The end of the iPod – last model available 'while supplies last'

Apple has ended production of the last remaining version of the iPod – the iPod Touch. A May 10 announcement broke the news gently, referring to the iPod Touch being available "while supplies last". Apple pointed out that the iPod's core function – storing truckloads of songs in a portable device – has long since migrated …

[Winkypop]

Sad but inevitable RIP

The iPod Classic mod scene is still very much alive. You can make a “new” unit from parts.

I’ve upgraded my old 160 gig to 256 gig via SD.

I much prefer to have my music off line. Streaming services just don’t cater for the more obscure of music choices.

[45RPM]

Re: Sad but inevitable RIP

I applaud your upcycling. Top effort. Have an upvote.

[AndrueC]

Re: Sad but inevitable RIP

I both love and loathe my iPods. I love the capacity. I love the way they (mostly) do one thing and do it very well. I loath iTunes with a passion that exceeds my ability to describe.

So with mixed feelings I've moved away to using my (Android) phone for the car and USB sticks for other things. Last to go will be my alarm clock and I don't know what I'll replace that with.

Mind you I continue to rely on my SqueezeServer and SB3/SB Touch for serious music listening. Those and my Harmony remote appear to be irreplaceable.

[DJO]

Re: Sad but inevitable RIP

I loath iTunes with a passion that exceeds my ability to describe.

Many moons ago I won a iPod Nano, my first and only piece of Apple kit, iTunes lasted under 10 minutes before I uninstalled it (quite angrily if I recall correctly) and searched for something like "iTunes replacement" and found a nice simple Windows app which could be run over USB from the iPod without installing on the PC, made it perfectly portable.

Never really used the bugger much but it's a nice bit of design.

[big_D]

Re: Sad but inevitable RIP

Streaming is also a pain when walking the dog. Most of the walks around here are at least 40% without mobile coverage or not enough throughput for streaming.

[sev.monster]

Re: Sad but inevitable RIP

Do your own streaming then. I am a big fan of myMPD; when I am at home I stream directly to my DAC via PulseAudio (via Pipewire compatibility layer) for lossless playback and when I am on the go I stream using the extremely data-efficient Opus. What needed 320kbps CBR MP3 to sound good now only needs ~100kbps VBR with Opus, so it's usable with poorer connections. You can even knock it down to half and it still sounds better than most other equivalent bitrate lossy formats.

Of course, you aren't forced to use myMPD, any MPD-compatible client will work. There are apps for most devices (like M.A.L.P for Android).

[ravenviz]

Re: Sad but inevitable RIP

This is why Apple products are for the majority people who don’t know how to do any of that.

[sev.monster]

Re: Sad but inevitable RIP

From zero, an afternoon with the very straightforward MPD docs is just about all you need for a functional setup. It's less of a case of not knowing how to do it and more not wanting to spend the time on it, not knowing the option is available in the first place, or already having another solution that works for them (e.g. the Apple ecosystem).

...Of course, then there are people like this. Even beginning to use a project like MPD assumes baseline familiarity with a computer and its methodology. Some people don't even have that, for which I concede to your point.

[Blackjack]

Re: Sad but inevitable RIP

I wonder if I can do anything with my Ipod Nano that has only 2 GB of storage space?

[deadlockvictim]

Re: Sad but inevitable RIP

I've put the full audiobook version of 'Lord of the Rings' onto my 2GB iPod Nano. The encoding bitrate isn't especially high but it isn't so such a problem. I'm usually in a place that isn't especially quiet when I listen to it.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Sad but inevitable RIP

"The iPod Classic mod scene is still very much alive. You can make a “new” unit from parts."

Clearly that's really why it's being retired. No serialised and OS security authenticated parts to stop people fixing their own devices :-)

[45RPM]

My iPod was great - actually, all of them were great. But I don’t have them any more. Their time is in the past. I’m not going to get nostalgic about them. It’s not like they were as influential (on me, at least) as the Spectrum. The BBC micro. The Commodore C64.

I can get nostalgic about a ‘proper’ computer because it’s essentially a creative device - it’s a tool to help the user make things. Getting nostalgic about an iPod? No. No more than I’d get nostalgic about a TV, or a radio. I like ‘em. I use ‘em. But I’m not going to celebrate them.

My iPod gave way to my iPhone with no diminishment of capability. My iPod Shuffle (which I used for the gym and for running) was superseded by my watch. And so it goes. One day these devices will reach the end of their lives, and I won’t shed a tear about that either.

