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Comment by justusthane | Hacker News Reader

This is really cool. It’s amazing how “realistic” the clickwheel feels—it instantly transported me back to actually using an iPod. Also, there’s something poetic about emulating the clickwheel on the interface that replaced it :)

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I still have my original iPods. The original and the mini chromatic ones. When I'm on the go and or in a gym and I need to play music, nothing beats a simple mp3 player. Don't want the bulk of the phone. Don't want to have to touch a phone screen and engage with it.

I'd rather just reach into my pocket and press buttons.

I think smartwatches fill that niche now - at least those models with physical buttons. I'm actually impressed by how ergonomic the music listening experience on my Garmin is.

I never thought I'd say this, but I actually agree. I have a Fossil Gen 5 that I use for the exact same purpose, and it works great with Bluetooth headphones.

I don’t like wearing a watch So for me the MP3 player is still great

What benefit do you get from the mp3 player over a phone? Typically the main reason is to avoid bouncing while running but most runners prefer to have a watch for fitness tracking.

Right, wearing an Apple Watch + AirPods is the modern iPod experience to me. I can leave my house without a smartphone and take a stroll or bike ride or skateboard etc with music. The Apple Watch crown provides that tactile feel missing from smartphones. I like how easy it is to turn up the volume by quickly rotating the crown up or down.

Do you have to have the watch with LTE, or does it actually cache music locally?

LTE but you can download music when on Wifi and keep it stored on the watch.

It can cache music locally – it does some guessing as to what you want by default, but you can also sync specific playlists. Current models have 32gB of storage.

you can but the issue is they limit the media storage to 8gb. :eyeroll. I can see why they'd want to leave some to the OS, but it really defeats half the purpose of 32 on a watch as is if limited to 8GB for media.

As far as I know, only apple music saves it locally but spotify and others can stream if you have LTE. I believe this is just a hold up from spotify and the apis are available though.

As of about a month ago, Spotify can download content to watch too.

I have this setup and it’s a great vision. Unfortunately I personally find it needless hamstringed:

1) the Watch works great for every single one of my smartphone needs, but you are required to pair it with an iPhone that has a phone plan…even if you keep the iPhone turned off 95% of the time.

2) the AirPods fall out of my head when I smile. I’ve tried the different sizings. For such an expensive gadget, I expect to be able to make them stay in my head without fear of losing them simply because I’m having a nice time.

3) people sometimes report that they can’t hear me very well through the AirPods even if I’m sitting still in a quiet room with no obstructions. This happens regardless of whether the pods are tethered to the Watch, computer, or iPhone.

#3 it sounds like something is wrong in your device chain. 80%+ of my family and friends use AirPods for personal, workout, and or business purposes and their experience is rather seamless. Reach out to Apple support.

For 2), something I didn’t realize till recently is that you can “twist” them towards your face to tighten the grip. Perhaps try that?

I found cheap yet decent earbuds from Aliexpress and a cheap 3.5mm bluetooth receiver that solves the earbuds falling out of your ears problem. Every time I hear about issues people have with AirPods I'm so glad I went with this solution, and spent a fraction of the money too. If I pop the bluetooth receiver off the 3.5mm jack, I can use it with my (growing) iPod classic collection. The only reason I even use bluetooth at all is because my iPhone demands it.

Can you reccomend decent earbuds from aliexpress? I bought some but they still had a strong chemical smell after I let them offgas for a week.

Anything from KZ. I’m personally using their ZSTs at the moment but the ZSN is probably the go-to

I got the KBEAR Lark Hybrid earbuds. Incredible price to performance ratio. They wrap up around your ears so nothing is getting them off your head except deliberately removing them. The Chinese have massively upped their quality game in recent years, it’s no longer cheap shite that takes a month to arrive.

That's too bad. I love my AirPods so much. I run with them, bike with them, work out with them, and I've never had one fall out (classic, not pro). Obviously one-size-fits-all doesn't always work out though.

I was debating getting a watch. Maybe I'll give this a try.

FWIW, if there’s one thing I love about wearing a non-smart watch is that it keeps me from doing all the other things my phone incites me to do (check messages etc) when all I want to know is the time. A bit like you use your MP3 player to, well, play MP3’s.

Airpods + iPhone/Apple Watch. No wires, nothing to put in your pockets when you're lifting and running. Who loads an MP3 player?

The square iPod Shuffle with the clip on the back was great for running! Still had a wire, but no need for pockets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod_Shuffle#/media/File:Apple...

I think I've got one somewhere. Weirdest thing about it was the cable, it used a USB 2 (4 pins) to TRRS cable for syncing with the computer.

Still use mine on an old one that accept the older iPod interface for music playing. Not all songs go into it though.

For the player I wonder whether I can trust it fir the access to my iphone account. Or Spotify.

+1 Would be super cool if this integrated with the Battery Status API for even more realism!

Looks like the spec is getting updated with more modern security and privacy practices.

https://www.w3.org/TR/battery-status/

"Sadly, this only works on Chrome Desktop" when clicking the sign in to Spotify on my iPhone. definitely doesn't have that "it just works feel" in that regard. However, driving the click wheel is fun. I did instinctively click on the buttons that would pop up in the menu by clicking them directly the first time rather than spinning the wheel to get to them. Just shows how much more powerful the touch screen is.

I think in terms of scrolling through the big lists, the wheel was a far superior scrolling device than touch scroll is.

I have to admit, this was first time I've considered trialing Apple Music after being a longtime Spotify customer.

Lack of browser support in a Spotify Web API providing free advertising for Apple Music. The irony!

What's the big deal? Just install our App. It's soooo much better in all the data we can take from you, er provide you.

Hmm, it works on firefox desktop on my end. Maybe they just doesn't support safari?

Agreed! And given the source code is available maybe someone could hack together a prototype of this Onion classic: https://youtu.be/9BnLbv6QYcA

OMG. Thanks for bringing back that Onion classic. The sentence suggestions are legendary Onion.

Is the click wheel "feel" experience only on iOS? I don't get any haptic feedback on Android

I don't feel the click haptic feedback on iOS with iPhone 12

No, no haptic feedback for me either. It would be interesting to try, but honestly it might make it feel more gimmicky if not done perfectly.

Depends on the phone, high-end phones (iPhone obviously, but also Samsung S XYZ, et al.) have quite good "vibration" these days, since it is produced by more sophisticated mechanism [1] than just rotating motor.

[1] https://www.ifixit.com/News/16768/apple-taptic-engine-haptic...

No vibration feedback on Android, something like navigator.vibrate(...) can be used for that [1]

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/v... or https://googlechrome.github.io/samples/vibration/

Part of what makes it feel so good is that it keeps tracking if your finger goes outside of the actual wheel. This mimics the fact that you could keep your finger in the physical wheel by feeling the edges

> transported me back

I felt the same way! It was 2003 again. Cool stuff. Thanks to the OP!

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