Will September Be The End For The iPod Classic?

[Nergol]

Yeah, yeah - I know people have been saying this for the last couple of years. But this time I think it's way more likely. The reason? The new dock connector, which by now has been so strongly suggested by so many sources that it's way more than just a rumor.

The thing is, there's no way in hell that Apple would keep just one device around with the old 30-pin connector. That's just not how Apple rolls - if they're going to commit to that drastic a change in their product line, they're going to go all the way with it. This means that Apple has two choices - redesign the Classic, or drop it. They've kept it in production for five years with the same design, likely because there was no R&D cost involved in churning them out, they had large stocks of parts, and support for it was cheap. That won't be the case if they have to redesign it. And considering the declining sales numbers for non-Touch iPods, it just may not be worth it for Apple to put in even the effort even to do the minimal redesign work involved in just putting out basically the same Classic with the new dock connector.

So what do you all think? Will we see the same Classic, the same Classic but with the new dock connector, a totally redesigned Classic, or will September be the end of the road?

[gbeenie]

I suspect the iPod Touch would sell better if they weren't so damn pricey for what you get. The Classic offered more storage and better performance with each successive model; the Touch has been nowhere near as aggressive in this regard.

[Nergol]

Part of the problem - and of the reason why the iPod Classic hasn't been updated in five years - is that, in all honesty, the click-wheel iPods do what they do about as well as any device ever could. There really just isn't a whole lot of room for improvement in them - something that can happen when you have smart people designing a relatively simple, single-purpose device (as opposed to the pocket computers of the iOS line).

For example, I still have the second-generation mini I bought the week they debuted in 2005. I've put in a couple of new batteries over the years and replaced the hard drive with a 32GB CF card, but since I don't watch video or look at photos on my iPod, the seven-year-old mini still does everything I need it to do. There isn't a single thing that a brand new digital media player could do that would be an improvement over my mini as far as I'm concerned. Not even capacity, really - 32GB is more than adequate for me, and probably for the vast majority of people. I doubt most people really need more than 20GB, which is a capacity that iPods reached nine years ago. And even for people who do want to watch video, the video iPods they bought starting in 2005 work just fine.

The thing is, I think we're reaching a point where just about everyone who wants a simple, clickwheel iPod has got one, and has very little reason to replace the one they have with a new one. The market is saturated with devices that really aren't going to go obsolete, and thus a once-booming market for these devices is now in serious decline.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Is anyone still interested in the classic?  I'd say it's still too big for carrying around, I stopped using my 5th gen classic when I got a 2nd gen 2GB Nano, that didn't have quite enough space, the 5th gen 8GB Nano I have now is the perfect size/shape and capacity.  I think they went too small with the current Nano design.

Don't use my iPod touch as a mobile device anymore since I got my Kindle Fire, have pretty much just turned the touch into an internet radio at home by hooking it up to a cheap dock and some computer speakers.

[Nergol]

DJs use iPod Classics to carry the insane amount of music (and probably high-quality 320k music at that) they need to carry with them. For most other people, 160GB is overkill - very few people have that much music.

I owned a 16GB 5th gen nano for a few years. It may be the best clickwheel iPod they ever made. I ended up giving it away to an economically disadvantaged friend when I got my iPhone, and as much as he appreciated it, I kind of miss it.

I just dragged my old iPod mini out of a drawer, replaced the broken hard drive with a 32GB Compact Flash card, and put it back in service, though I did so more than anything because I may find myself in India for three weeks a few months hence, and would rather not risk carrying around my expensive iPhone in a third world country notorious for having large numbers of pickpockets. If my mini disappears during the trip, well, all I really lost was my $40 investment in the CF card. 32GB should be enough space for three weeks worth of audio, especially since I mostly listen to podcasts and audiobooks instead of music.

(Gromit), if you ever decide you'd like to trade that dust-gathering old 5th gen Classic for, uhm... a huge stack of DVDs, or... whatever else I can dig up around here... let me know. I love fixing up old tech, and every device gets an appreciative home.

[k1]

I have a 160GB classic and it's completely full.  However I haven't used it since I was laid off from my old desk job.

When I was at a desk for 9 hours a day I LOVED having the option of listening to just about whatever I wanted from my music library.  Now that my listening is cut down to maybe 30-40 minutes at a time on a good day I just use my iPhone.

[Bob]

I use my iPod on a bose-ipod speaker set in the kitchen.   I mostly use my ipod to have all my Rifftrax/iRiff mp3s on so I can watch their movies with the sound going through the ipod.

I use my iphone and ipad for everything else.

[Thrifty]

Is anyone still interested in the classic?  I'd say it's still too big for carrying around, I stopped using my 5th gen classic when I got a 2nd gen 2GB Nano, that didn't have quite enough space, the 5th gen 8GB Nano I have now is the perfect size/shape and capacity.  I think they went too small with the current Nano design.

For the capacity, yeah.  Too big?  The thing weighs like 5 ounces and is half the size of a deck of playing cards.  My Ipod classic broke and I replaced it with an 8 Gb Sansa Clip MP3 player.  The Sansa works okay, but I hate that I had to leave out a bunch of my music library.