[SloppyJesse]

Still use an iPod nano for music in my car. The infotainment interface when using an iPod is leagues ahead of just connecting a generic USB drive.

Unfortunately iTunes long ago gave up genius and recent hire cars do not recognise the iPod (presumably older device support has been removed) so I guess it'll go in the bin when the car gets upgraded.

[Androgynous Cupboard]

Video is genius

Thanks for linking to that.

[Mayday]

PDA

These things were, for Australian tax purposes at least, a PDA. A pretty ordinary PDA nonetheless but could show some rudimentary calendar which therefore classified them accordingly.

Which led me to get one under a method where I could claim it as a tax deduction, and henceforth made me use only iDevices ever since.

Thanks Steve and co. This is all your fault.

[Roj Blake]

Flea

Of course, the best version of the iPod was the Flea

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvPj22jANDw

[Fred Daggy]

I always thought the iPod touch was brilliant. It's selling feature was that it wasn't a phone. Considerably cheaper, for example.

Brilliant for younger kids or older adults that can barely copy with a mobile phone. They soon mastered the interface but I could keep in touch with them via FaceTime from the other side of the planet. Less fragile than an iPad.

On the con side, never had good camera compared to the phones, but it was "ok". Not sure if the camera had a flash either. So, sucked for that.

[Anonymous Coward]

The "real" iPods have already been gone for years

Whatever its merits as a device, wasn't the Touch always really just a cut-down version of the iPhone it had more in common with it than the other iPod models?

It could be argued that the iPod- i.e. the original concept rather than the brand- already died in all but name when they discontinued the last remaining non-Touch models (Shuffle and Nano IIRC) about five years ago.

[Zippy´s Sausage Factory]

The iPod classic was great. The nano was good, if a trifle buggy (especially if you're a last.fm addict, as I am, the fact that it sometimes just forgets what you played today is annoying).

The touch however, I could do without. The terrible Podcasts app I just find excruciating. iOS 6 handled it WAY better than anything afterwards.

[D@v3]

iTunes.

i've said it before, and i will no doubt say it again. People who complain about iTunes clearly never used SonicStage.

Anyway.

I've always loved the iPod's, have had various as the capacity improved, starting i think with a 10Gb model, brough to take travelling instead of a mini disc player and a pocket full of discs. never felt the need to get a Mac to make it work properly, have always managed with iTunes on the PC, and still do, using it to manage the music on my iPhone.

As I'm sure with others here, i still like to by my music so that it is mine. I do now only have 1 CD 'player', but that is in the PC that i use to rip them to iTunes so i can listen to my music where ever i want.

Still have my 120GB classic in a draw at home, the battery isn't what it used to be, and seems to only charge with certain combinations of cables and plugs, but that's fine. Doesn't really get used anymore, but i can't think of anything worth while to do with it.

[Fifth Horseman]

Re: iTunes.

SonicStage... Is that the abomination that Sony used to ship with their MP3 players? That is a truly awful piece of software. IIRC though, the Sony players showed up as standard USB storage devices, so fortunately you didn't have to use it.

[AndrueC]

Re: iTunes.

That rings a distant bell with me as well. At least iTunes doesn't grind to a halt just because you have more then six albums. But I still occasionally find albums on my iPod where some of the tracks are duplicated because of something that went awry when I was importing them into iTunes. It's also painfully slow because it insists on converting everything into AAC.

[Mike 125]

1.8 inches

"the untimely death of an iPod disk. The telltale clicks of a broken part presaged its untimely demise. "

I bought that model secondhand from a colleague- (I just needed to own a 1.8 inch disk!)

In my case, and probably in a majority of cases, the problem was the battery not the disk.

The battery aged, and eventually failed to provide the disk spinup current surge (not much for 1.8 inch, but still much larger than normal running). So it just ticked. I proved it by wiring a capacitor across the battery. It worked perfectly.

And then I got bored and moved onto solid state, as you do.

[nintendoeats]

Re: 1.8 inches

That might explain why mine would spin up when I gave it a good whack...or the other one that would only work if I put it in the freezer first...these might have been the same device, I can't remember anymore.

[trevorde]

Can't forgive, won't forget

The abomination that is iTunes. It morphed from a simple program to manage music to engulf music, apps, movies, podcasts and ebooks. Is there anything it can't do (badly)?

