't actually spin, but it also doesn't really need to.
I’ve never seen it work except in first party apps. YouTube, plex don’t support it, maybe Jellyfin does but I don’t remember. I’m betting it comes down to whether you use the built-in frameworks for video playback or bring your own.
Maybe.. but someone thought that this exact format is better for kids to listen to music / audio books / podcasts from, a device that doesnt need internet access, you download what you want and need. Some people also noted (I think it was this device havent tried it) you can open the device up and put in a new SD Card to increase capacity.
Its spiritual successor is the crown on the Apple Watch. I never swipe to scroll on the watch. It's way more fluid (and you get neat haptics) to twist the crown.
extremely ironic comment considering there has been a Renaissance of personal music players lately, including ones with click wheels. look on Amazon for all the Chinese made ones. there is absolutely still a desire, perhaps a growing one, for dedicated devices, as everyone grows wearier of phones
Also as phone bans start up in various schools there are often carveouts for mp3 players. A lot of summer camps too that have no-device policies allow non-internet-connected music players as well. The market both on the super low end and the high end is looking pretty strong. Hardest aspect, from my perspective, is gaining access to downloadable music when most consumption has moved to streaming.
I got myself a couple. A Mechen M30 and a FiiO M21. First one is pretty low-end in terms of interface and firmware capabilities, but both sound superb, and being able to listen music without a connection to somewhere and not interrupted by notifications.
I personally never gave up standalone players. My MD is still alive and kicking for example, but I find myself reaching for them more and more for proper music listening.
It's a modern iPod motherboard replacement that enables the device to have bluetooth, Wi-Fi, UI improvements, etc. Surprised it hasn't gotten more traction on HN
I am not sure it is necessarily people growing wearier of phones. It is kind of a mix of gen z's weird nostalgia for things they never grew up with and the proliferation of AI music. I have a hard time trusting random playlists on music services because I don't know if it is genuinely new music made by real people, or ai the platform is pushing so they can make more money. Either way I don't want to be part of that. I don't personally own one of these devices but my listening habits have changed quite a bit in the last year.
> gen z's weird nostalgia for things they never grew up
Plenty of older Gen Z grew up with iPods - the iPod touch didn't show up till they were 10 years old, and it took the smartphone another ~5 years to fully kill off that whole product category.
yeah, I grew up on my dad’s old iPod and BlackBerry up until high school; a lot of people in my peer group also were exposed to “older” tech by way of parents, siblings, etc.
I feel like it’d make for a great interface for a physical controller for smart lights/speakers. I’ve got a Hue Tap Dial with a physically spinning wheel, but the click wheel would be great instead.
I’m half tempted to buy an old iPod and attempt to hack something together…
My 2nd generation iPod stopped working last week. It had a spin wheel but its predecessor's actually spun.
The monochrome screen shows a folder icon with a warning sign. I haven't looked into it but I fear that something happened to the internal hard drive. It's one with spinning disks. It was truly a work of art, that device.
The HDD connector usually unseats slightly and it stops working. Pop it open with a credit card and reseat it. A more dangerous way that sometimes gets it working again is to wait for it not to be spinning and give the edge a good smack against palm of your hand. This usually works to reset it the tiny bit it needs…
I’m sorry to hear that your iPod might be bricked. I haven’t worked on an iPod gen2 personally, but I repaired an iPod mini. The interface for the small hard drive in that is the same as compact flash, so it’s very easy to replace the storage with something more physically durable. Or at least it is easy to find the replacement part - I haven’t tried the whole process on your iPod.
Honestly I'm amazed yours lasted this long. I had a fourth-gen 40GB iPod back in The Day and it was easily the least-reliable Apple product I ever owned due to that internal 1.8" HDD. Mine was replaced five times under AppleCare.
When that eventually ran out and it died again (in 2009 IIRC), I swapped in a CompactFlash card using a cheap adapter from DealExtreme. Once you do that or an SD card mod (more popular these days), have iTunes restore the partitioning scheme and OS and it'll be good to go.
The mechanical drive has probably failed. If you put the iPod in a freezer bag and get it very cold, it may spin up long enough for you to make a backup. But make sure it is in a freezer bag or something otherwise airtight or the condensation will brick it worse. The cold shrinks the metal enough to mitigate the initial friction of the drive spinning up.
From there, you can mod it to work from a micro SD card.
