in 2022.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod#Timeline_of_iPod_models_and_related_products




I used to have an iPod shuffle 1 back in the day. It was alright, unless you put into shuffle mode

I my orange 5th gen' iPod Nano.



It's one of the few genuinely good presents my then girlfriend got me.

I didn't know how to work mine, so I gave it to a man in the pub who was about to start palliative chemotherapy (I overheard his conversation) and told him to just keep it. His wife said their son would definitely know how to upload music to it for him. They seemed pleased.

I've never owned one. I remember being shown an iPod circa 2001/02 and it didn't really impress me.

I've still got an iPod touch I got for me ma in 2012 or so, it get used as a torch, playing birdie sounds to the little birdies and for the weather app that still amazingly works.

It's on iOS8 or something.

I have never owned any Apple products. I did have two Alba MP3 players though, little USB stick ones that hung on a pendant off the headphones.

I used to listen to them (one at a time) on the bus to work circa 2005, while wearing bootcut jeans.

I've never been someone who has enjoyed listening to music on the move. My Dixons-Saisho "Walkman" rarely got used and I never had a "Discman" despite lusting after them in the Argos catalogue. I'm more of a living room/bedroom music listener when one can sit, listen and enjoy.

I actually rarely listen to music in the car either. My iPhone has a few tracks installed on it and I can connect it up with the car's system thing but I'd rather just put a CD or reckud on at home. Or play an individual track on YouTube.

Butterfield wrote:

I've never been someone who has enjoyed listening to music on the move. My Dixons-Saisho "Walkman" rarely got used and I never had a "Discman" despite lusting after them in the Argos catalogue. I'm more of a living room/bedroom music listener when one can sit, listen and enjoy.

I actually rarely listen to music in the car either. My iPhone has a few tracks installed on it and I can connect it up with the car's system thing but I'd rather just put a CD or reckud on at home. Or play an individual track on YouTube.

I have to have music on in the car, but I don't wander about with headphones on. I think it's dangerous - how do people hear traffic, or muggers, or people asking for help, or those they know shouting hello, or rapists and murderers? It seems mad to me to walk around with one of your senses deliberately disabled. It would be like going shopping with an eyemask on.

Yet, you see it everywhere these days. There they are in their millions, strolling across junctions without looking, or walking into their fellow pedestrians with barely an apology, headphones on. Some people almost deserve to have their bags snatched by someone coming up behind them.

Who knew that this thread would turn into a snobbish, dismissive, bile-laden hate-in for the humble iPod.

I was a pioneer portable audio user, I used to do my paper round listening to a transistor-style radio concealed in my capacious jacket pocket. Using one of those white, single earphones that radios used to come with in those days, and which somehow suggested something 'invalids' would be given to use.

In early 1988 I bought a Saisho walkman, which was so cheap that it didn't even have a rewind button. Later I had a better one with a radio, which I used to listen to on the bus to university. But the cost of batteries was too high for me to continue.

The radio one had a revival in 1998 when I had a 75 minute each way bus journey to work. Even today the Psychedelic Furs' first album is still associated with looking down from the top deck of a bus onto the dangerous A12 junction at Rivenhall on a summer evening.

Circa 2003 I bought a genuine Sony walkman with radio, which proved really durable. It still works. It was my bedside radio up until a year ago (after which I didn't have a bedside).

I also owned a couple of discmans circa 2006, but they were rubbish and soon broke. They always skipped if you tried to actually walk with them.

I had a cheap and cheerful walk person style device, but I later got one of these:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/234526488679?var=0&mkevt=1&mkcid=1&mkrid=710-53481-19255-0




Should have kept it…

So I could sell it

I did have one of those stick MP3 players, who's name escapes me, but it got a good review in HiFi-world of all places, when they weren't talking about Garrard idle wheel turntables and Leak Troughline tuners. It was only 512mb or something feeble, and the inline controls busted.

I can't remember if this was before after the iPod shuffle*, I also got one of those Sony walkman MP3s things, which seemed a waste of time now I'd jumped on the Smart phone bandwagon 8 years behind the times.


* I just remember I got the iPod shuffle free when I bought a second hand Apple G3 iBook

Oh and I also bought a (second from) top of the range Panasonic Aiwa tape walkman, than never quite worked properly, I think the belts were slack. Probably not a good idea to get something like that second hand.



Oh, and I couldn't work out to put the rechargeable battery into the charger, said this to a friend and instantly put the whole 'personal cassette player' onto the charger, oops!


Well, that was an enjoyable wander down memory lane. and all that.