[Plest]

Re: Can't forgive, won't forget

The one reason i won't buy an iPhone or iPad is that I would have to deal with iTune on Windows as I don't own a Mac, that alone is all I need to stay with Android. I've had to work with iTunes for years supporting my wife and kids and I hate it with all the bile I can muster from the very depths of my being, it just about works on OSX but on Windows it's like pumping raw sewage into every meal you cook!

I'll stick with the superb MusicBee software thanks, works like a treat on Windows.

[Pallais]

Re: Can't forgive, won't forget

You haven't needed to use iTunes with an iPhone or an iPad for years now. You can if you're a masochist ^_^, but those two devices quite easily operate independently of iTunes. You can also get iTunes Match if you want to have CDs you've ripped available across all your devices. (At $25US per year, it's one of the cheapest useful subscriptions out there.)

Of course, you'll need to have any ripped music be in a format an iDevice can play, but that's an issue whether or not you choose to use iTunes.

[Irony Deficient]

Of course, you’ll need to have any ripped music be in a format an iDevice can play,

One could use Rockbox to expand the number of formats that an iPod can play. (I still use Rockbox on a SanDisk e200, piped through a FM transmitter for long-distance car trips.)

[Martipar]

Re: Can't forgive, won't forget

You can also get iTunes Match if you want to have CDs you've ripped available across all your devices. (At $25US per year, it's one of the cheapest useful subscriptions out there.)

Sorry. $25pa to listen to CDs i've already bought is cheap? $0 is cheap, anything more is a double charging, rip off. I have never bought into the Apple multiverse, i've always preferred generic MP3 players, right now I use my Android phone and PowerAmp media player. I still buy CDs, I rip them using Winamp and have all the files on various computers and the Micro SD card in my phone, if i lost my phone it takes a short amount of time to transfer all my file across to my new Micro SD card and i'm away. There's no way i'd pay to listen to music I already own especially if the annual price is the same as the one off cost of a decent sized Micro SD card.

[goldcd]

I think the original ipod was the last gadget that blew me away

Whole racks of CDs moved into that satisfyingly small (and annoyingly scratchable) little brick you could easily drop into your pocket and later drop into a little dock nestling on-top of a speaker. Latter was also maybe the 'death of the hifi in most homes'

iTunes (especially on my PC) was never perfect - but a quantum leap ahead of previous music management software.

Also allowed podcasts and audiobooks to really take off and sit alongside music.

Continuing my defence of the slighted, the Zune wasn't bad, but just that bit clunkier and late. Did do some interesting things around music subscriptions and sharing, whilst Apple was still wanting to just sell you CDs, but digitally.'

[heyrick]

Re: I think the original ipod was the last gadget that blew me away

I had a Creative Zen. Basic interface, nice colourful screen, could even play 320x240 XviD movies (native screen resolution). A simple driver install in Windows (it's some sort of MTP device) and just plug it in and dump files onto it. I used to use it when I was at work, before I had a smartphone, and it would cope with eight hours of playing stuff without issues.

I've seen a lot of crappy "MP4" players (some, comically, based upon a DSP bolted onto a clone Z80!) which have been varying degrees of crap with horrible user interfaces... but the Zen... was rather nice.

[Coastal cutie]

Re: I think the original ipod was the last gadget that blew me away

I remember my Zen very fondly - easy to use, easy to pack for holidays along with a travel speaker, tough and reliable. Eventually it wouldn't charge up any more and Creative had dropped out the market so never replaced.

[Boothy]

Re: I think the original ipod was the last gadget that blew me away

I still have a Zen Vision M somewhere, I rediscovered it about two years ago, and it still booted up and worked!

No idea how good the battery is by this point. It hasn't been actively used since about 2008.

[Lazlo Woodbine]

I've got an iPod Shuffle somewhere.

I got it free with an Audible subscription, the default shuffle mode wasn't terribly useful when listening to audio books, so I'm not sure what Audible were thinking about with this particular promotion...

[yetanotheraoc]

what Audible were thinking

... poetry

[juice]

Ol' (mostly) reliable

I've had a long history with digitally compressed music; I can remember encoding CDs on a P100 machine, and friends who had RAM-based MP3 players; if the battery died, then you lost your music!

However, back in the day I mostly stuck with Sony's minidisk players; the later models gave you up to 320 minutes per disk (at around a quid per disk), Sony grudgingly let you digitally copy music over to the later models via USB, via the abomination called Sonic Soundstage, and you could get over 50 hours playback from a single AA battery.