If you're a trackball person, a lot of trackballs have a scroll ring that's similar to a click wheel. The Ploopy A+ has two discrete scroll wheels: https://ploopy.co/aplus/
I'm pretty partial to the Kensington Slimblade though. You scroll by twisting the ball itself - very satisfying once you figure out the technique. I hate the aesthetics (it looks kind of tacky) and the client software (bloated and buggy) but it's the only trackball I know of with this feature and I like it enough to put up with the issues. https://www.kensington.com/p/products/electronic-control-sol...
The haptic trackpads on a Steam Controller use the same circling motion to perform scroll wheel actions, and the haptic feedback is superb at selling the effect both audibly and from the feeling on your thumb.
Same with a lot of things. A synchromesh gearbox comes to mind. There's definitely something bittersweet about technology becoming obsolete and redundant.
There appears to be different URLs for different territories. For anyone curious, I've fed a few of them into an agent and they are largely consistent.
Huh! Alright, that explains why this damned thing had so much music from my own Apple Music library yet was missing so much more! I’m mildly disappointed that it doesn’t just load a user’s Apple Music library.
It's really cute. I wonder if we'll see a significant market for plain MP3 players with the whole digital detox fad lining up with the nostalgia. There's already a lot of people buying refurb and bluetooth-modded modded ipod classics.
It's been happening, but just like all fads, especially nostalgia driven ones, it'll die soon. Every few years a new batch of people enter their higher earning years where they have more disposable income (mid to late 20s for some, early 30s for some, late 30s for others, etc) and nostalgia hits and they go crazy for a piece of their childhood or adolescence or their crazy 20s. If enough of said batch line up, you get a phenomena or a fad.
The sudden growth rate in sales derive some people to capitalize on it. Mostly either Chinese manufacturers or drop shippers though sometimes big names get swept up in the frenzy too. Then the market is flooded and it's not cool or unique anymore, or the target audience is saturated and then it's forgotten. I suspect something similar is happening now with screenless fitness trackers right now (even though I bought one because I hate smartwatches but want a fitness tracker)
It's especially funny seeing people who are into "MP3 players for digital detox" speak on podcasts or online. "I love that it's not a phone. I just wish it had <insert random ass app(s)> so I can take it on walks and leave my phone behind" then those random apps are different per person. It's really funny.
Similar thing with the screenless fitness trackers I mentioned. On every single review or discussion board for them, you will find people complaining that a screenless fitness tracker is, in fact, screenless and that they wish it just had a small screen for their important notifications or if it can answer calls or get phone notifications or connect to LTE.
Music listening has become so atomized and private, with the vast majority of people listening through earbuds and unaware of even what close friends are listening to. Under these modern circumstances, I don't think that any choice of product around music listening serves as a strong social signal any more, except perhaps among a few middle-aged men in a few countries.
Not entirely related to the topic, but there is also this weird thing where if you're not on your social network's choice of music streaming service you'd feel left out. I find it a bit amusing. My friend group are all on Spotify (which I assume most people are) and when someone shares a playlist they share a Spotify link. I selfhost my music, so I have my own scripts to extract the playlist and fetch the songs and add them to my server. But I suspect it would also be a problem for others who might be using a different service like Apple Music or something.
I know someone in my group who moved from Apple Music to Spotify because everyone else was using Spotify and she didn't wanna feel left out.
I also can't really share playlists with them, which is fine since I only listen to the same 1,700 tracks from the 90s or early 2000s anyway.
Also for the troops. Have some friends that cannot bring devices that emit RF / BT on base or ships during certain operations and exercises.
It's extremely hard to find a new production MP3/FLAC player with upgradable storage that don't suck for one reason or another. Plenty of perfect new ones, but they will have onboard BT or Wifi still.
There's a bunch of options from Chinese companies as well as from more traditional companies (like Sony), but the majority run Android (some skinned to be "simple", some basically like the Android counterpart to an iPod Touch) and are built with super overspecced hardware which kinda defeats the point in my opinion.
Part of the appeal of the iPod is that it only had just as much hardware and software as it needed and was simple, which lends to its extreme mod potential that's fueling its continuing popularity today. A good modern iPod analogue needs to deliver on those fronts, too.
My friend's grade-school kid gets exuberantly excited by CRTs and VCRs, and I know a few Gen-Z's with record collections. Maybe there's truth to the Dennis Duffy joke on 30 Rock: "technology is cyclical" :)
I think I asked in HN last year if anything was happening in this space now that the click wheel patent expired. I ended up buying a $50 Chinese knockoff for one of my kids. It...feels like a $50 knockoff, haha.
