Apple Officially Obsoletes Last iPod Nano Model | Hacker News Reader

Apple Officially Obsoletes Last iPod Nano Model

macrumors.com

54 pointsingve29 comments

I absolutely loved the iPod nano for my kids. It lets me give them easy access to an iTunes library in their rooms without worrying about other apps or messing with anything else. Even the youngest (3 years old) could figure out how to skip to the next track or start/stop the music to the Bluetooth-paired speaker in their room. I even bought an extra Nano for when this one dies in the hope that that gives me enough time until they’re old enough to handle a “full” iPod touch.

I liked the little bastard. I wish Apple still made them. I don't carry a phone when running. A small music player would be nice.

Rios were great for their time too.

Apple Watch and Bluetooth headphones works nicely. Also does distance tracking etc.

Doesn’t work so well for water sports though :(

I use mine for kitesurfing...gotta order a couple more to have spares now

It does. Water sports are supported since last years watch 5 release.

And trades out a $100 device for what $1000 worth of gadgets?

Apple Watch SE: $279 AirPods: $159 Total: $438

I’m sure there are cheaper headphone options available. You might already own some, even.

The Apple Watch Series 3 costs the same as an iPod Nano when it was new. They're literally directly comparable in price.

My iPod nano died a long while back. I bought a watch series 3 from Apple because I didn’t need the features of the newer models.

I kept my wired Sennheiser running headphones and bought a Bluetooth adapter with inbuilt battery that clips to their headband.

Considering how much these gadgets are helping me with health and fitness I’d say they are a bargain.

Exactly!

If you have your own local songs, you can easily load playlists/albums/etc onto an Apple Watch just like you could with an iPod. I've found it's really useful for listening to music while focusing on a task.

if you have a cellular watch then you can just stream from Apple Music!

That “complicate everything” attitude involving several extra items of hardware (Apple Watch, AirPods, and of course an iPhone to configure the watch) and at least a couple services (phone provider, Apple Music or Spotify) is frankly distressing.

I have all of the above (iPhone 11 Pro, Apple Watch 6, AirPods Pro) and yet I still rely on my colour-coded last-generation iPod Shuffles when I want to just pop in a pair of earphones and have some favourite tunes that suit whatever mood I’m in (or want to put myself into). Why on earth should one have to spend so much money to achieve the same result (and forgo the elegance of simplicity in the process)?

You can buy a cheap MP3 player for $5 as long as you don’t mind loading it up manually.

To each their own way to solve the problem, but I do not consider a handful of color-coded Shuffles to be less complicated than playlists on a single device. Especially when one goes to grab that black Emo Shuffle only to find that you forgot to charge it. How apropos.

I don't know about you, but my AirPods have been a total nightmare. Routinely won't wake up, routinely don't charge; often when I go for a run one of them is dead or at 10% charge. I now have a routine where I insert/remove/insert/remove/insert/remove and watch the led to make sure it blinks -- it makes it better, but it's not foolproof.

And don't get me started on the iWatch, it crashes at the same point on my run about 50% of the time. Now when I say same point, I mean same geographical location. Doesn't matter if I run directly there (it's about 1 mile from home), or if I do a 5 mile loop first. Always roughly the same place (within 200 yards). I should go and look up the coordinates, maybe there's something odd about the numbers.

Anyway, switched back to iPhone, wired earphones and armband holder -- much better (and now I can take pictures of the woods when I see something interesting!).

I don't know if this applies to you, but I've purchased multiple pairs of airpods and airpods pro (only ever lost one bud) and I've gotten 1 very professional counterfeit (sold at a major US retailer, looked perfect) and one bad set from the factory. Both had the problems you are mentioning - terrible battery life, terrible pairing and connection.

I was able to return both of them (convincing the retailer that I had not swapped out a counterfeit set of airpods and was trying to return them was tricky), no problems anymore.

Mine were a gift, so I don't know where they came from. You might be on to something, thanks!

I loved my iPod nano back in the first and second generation. But I always carry my phone with me for safety reasons, and it just turns out to be redundant.

Still... I keep thinking that I'd like to get into multi-day hikes, and when I do it would be nice to have a dedicated player that lasted for days without being recharged.

I still use my iPod for exactly this. Not so much that it’ll stay charged for days, but that I can listen to podcasts & books for days without discharging my phone.

I was so sad when my iPod Classic died honestly. The iPod Nano was my first iPod, I miss when it looked similar in style to the Classic. It's a shame cause they were highly reliable devices as long as they didn't die out of course, but you would rarely run into issues with them.

The iPod Nano was the first iPod I could convince my mom to buy me because it was cheaper.

A sad day for portable music players. I got a used last gen for my son last year and the UI is light years ahead of any other player. I was pleasantly surprised how many iOS like features they included - voiceover, double and triple click shortcuts for the home and side buttons, many of the iOS touch gestures are there as well.

There's still a fairly large stock of iPods being fixed up and traded around on eBay, plus Apple still supports every iPod at least up to Catalina, so I've got another few years at least.

I've been using a 5th generation iPod Video (2006!) and and an HD598 to sit down and listen to an album when I want to.

A few years ago it failed, and I popped in a new battery and replaced the spinning hard drive with a flash card. I'll have a hard time giving this guy up when I can no longer find parts.

If you're into this kind of thing, check out https://youtube.com/dankpods

This one always looked odd to me, the way the inner radius of the bevel is rounded, but the outer radius is square. Like they duct taped a picture of one iPod model onto a different one.

The iPod Nano in our house is my old iPhone 4. Not that anyone actually uses it regularly except me a few times a year when I want music while I poke around the garden/yard.

I still use my circa 2007 8GB nano regularly. The battery isn't great anymore though, but I think there's still the possibility to get replacements (?)

Looks like ifixit gives the 3rd Gen Nano Battery Replacement a “very difficult”. Anecdotally, as a person not versed in repair, I performed a laptop battery replacement ifixit deemed difficult and it was my upper limit

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPod+Nano+3rd+Generation+Batter...

still using my 7th almost every day, the 4th with the "wheel" was the best though

Seeing this made me remember the iPod Shuffle. That was also a nice product.

I have several last-generation iPod Shuffles. Depending on the colour, I’ve loaded them up with various songs that match my mood (Red for Romantic, Blue for Sad, Black for Darkwave, Gold for Retro eighties/nineties, & cetera) and I’ve occasionally dropped one into my girlfriend’s bag as one used to do with mix-tapes, particularly when she was heading off on a long trip of some kind.

It’s such a sad shame that they killed them off (and insist on the music-as-a-service model rather than the prior music-as-a-product or the even earlier pre-iTunes Rip/Mix/Burn).

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