And the MP3 players at the time frankly couldn't hold a candle to either the battery life or song-storage capacity, especially since I could easily carry a half-dozen minidisks with me!

Still, once solid-state capacities started to grow past 1GB, I did start using MP3 players.

I can't remember exactly when I fell into the Apple eco-system, but for me, the iPod peaked with the 3rd gen iPod Nano. The "shortened credit card" form factor was far easier to keep in a shirt than the tall/thin form factor favored for the other Nano variants, and 8GB gave the Gods of Random (tm) a fair amount of stuff to play with.

Plus, at that point, iTunes was measurably better than Sonic Soundstage.

I did eventually drift away from iPods, but ended up being roped back in entirely by accident; my old MP3 player died, the day before I was due to go on a 20-hour coach trip to Germany, so I nipped into a local Cash Converters and grabbed a used 120GB iPod Classic.

And that thing lasted for over a decade; it was a bit dented and scratched when I finally parted with it, but functionally, the only real issue with it was a diminished battery life. And even then, I think I still got about 50 quid for it, via Ebay...

Alas, things haven't been quite as smooth sailing since then. I did pick up a "refurbished" iPod Classic with a 128gb SD card, but it was prone to locking up. I suspect the battery wasn't quite up to snuff, as it was generally fine when charging/playing via a dock.

I also dabbled with iPod Touches, but all the ones I bought experienced the same issue; after a while, the headphone jack-port would fail. I did try to get a couple of them repaired, but this was never successful.

In the end, I bit the bullet and upgraded... to a 128gb 1st-gen iPhone SE, from CEX. Since it was both cheaper than an iPod Touch and is the last iPhone model to have a headphone port.

And I'm still using said beast daily, while sat at my work desk.

Smeg knows what I'll do when that finally dies (and/or I can't source a good replacement from Ebay or similar).

For all that iTunes is a bit pants, it's still better than most options, especially since I'd have to deal with the joys of exporting all the stuff I've set up; I carry around 10,000 songs with me, split across 50+ playlists, even if I do usually just let the Gods of Random pick the songs for me ;)

I have dabbled with porting stuff over to Android - e.g. via iSyncr, which uses AppleScript (or somesuch) to query iTunes and then transfers the given playlists and songs to your Android device - but it's an extremely clunky process and Android is fundamentally a far poorer host for locally stored music, especially with the number of tunes I carry around.

And as far as I know, there isn't any Android player which lets you tag/rate songs, which still remains my favorite way to process new tunes: stick 'em in a playlist, sync to the player, and then mark them as 1-star if they're crap.

So, yeah. I've had a good run with the classic iPods, if not so much the more modern iPod Touches. It's been one of the few places where Apple's It Just Works ethos properly clicked with me!

[nintendoeats]

Re: Ol' (mostly) reliable

There are plenty of companies making nice standalone music players, so when your iPhone dies you can migrate to one of those. I use a Fiio X3k, but the more modern devices are all touchscreen streaming device things.

[juice]

Re: Ol' (mostly) reliable

> There are plenty of companies making nice standalone music players, so when your iPhone dies you can migrate to one of those.

Possibly. In some ways, it's more about the integration with iTunes which is the key thing for me. Because I do actually sync from both iTunes -> iPod and vice versa.

E.g. I'll put some new songs onto the iPod, listen to them for a day or two, and then rate each individual song.

Then, when I sync the iPod with iTunes, I can use those ratings to update my "master" playlists. E.g. I can delete any 1-star songs, or move any 5-star songs over to one of my permanent "genre" playlists.

Similarly, iTunes has the option to mark songs as "skip while shuffling".

Because, as much as I love leaving things up to the Gods of Random, I've also got a number of comedy and seasonal songs (or sometimes both - the HP Lovecraft themed A Very Scary Solstice, which rewrites Xmas carols to be about eldritch horrors...) which I don't particularly want to listen to on a regular basis, but which I'd like to keep around for the appropriate occasions.

And it's also got the ability to soft-trim songs. Which is great when there's tunes which have a spoken word intros (e.g. live recordings).

And as far as I know, there's no MP3 player (hardware or otherwise) which supports these features.