Feels retro, but still a ~decade newer than when this was state of the art. Some reasonably obscure artists. Thrice and Thursday released a split EP recorded in the Apple stores: I see Thursday but not Thrice here.
Thrice still makes music. Thursday has been quiet for more than a decade.
Oh, I thought it was more about the first playlist, which is indeed commercials. The rest seemed like the regular top hits. Always wondered how their creative team picked those bands...
Reading this as I sync music from iTunes/Apple Music to my iPod. Going on 20 years of service life (it's been rebuilt by a pro to have USB-C and Bluetooth, and a new battery) and still my library is intact and syncing works the same. Let's see how long it'll last :)
The first time I tried my friend's iPod I couldn't figure out how to turn it off. Holding down the Play/Pause button is not discoverable at all but once you knew it was perfect. Your thumb never had to leave the wheel.
Somehow apple does not want users to turn off their devices. They removed the “hold the lock button long to show the shutdown slider” and buried it deep into the settings as well…
Very disappointing that the Music app on iOS doesn’t render the page. Would have been super cool to scroll in the app with some haptic feedback along with the click sound. I can understand why it won’t be there as you can’t directly navigate to a pre-determined page, but instead they force you to portal through their search button.
Even still, I’m a little sad knowing what could have been! :(
The ordering of the artists is interesting. Unlike most systems, 2Pac and 50 Cent are sorted right at the end. 50 Cent actually comes after 8Ball & MJG so it's a bit like `sort -n` but with numbers to the end. Is this an Apple thing?
It is an almost perfect replica of the iPod, one of the most generation-defining products ever released. We've grown out of these as a society, but I'd say that's something special.
There's not a way to give evidence for this kind of stuff but that's feeling it gave me too. I suspect a lot of superfluous stuff implemented in recent software is implemented by an agent. I haven't formed a concrete opinion on how I feel about it though.
The progress bar are vectors and not pixelated like they should be. A pretty obvious detail they should not have missed, but I understand how that could be harder to implement.
woz and jobs did work on breakout at atari
Digging into it just now, an important distinction I initially missed is that they worked on the original arcade cabinet (all game logic implemented directly in hardware), which predated the 2600 and its software version by several years (by which time they had already founded Apple).
It's literally one of the "big prick" items of Job's history, along with disowning his own child.
It was heartbreaking.
Though it's cute that it's the 404 page, you can get to the page directly via https://music.apple.com/us/ipod.
I would, unironically, use a device that had that iPod interface as a music device until my dying day. Make it only able to stream from Apple Music, make me load up songs through USB -- I'll do it.
And miss me with the "but you can use your iPhone", because that's exactly what is wrong with Apple products. I don't want an iPhone, and there is absolutely no technical reason to not have a better virtual keyboard or supporting non-Apple devices as remote controls.
Just before Covid I got nostalgic for the iPod and got a used one and put in bigger storage and Rockbox, but it was precisely the cumbersomeness of the scrollwheel that caused me to give it up and go back to my phone.
Apple doesn't have an official way to prevent it, but I think you could do it with Shortcuts and an automation to pause music triggered by "When CarPlay is connected."
If it's tricky to get it to trigger at the exact time it starts playing, you could even do like:
It was always a stupid decision to start playing your music alphabetically, but it became a more stupid decision when music libraries were no longer carefully curated folders in the filesystem.
The aftermarket CarPlay adapter I installed in our Toyota is in the latter group. When I climb into the car, the CarPlay UI pops up on the vehicle's screen, ready for me to ask it to do something. Until I do, it does nothing other than show the homescreen with icons on it. A Ford I rented would fire up Music the second I plugged my phone in.
It is 9 minutes of silence so that U2 album you never asked for doesn’t start playing at the most dangerous part of the journey.
You know that ring around the main button, that kind of functions like a D-pad with four arrows?
If you're paused while watching something, you can drag your finger clockwise or counter-clockwise around the ring to seek forwards or backwards. It's really nice, much finer-grained control than normal skipping forwards or backwards.
The wheel doesn't actually spin, but it also doesn't really need to.
On a roadtrip I doubt this stops playing music…
https://storybutton.com/products/storybutton-one
Yt-dlp for the win
Somehow, with all the world's music a tap away I listen to far fewer albums now. I loved preparing my mp3 players, like packing a bag for a trip.
I personally never gave up standalone players. My MD is still alive and kicking for example, but I find myself reaching for them more and more for proper music listening.
