The listed specs are generally what the manufacturer tests to. The equipment may very well operate outside of the specs, but the manufacturer didn’t test it and didn’t care because only one in a million users will ever use it outside of spec. Other times the spec exists for a very good reason. And it is also sometimes the case that 90% of the use cases work in a wider range of specs, but the other 10% don’t.
We just did an ad hoc shipping range temp test on our new product that combines a piece of custom hardware with an off the shelf Android tablet. Stuck it in a freezer overnight (-5F) and it powered on and the tablet worked. We fully expected the power up while frozen to either not work or to damage it, but we powered it off and let it warm back to room temp before re-validating its functionality and it was none the worse for wear.
I have killed more than one ipod by leaving it in the car overnight on a sub-zero night.
My last one (because they stopped making the best damn music playing/storage device ever invented in order to sell low-storage ‘music-renting devices’) is still alive, but barely. It’s the 160gb classic, and I will be very sad when it finally dies altogether.
no, they stopped making them because nobody was buying them. trust me, if the ipod were still selling, they’d still make them. besides, you can now get phones with more flash storage than the old ipods - though it’s admittedly pricey.
Yeah, Apple kept selling the iPod Classic far longer than anyone in the industry expected. It was selling in incredibly tiny numbers the last 3-4 years it was on the market, as just about everyone had switched over to storing music on a phone (or iPod touch or other flash-based iPod).
except that I don’t want a phone to play my music on.
I have no desire for a touch-screen that I can’t use ‘blind’ in my pocket (and that I don’t need to be looking at anyway for listening to music). I want a portable music player, not network dependant, with a Tb of flash storage, physical buttons, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. It does not need to take pictures, tweet, post, like, follow, pin, upvote, love… just play the music that I have loaded onto it. Through my big, ridiculous, studio-dj headphones.
Apple still makes the touch, the nano, and the shuffle. The touch and the nano are basically wifi smartphones without a phone app. The shuffle is the closest to what I would want, but is physically too small, has very little local control (no display at all: you must setup playlists on the computer) and is still only 2gb (although, granted, my girlfriend loves the one I got her for skiing). None of them have as much storage as my 160gb classic… the biggest touch is still just 128gb.
Apple wants you to store stuff in the cloud. Their cloud. And they want you to pay for it.
They want you to rent music from them (ie paid streaming through Apple Music), because DRM is easier when you never provide an actual copy of the thing. Great model for them, but I hate it. I’ve been hearing rumors (firmly denied by apple) that they want to phase out downloads altogether in the next few years.
Luckily vinyl is doing better than ever, and I am able to purchase many of the new albums I want in physical record form… complete with digital download copy… because I am not quite hipster-cool enough to carry a Vestax HandyTrax and 100lbs of wax with me snowboarding, dirtbiking, or even walking the dog.
good for you, dude. all i was doing was responding to your intimations that apple canceled the ipod out of some genius market strategy pushing toward music rentals. they didn’t - if the ipod sold, they’d just make their rental music service compatible with it, since it already worked with their drm.
i don’t understand the need for a device you can use blind in a pocket since any of the main functions (play pause skip fwd etc) work on modern device headphones.
nothing is stopping anyone from from using any of their iphone or android devices to listen to any song they own.
Apple only reluctantly jumped on the streaming bandwagon because digital music sales were declining rapidly as consumers shifted away from purchasing and towards subscriptions instead. They were quite happy with their massive market share on digital sales, but after music sales started tanking they had to go play catch up on streaming. (And they’re still quite a ways behind the competition.)
If the download market stabilizes, then of course Apple will keep the iTunes Music Store around. It’s quite profitable for them. But if sales dry up, then they’ll eventually drop it, the same way they stopped selling iPods with hard drives when everyone stopped buying those.
And yes, people had stopped buying the iPod Classic. From the time they decided to stop manufacturing them it took over a year to sell off the remaining inventory, as the vast majority of consumers had lost interest in the product. (Of course, even if they had wanted to keep making them, they wouldn’t have been able to. The hard drive manufacturers had stopped making the tiny 1.5" hard drives used in the iPod Classic. Apple was their last remaining customer, but Apple wasn’t ordering enough of the drives to keep them in production.)
I bought my favorite set of headphones in 2001… They still sound great. I would put them up against any current sub-$300 pair of headphones. They don’t have controls. I have another pair that has controls, but those are nearly impossible to operate with gloves on. I guess I’m just a フリーク.
I thought it stopped selling because they stopped improving it, hyping it, marketing it, and removed it’s category from their front page. They were switching everyone over the Touch or an iPhone; the store-in-your-pocket. I came to that conclusion, not by following any sort of industry news or sales figures, but just watching from a consumer standpoint. And although I know of quite a few people who would buy an SSD-based classic, it seems I am wrong about why it went away. That’s cool. I’ve been wrong before. Probably will be again.
