iPods now considered vintage tech– so of course sold out at Urban Outfitters

From 1965–Present, the world is in color. The tone shifts a bit, but it's all in color.

1900–1964: Black and white. The world was actually black and white. Sometimes people moved around at a weird frame-rate :)

1800–1899: Color, but very much sepia toned. The whole world was slightly dirty and brownish, but the sky was still blue.

Big Bang–1799: Color, no sepia or nothing.

Of course this is all due to photography and movies. The general lack of both of those before the 20th Century (yeah, I know photography goes back further, but just barely. It wasn't widespread) means whatever images I get from that time period come from paintings and illustrations and written accounts. The sepia I perceive from the 1800s is basically thinking of them in terms of the railroads, westward expansion, etc.

So the result is that when I think about the Roman Empire—when was the last time you thought of that?—I see a richly-colored world like the one we have today. But when I think about WWII, it's all black and white. And the Civil War occurred in a vast, dusty, brownish field.

Depending on the device you use, you can squeeze out > 40h of pure listening time.

> Music devices are like cameras, the best one is always the one you actually have with you.

Hehe, nice comparison. But the iPod is not about having the BEST sound quality. It's more about being decent enough in every feature it has. Pretty sure iPods can't compete with the Hi-Res DAPs like Fiio M11 Plus, Astell&Kern, iBasso and others in terms of sound quality. But the user experience may still be better, depending on your personal taste.

I've trialled mSATA, SDXC and Compact Flash.

16 hours is easily achievable using CF and a "fat" back that fits a 1900mah battery. Rockbox provides a plugin called Battery Bench that allows you to benchmark how long you can continuously listen to music for.

Having recently switched from mSATA to SDXC I am yet to run a benchmark for SD. From recent usage I would guess 12hrs is fairly easily achievable.

EDIT: bwoodward has benched 60hrs of playback with a 5th gen Video and SDXC below.

I successfully used the 2200mAh batteries from "thepartguru" on iPod classics with iFlash Quad. The advantage over the 3000mah ones is, that it still fits with a thin backplate.

You should also be aware, that putting more than 256GB into the device is considered as "unstable" depending on the content you use. Having more than 50000 tracks may lead to unexpected behaviour (random reboots, showing the wrong covers for items, etc.). Technically iFlash Quad supports up to 4TB microSD space, but in practise it just does not make any sense. I would not use more than 512GB - my most stable experience was 256GB.

The reboot loops are extra nasty, because once they happen, they do at random days of a week and if you don't use your iPod every day it fries your 2200mah battery after a few days of reboot loops... expensive experience ;)

This is actually one of the things that makes me excited for AR (pending workable haptics). So many proofs-of-concept are just floating screens; what about functional digital fascimiles of our old gadgets? What about new ones with wild designs? What about modding the old, physical devices themselves to function as interfaces?

In the meantime, it would be nice if this sudden resurgence of interest in older gadgets makes it easier to rehabilitate and maintain them.

Now we have a single device that solves all three and more (e.g., biometrics) in albeit a least common denominator sorta way. A single form can't expect to complete with specialists.

I prefer a crap device that I use for comms (phone and SMS), and a second device with a better camera and more storage for media that only connects via wifi. There are plenty of instances I want a camera and/or music (often without even wifi) but not the temptation of being full connected.