It's a modern iPod motherboard replacement that enables the device to have bluetooth, Wi-Fi, UI improvements, etc. Surprised it hasn't gotten more traction on HN
Plenty of older Gen Z grew up with iPods - the iPod touch didn't show up till they were 10 years old, and it took the smartphone another ~5 years to fully kill off that whole product category.
In America. My country, and 90% of the world, was noticeably behind, and "mp3 players" reigned.
I’m half tempted to buy an old iPod and attempt to hack something together…
The monochrome screen shows a folder icon with a warning sign. I haven't looked into it but I fear that something happened to the internal hard drive. It's one with spinning disks. It was truly a work of art, that device.
When that eventually ran out and it died again (in 2009 IIRC), I swapped in a CompactFlash card using a cheap adapter from DealExtreme. Once you do that or an SD card mod (more popular these days), have iTunes restore the partitioning scheme and OS and it'll be good to go.
From there, you can mod it to work from a micro SD card.
I'm pretty partial to the Kensington Slimblade though. You scroll by twisting the ball itself - very satisfying once you figure out the technique. I hate the aesthetics (it looks kind of tacky) and the client software (bloated and buggy) but it's the only trackball I know of with this feature and I like it enough to put up with the issues. https://www.kensington.com/p/products/electronic-control-sol...
So long as it does effect the perceived thinness at the edges, I suppose.
https://music.apple.com/includes/ipod/data/us/en-US.json
US 1,029 Songs 682 Artists 39 Unique tracks
GB 1,156 Songs 727 Artists 12 Unique tracks
FR 1,217 Songs 797 Artists 132 Unique tracks
DE 1,062 Songs 709 Artists 62 Unique tracks
ES 1,155 Songs 724 Artists 7 Unique tracks
The sudden growth rate in sales derive some people to capitalize on it. Mostly either Chinese manufacturers or drop shippers though sometimes big names get swept up in the frenzy too. Then the market is flooded and it's not cool or unique anymore, or the target audience is saturated and then it's forgotten. I suspect something similar is happening now with screenless fitness trackers right now (even though I bought one because I hate smartwatches but want a fitness tracker)
It's especially funny seeing people who are into "MP3 players for digital detox" speak on podcasts or online. "I love that it's not a phone. I just wish it had <insert random ass app(s)> so I can take it on walks and leave my phone behind" then those random apps are different per person. It's really funny.
Similar thing with the screenless fitness trackers I mentioned. On every single review or discussion board for them, you will find people complaining that a screenless fitness tracker is, in fact, screenless and that they wish it just had a small screen for their important notifications or if it can answer calls or get phone notifications or connect to LTE.
Music is cheaper than it's ever been for the consumer and segregation between genres or bands is non-existent on music streaming.
It's hard to socially signal when everyone can afford to stream and the search bar can show you Sabrina Carpenter just as easily as RYM or /mu/core.
However , you can socially signal if you spend money on an iPod, DAP, better headphones, physical media etc.
I know someone in my group who moved from Apple Music to Spotify because everyone else was using Spotify and she didn't wanna feel left out.
I also can't really share playlists with them, which is fine since I only listen to the same 1,700 tracks from the 90s or early 2000s anyway.
who am I socially signaling to if I have physical media in my basement? my wife?
I do think this take is lukewarm.
It's extremely hard to find a new production MP3/FLAC player with upgradable storage that don't suck for one reason or another. Plenty of perfect new ones, but they will have onboard BT or Wifi still.
Part of the appeal of the iPod is that it only had just as much hardware and software as it needed and was simple, which lends to its extreme mod potential that's fueling its continuing popularity today. A good modern iPod analogue needs to deliver on those fronts, too.
https://certainthings.studio/sprout
Pretty cool in other browsers, though.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_of_Innocence_(U2_album)#...
No explicit filter either!
The hip-hop playlist is 1000%; instant throwback to my 2000s living in Greater NYC
Spotify just works on android but with apple everything feels intentionally slow.
Feels retro, but still a ~decade newer than when this was state of the art. Some reasonably obscure artists. Thrice and Thursday released a split EP recorded in the Apple stores: I see Thursday but not Thrice here.
Thrice still makes music. Thursday has been quiet for more than a decade.
[0] https://music.apple.com/includes/ipod/data/us/en-US.json
https://www.crowdsupply.com/certain-things/sprout-pi-mainboa...
Im not affiliated with this project
Sad!
Ipod seems pretty cool. I never owned one, kind of want to get a modded one or a newer knock off
damn what a pleasurable experience of using a click wheel.
Even still, I’m a little sad knowing what could have been! :(
Who the fuck cares.