Though I'm more than willing to be pleasantly surprised :)

Having said all that, I'm going to have a look at Music Bee, since I'd quite like to have all my tunes on my Samsung S21+, and for some reason, iSyncr is bringing over all the songs, but not the playlists. Which makes the Gods of Random happy, but complicates everything else!

[Claverhouse]

Re: Ol' (mostly) reliable

I can remember encoding CDs on a P100 machine, and friends who had RAM-based MP3 players; if the battery died, then you lost your music!

.

How did you change the batteries ?

[doublelayer]

Re: Ol' (mostly) reliable

On the only device I had with RAM as the primary storage (though a PDA rather than a music player), you didn't. You recharged the battery in the device, and if that battery was in need of replacement, you hoped it would work while you copied anything you weren't planning to lose over to a computer. There was a reason I stuck with devices with flash, even if it was removable flash, after that.

[juice]

Re: Ol' (mostly) reliable

Probably a bit late now, but yep - if you had to change the batteries, you had to do it next to the computer, so you could re-sync your songs onto it.

As Doublelayer said, early PDAs had similar issues, though with at least some (e.g. Palm), I'm pretty sure they had a capacitor "UPS" built in, which gave you about 10 seconds to get the batteries swapped out. Even worked, sometimes!

There was also a period where some PDAs were still using RAM for internal storage, but also had memory-card slots built in. At which point, apps started to spring up which would let you back up/restore the internal memory from said memory card.

Which at least meant that you could swap out the batteries while travelling...

[Wade Burchette]

Still use my ipod

My ipod stays connected to my car. I have a playlist that takes me months to go through. I know what it does can also be done by the iphone, but I take my phone with me when I leave the car; I can leave the ipod in the car at all times. When I get in, it starts playing. I don't have to listen to DJ's prattle on about their life -- I don't know them and I don't want to know them. I don't have to listen to this modern banal music -- the recording industry's greed has killed creativity. And I don't have to pay a subscription service or listen to commercials. The ipod lets me do all that. I will be sad to lose it.

[AndrueC]

Re: Still use my ipod

My ipod stays connected to my car. I have a playlist that takes me months to go through.

I just left my Classic on random album shuffle. When that iPod died I got a Touch but that meant paying £1 for a random shuffle app. Then the touch started to get iffy (possibly due to compatibility issues with my new Toyota) so for a short while I dabbled with USB but:

* Toyota's player doesn't support album shuffle.

* When the power is cut to the unit (eg; when serviced) it restarts from the first track on the stick so I only ever heard the first few dozen albums. Also does it if the stick is removed and since Toyota only deigned to give us one data socket(*) that was a nuisance.

* I had to wait over a minute after switching the car on before it would change track which surprisingly often meant silence for many seconds.

I now use my phone and BT but that's not perfect. Sometimes the metadata gets lost between car and phone leading to 'Unknown track' and 'Unknown artist'. It doesn't do it when I'm using Android Auto so it must be something to do with BT.

(*)My model has two USB sockets but one is charge only. I don't understand that decision. I was under the impression that there was nothing to be gained from having a charge-only USB socket.

[juice]

Re: Still use my ipod

> Toyota's player doesn't support album shuffle.

Could be worse.

At one point, I picked up a car stereo with a sd card reader, which could play MP3s.

Which was all well and good... except that the built in RNG reset itself when the car was switched off.

So the "shuffle" feature always played the same songs in the same order...

After a while, I got into the habit of deleting random files from the card, just to force a bit of a "reshuffle"!

[Winkypop]

Re: Still use my ipod

Exactly.

My Ford is old enough to have a dedicated iPod cable interface deep in the centre console.

The old Nano is on random, gets recharged and just works seamlessly.

No adverts, no “young person’s music”, just my faves.

; )

[Steve Kerr]

IPod Touch

Still use my IPod Touch with stored music from ripped CD's and with Tidal in offline mode.

Was hoping they were going to release an updated one as it's useful for being small, good battery life and not having to worry about storage for everything else on a phone as well.

So when this dies or becomes incompatible with the latest Tidal App update will have to look for something else.

It's a shame as it was a really good simple product.

[FirstTangoInParis]

Great for audiobooks

The difference between the Nano 3G and other MP3 players is that the Nano would remember where you were in playing a track. All the others started the track again, which was a real pain when your audiobook "track" (= a chapter) would not start from where you left off. I've still got mine somewhere, and did use it in the car before the advent of CarPlay.

