RIP iPod Classic

[scipioafricanus]

I have had 3 iPods (First Gen, Third, and Classic). My 160 Gig classic has been my constant companion at work, driving, etc, and it will remain until one day it works no more. But Apple is moving on.

http://www.wired.com/2014/09/rip-ipod/

SA

[Jericho941]

Steve Jobs popularized technology that was already in production and marketed under less-recognizable names than Apple. Holy. Shit.

Fuck iPods.

[Greg]

I have an original Shuffle that I got as a gift. It's a cute gadget. ITunes sucks rancid goat ass.

And yes, I do get tired of the sad parochial ignorance that lets companies like Apple claim to have invented things.

[Aesop]

So, having decimated the music industry*, what will they blow up next?






*(Let's be fair, the greedy pigs running things had it coming, but the tech and the piracy the new tech winked at also slaughtered the system that brought bands up. So now your choices are either octogenarian "rockers" more in need of Depends and Poligrip than roadies, or garage bands who sound like...garage bands. Forever. Could I please have vinyl, and the quality of '70s and 80s rock bands again? I'll pay extra if necessary. Word processing programs haven't given us a world of Shakespeares, and being your own record company via tech hasn't given us 1/100th the talent that used to play somewhere all over L.A., Boston, S.F., Chicago, or NYFC on any given Saturday night. And it never will again, either.
"But now I don't have to buy a whole album for one song!" Fuck you, you tightwad pussy. When you go to a concert, do you only get a ticket for one song? Do you only read classic literature for one line? {My bad, you don't read at all, you wait for the cartoon version.} Buying the whole album exposed you to music you wouldn't have heard. Including any number of incredible B sides off of singles that became monster hits in their own right, because someone took a chance, and flipped the platter over one day. It gave the artists breathing room to try something new, so you could get "Pet Sounds" or "Sgt. Pepper" or whatever. Contracts meant an artist could lose his mind, screw up his life, put out a POS album, and still have a shot to make a comeback next time, which is how you got all those acts that are still touring 30-40-50 years later. Now, everyone's nothing but a one-hit-wonder, the artistic equivalent of the Hot Pocket.
Don't even get me started on how much unbelievable music has turned into the digital equivalent of Amelia Earhardt, because the band had its moment in the sun at the back end of vinyl, but without enough legs to become an iTune, and so both sides dropped them into limbo, as if they'd never been, unless you haunt used record and CD stores and stalk finds on Amazon and eBay like Captain Ahab trying to find that missing bit of reality, pursuing it to the ends of the cyber-earth (you conscienceless music-hating soulless technophile fucks!).

TV is the same story. 157 channels, and nothing on, (yet I still have to pay for Oxygen and the Korean Game Show Channel?!), like expanding the NBA to 500 teams, and then wondering why they all suck. More and more being produced by less and less, and the pitifully small amount of talent trying to find anyone with enough money to get something decent made, and failing, or giving up. 23 talent-search reality shows, every CSI including CSI:Bumfuck Egypt Library Fine Unit, but no channels that show actual music videos ever, for any reason, and no room for Firefly. There ought to be a happy medium between three networks in lockstep, and so many channels that they all go content-free, and show infomercials at 2AM. In lockstep. Because at the end of the day, all those channels are owned by...wait for it...about three networks.

Fuck Apple, up the ass, with a chainsaw, for their part in that.)[/rant]

Okay, all better now.

[PawPaw]

Never owned one. Won't miss it. I get my music the old-fashioned way, by pirating it.

[Kommander]

Never owned one. Won't miss it. I get my music the old-fashioned way, by pirating it.

100 internets for you good sir.

[BDK]

Eh, the money in music, for the bands, was always in shows.

I admit, production quality has collapsed, but I think that's more about the loudness war than anything else - I have older CDs which sound much better than the more recent re-releases.