Back before the iPod was released, I had a Rio player with a miniature spinning drive (like the iPod classic). It was the size of a hockey puck. It was simplicity itself. No software required (although it COULD sync with Windows Media Player). You could just drag and drop files and folders into it like a flash drive.
It didn't use use ID3 tags at all - it went by folder and file names. You could throw all your rock music into a ROCK folder and then just select the folder and play all -> shuffle. No messing around with sometimes incorrect or missing ID3 tags (which was common back then since most of my music was ripped from my CDs or copied from friends).N o need for playlists either - the folder was the playlist. Want to add more songs to the Rock playlist? Drop them in the Rock folder.
I loved that thing, until the drive finally died a few years later, and I cried. They were discontinued by then, and I my next player was an iPod Classic. Then my iTunes nightmare began, and I had to spend several weeks fixing or creating ID3 tags on thousands of tracks
Apple is being clueless. There's a substantial number of people (both casual and professional) who would pay good money for an updated iPod Classic with, say, 128GB of flash, keeping the original circular controls (which were friggin' BRILLIANT). $500? People would buy it. Sure it would be a niche product, but so is the Shuffle and the Nano and they're still around. Heck, why don't they make a 64GB Nano? The Nano only comes in 16GB. Sorry Apply, not everyone has or wants an iPhone.
There are lots of professionals AND people like me who JUST WANT AN MP3 player, that plays MP3's VERY well, and does nothing else. While I love my iPod Touch, it just annoys me that the GUI sometimes freezes while I'm trying to bring up a song or a podcast because it's doing some mysterious background operation. And this is the latest 64GB model. I wish the OS was like Android where I could just kill every background process I didn't want. I've considered using an Android based player, but Android doesn't have a podcatcher that's anywhere as good or as easy to use as the iPod's
And no, I do NOT use my Android phone for music or Podcasts, although it does have some emergency music on it and I do rarely use it for audio books if the iPod's not handy. I want my phone battery to last, and I primarily use my phone for calls, Internet browsing, and GPS. I also don't want my music interrupted by a sound notification blasting through my phones or speakers. Plus the Griffin dock I use in the card for my iPod is just SO convenient. Plug in the lightning cable, and I'm connected to my radio and the iPad charges while in the car, plus I have play/pause/skip controls within easy reach.