Also big hats off to the ladies and gents volunteering to read out of copyright books at LibriVox, which is still going all these years later. I listened to some great early sixties SF while commuting on the train back then.

[batfink]

Works fine for the car

My old (10+ years?) one just lives in the car and does a fine job a supplying my music to the car stereo. Every now and again I bring it inside to update it with anything I've bought recently. The sound (with high bitrate recordings) is good enough for the car, as any imperfections are hidden by the road noise anyway.

When it dies I expect it'll be the spinny disk, so I'll just go the SD card replacement route and continue with it until it dies completely.

[Plest]

iPod Shuffle - RIP

I have terrible insomia and stress so I listen to audio comedies when I wake up at night, Tony Hancock, Marcus Brigstocke, Mark Steel, anything to silence my mind from going into overdrive on work stuff. The iPod Shuffle was absolutely perfect, I got my wife to load it up with my radio comedy MP3s through her iTunes ( i hate iTunes!! ) and it ran like a dream for years, hours of playback on a single charge and as it was so small it didn't matter if it got lost in the bed. Until sadly one day it ended up going through a full wash cycle of the bed linen and it didn't survive...RIP little buddy. Had to buy a Sandisk MP3 player, it works but just not quite the same.

[ICL1900-G3]

Re: iPod Shuffle - RIP

I am so sorry about your insomnia/stress. I had a similar problem when I was an apparatchik at a well-known charge card company. In the end, I took redundancy and set out on my own, which was the best thing I ever did. I look back on those times and shudder. Good luck, but don't leave it too late to change.

[DS999]

Got squeezed between the phone and the watch

The iPod Touch was basically a music/app only iPhone, but the iPhone SE pushed too close to the iPod Touch's price point - a used iPhone SE of the previous generation was probably a smarter buy. Meanwhile the Watch had already taken over the Nano's role as a smaller form factor music player.

[ravenviz]

Re: Got squeezed between the phone and the watch

I was given an iPod Touch which i used as a replacement for an ipaq PDA, but was so impressed with it I got a second hand iPhone 3GS, which in itself as a phone was far superior to my Blackberry Pearl. Been iPhone ever since, although still only up to iPhone 8 albeit with 256 GB with all my music and all my photos on it (none of this iCloud nonsense!).

[Emir Al Weeq]

It must have been about 20 years ago but I still remember, having unpacked my iPod, the disappointment and anger as I looked at one of the items on my desk. "What the hell is that?". A colleague answered, "firewire".

I discovered it would cost me another £20 to buy a USB cable from Apple (inc postage), so instead I bought a firewire card for £22 from a local PC shop and vowed never too give Apple another penny.

I'm a stubborn bugger and have stuck to that ever since.

Can't fault the iPod though: got many years of use out of it.

[PhilipN]

Rio

Three cheers for the original MP3 portable player of which I have fond in fact very fond memories.

The first time you sit on the bus with the ability to enter your private hi-if world and actually choose what you listen to.

Since El Reg and nobody else mentioned it I shall, again : the Rio MP3 player

[JDX]

I still have one of those unibody aluminium nanos that I won. It's of little practical use but I still think it's about the most perfectly designed gadget I've owned. Just beautiful.

[deadlockvictim]

Replacement Device

I like my iPod Touch. I got it partly because of its price, partly because my wife manages the family calendars on her iPhone and partly because of FaceTime. my wife, younger daughter, mother & sister all have iPhones. I use it primarily as a podcast device, calendar and video-calling device.

I can replace FaceTime with Signal. Getting family members to download Signal shouldn't be too hard.

What about a good calendar app, preferably one that can read the Apple Calendar app data and preferably one that doesn't sell the data to ad agencies. Can anyone recommend one?

Finally, what do I replace the iPod Touch with? I'd like to avoid a smartphone if possible, although Apple's new SE might be the obvious choice. Tablets are big.

If I do transfer my soul from Apple to Google, which Android device do ye have good experiences with? Can one totally deactivate the data-slurp?

With my iPod Touch I leave Bluetooth on and I've only activated two Wi-Fi networks: home and work. I occasionally activate it when I absolutely must but that is rare.

I have a modern pre-iPhone-style phone for actual phone use.

[Fr. Ted Crilly]

preffered

the Creative offerings personally, somewhat more robust with an easier interface which Apfel eventually had to cave in over and cough up $100 million ;-)

Oh and the 3.5mm headphone socket didnt crap out just after warranty either...