Anywhoo, back to the point I was trying to make (before I digressed into an apparently wildly inaccurate rant) … (and trying to get closer to being back on-topic!)
I have noticed that cold temps can mess with batteries. Snopes agrees.
I suppose each person has their own specific needs. I know people that have devices dedicated to just music for whatever reason.
My opinion is that I don’t want to carry an extra device around. If I can get that much more functionality out of one device, I take it. I don’t need a watch, I don’t need a navigation system, I don’t need a portable music player, I don’t need a portable video player, I don’t need a portable game system (though I’m definitely getting Nintendo Switch!), I don’t need an appointment book, etc… It’s all on my iPhone.
@jbv you mention wanting a Tb of storage… Can I ask what the reason for that much portable music is? Is it just convenience so that you have as much of your music with you as possible at all times? I used to check the “fill empty space with music” checkbox in iTunes for that reason… so that I had the majority of my music with me and I wouldn’t have to worry about being able to play a specific track. Over the years I found that to be too cumbersome and gravitated towards the same songs all the time. Now I maintain a couple dozen playlists that I can alter whenever I need to and it seems to be working fine. Any music I’ve purchased is easily downloaded on the fly if I want it, and any music ripped from CDs or downloaded “back in the day” I can just wait until I get home to get it onto my phone.
As for the streaming music… you are right. The world is gravitating that way. It doesn’t affect me much as I have my music, and rarely buy music in any form these days. But it’s what sells, and so that’s the way things tend to go. You don’t have to do it though. I just ignore that “Radio” button when I pull up the music player. I do use Spotify at work sometimes. My wife loves I Heart Radio, but we don’t pay for them. I can see the draw of it though… the cost of one CD per month and you can listen to all the music, and you don’t have to store it or transfer it in and out of your device. It makes sense. That said, I still buy the CDs of my favorites. I buy from iTunes and download everything else that I get… which as I said before, isn’t too much these days.
You n’ me, both! in fact, I don’t even store photos, watch videos, or play games on my iPhone either…I use it almost solely as a ‘phone’. I’m sure I’m in a small minority. I have two iPods (Shuffles)…one in my car (which I should check out, as it’s been below freezing here for several days now) and one here in the house. I never knew that very cold weather could kill an iPod, so I hope mine is still alive.
google translate suggest that means freak. i’m not sure why you’d say that or why you felt the need to use japanese. either way you could buy a set of in-line controls for them if you wanted to. i have cans with no controls, too, i just never use them when i’m mobile.
Unless you’re keeping them at like -40F for extended periods, you’re probably fine. The only thing you need to worry about on them is the batteries, really, and even then as long as you let them warm up you’ll probably be okay.
Yes, convenience… and because I think the 1tb ssd drives are about the right size. 500gb would serve me just fine. Apple won’t make it anyway, so it is a moot point. Maybe Sony will drop a WalkManSport-themed digital music player to capitalize on the retro-love. It could have big chunky buttons!
Freak because I love new tech but I hate change; I’m a Technophile Luddite. I say it jokingly. In japanese because it was sitting on my clipboard after just making some decals for a local import-street-racing/drift crew.
I don’t know per se that it will hurt a shuffle, I just that I damaged a few original/classics. From everything that I read, it was probably more due to heat-cycling condensation than anything else. The Classic temp ratings were
Operating temperature: 32° to 95° F
(0° to 35° C)
Nonoperating temperature: -4° to 113° F
(-20° to 45° C)
I certainly used it above and below the operating temps, and temps in the car (where I lived then) could easily have gone outside the non-operating temps. I have only myself to blame.
The shuffle page says
Operating temperature: 32° to 95° F (0° to 35° C)
Nonoperating temperature: -4° to 113° F (-20° to 45° C)
Relative humidity: 5% to 95% noncondensing
Operating altitude: tested up to 10,000 feet (3000 m)
I have used both classics and shuffles above 10,000ft with no apparent ill effect.
Knowing they probably use a close loop cooling system like a close loop liquid cooler used for a computer which the average storage temps is -20 to 70 C
We have the pro model + filter on order, but wife still doesn’t feel 100% comfortable with the laser in the house and is suggesting we keep it in the garage. We live in Dallas, TX, so the summers can get brutal. The garage isn’t insulated/climate controlled, so it can easily get into the 100s in some cases.
Pardon the resurrection, but I don’t see any updates since last spring… its cold outside right now, can I keep it in my detached shop that often gets down to around 30F, especially at night?