Touching the back wall of the Apple store

+1 for the mention of Zune. I started with a Zune, a bright green and brown one, then went to iPods. Like the author and their first Walmart MP3 player, my first MP3 player, my Zune, left a much bigger impression on me than all of my later iPods. I think there's an alternate history where Zune, with all of its weird personalization and oddness, won out over iPod's sleek luxury. In some ways I think that that alternate reality might have been a bit more fun.

iPods got out of the way and could be used in your pocket

I got a Zune and immediately realized MS had no idea why people liked the iPod

Different folks like different things, but I don't think a big menu of lowercase text is more fun than the iPod in any of its variations

That's reasonable. iPod was probably a better product overall, but I think Zune had more character. In Starcraft terms, I'd say that iPod was the pure Protoss and Zune was the primal Zerg. I guess I'd rather live on a Protoss world, but you can't deny that it'd be interesting to visit a Zerg one.

Great analogy! I still use my iPod, because for whatever reason the OG battery hasn't died even though it is a FireWire model. It also, shockingly, sounds WAY better with any pair of decent headphones than any of my AirPods including the Max.

Not a fair comparison since a wire will always have more bandwidth for fidelity, but the difference in listening experience on an old iPod vs a modern iPhone is so shocking I find that modern iPhone listening is like diet soda and is somewhat unfulfilling (I have Apple Lossless turned on, but the sound chip + low power of modern headphones + no wired connection... loses something)

I don't mean in a "vinyl is better" sense... I mean, everyone I've demo'd this to has looked at me with big eyes when they put the iPod on and listen to the same song vs. the same headphones plugged into a modern phone. It's weird, especially since the iPods of this era can't do anything close to Lossless... they're 160-192k AACs so the limited RAM cache can play a full song without pausing on an old iPod.

The early iPods had _really good_ DACs. Do some reading up on on them.

Still do. The $10 USB-C dongle is better than many audiophile DACs. After all, it has a bigger R&D budget than the entire industry.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/r...

The trick here is that people just think whichever one is loudest sounds best. The iPod might be able to drive high-impedance headphones better than a phone too, since the phone is pretty limited there. You can always get an amp.

But I have this dongle, the exact R&D budget one you discuss, and the iPod side by side with the same song loaded (except the iPhone has way higher resolution, as menitoned the iPod is under 256kbps).

The iPod isn't louder, but it has sounds in the music and a breathiness and real, moving sensation that my recent iPhones with lightning or USB to 3.5 adapters haven't had. It's hard to explain unless you listen side by side, and now I sound like an audiophile but I am far from it - the ears just don't lie and the old iPod really had amazing sound.