Most of us listen to music using an app on our phones.
The iPod was the opposite.
Offline, finite, totally focussed, and designed to do one thing really well.
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And I want one.
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So, why buy an old, used click-wheel iPod in 2021?
The answer lies with tapes and personal stereos (aka the Walkman).
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I really dont like the music app on my iPhone.
I tried switching back to tape for a while partly because its just so much fun.
But I found that I got way too hung up on making new tapes.
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When cassettes were the only portable way to listen to music, you either bought or recorded everything.
Now, with blank tapes costing way more, I found myself debating what music I wanted to record.
Would I listen to this album enough, etc.?
The classic iPod has much of the appeal of the Walkman.
Its a dedicated rig.
You just do it.
Another downside is that you have to use Apples old 30-pin dock connector to charge it.
Luckily, I still have a bunch of these in a drawer.
The Options
Next up was deciding which model to buy.
There are two overall options.
Some might like the iPod mini, but I prefer the nano as its smaller and has more storage.
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For nostalgia value, its hard to beat the originals with their mono LCD screens.
The original has physical clicky buttons around the wheel.
The minis innovation was to make the wheel clicky, so you could spin and press.
The iPod nano has one significant advantage over the bigger models.
It has an SSD instead of a spinning internal hard drive.
On the other hand, the hard drives were a lot bigger.
The iPod Classic, Apples final old-style iPod model, packed up to 160GB.
In the end, the iPod Classic looks like the best deal.
