Jul 05 2009
iPod Classic (160GB) Review
A few years ago a friend of mine told me triumphantly that he had (finally) figured out how to get along great with Windows. He said: “Just don’t try to fight it. If it wants you to put your music in ‘My Music’ – put it there. Same thing for My Photos, My Documents, etc.” As ridiculous as that may sound, he was dead serious. Recent experience with a new iPod are repeatedly reminding me of his advice.
I was (and still am, actually) a proud owner of an iriver H340. It was an awesome music player to begin with (not to mention video), with a keen user community, even. But it got exponentially better with the introduction of Rockbox – one of those amazing open source projects where users take control of the product and make it a gazillion times better. I didn’t mind people gawking at the size of it (most of them didn’t even realize that for 40GB you need a much bigger player than their nano-knockoffs).
However, more and more the 40GB capacity of the H340 was a limiting factor. With over 100GB of music at home, I was simply forced to travel with only a fraction of my music. For most people I guess this is not an issue. They seem to get along fine with those tiny 4GB players. But I have my own preferences and the main one about music is that I want to have any song that I like (and have) immediately available to me on the go.
So I checked my options: Replacing the drive on the H340 is possible, but limited. The other option is to buy a new player.
There are other choices on the market, but eventually I settled for the iPod Classic 160GB. It’s not even made anymore, so I bought it second-hand, but that made the deal sweeter – came pretty cheap, when compared to a new device. I knew that Apple’s products are very limiting, but I figured that I’d figure out a way to work around this. After all, 160GB in such a small sexy package is worth it, no?
Well, no, not so much.
I found that the iPod is limiting as hell. Apple’s system for managing music, which they force down our throats, is narrow-minded: You have songs, which are sorted into artists, and then sorted into albums. This system can’t even properly handle the simple idea of several artists issuing albums by the same name (a good example of this is projects, such as Another Late Night, or Back To Mine, or DJ Kicks). Just like when I select an artist and see what albums they have, in this case I want to start off with the album name and then have a list of artists. No can do.
And that’s not even the major management issue. When you have over 10GB of music, not to mention 40, or 80, or 140GB, you can’t simply scan through a list of artists or albums looking for what you want. Such a straight list is too cumbersome to scan manually. And I’d bet you’ve probably already organized this heap of music into something more accessible, such as into folders. For example, I had these main subdivisions:
- Albums – for complete music albums (sorted into a subdirectory per artist)
- Mixes – for albums that play through as one seamless mix (DJ sets, etc.)
- Misc – for scraps of stuff, singles, etc. (I also put tracks from albums for which I didn’t want to have the entire album)
- New – anything new (to me), which I keep for as long as I want until I move to one of the other three (no rules for it)
Now under these I even had further subdirectories, which I won’t go into here. The point is: I simply cannot do any of this with iTunes / iPod.
So I’m left with a device that forces me to take my friend’s advice: Don’t fight it, work with it like it expects you to.
iPod’s cool features
- It’s beautiful. Sexy, even
- The design is very minimal (I really like minimal) and the interface is very simple. Many times when strangers picked up my iriver they had no idea what to press to simply get it to play or to stop playing. I imagine there would be no such trouble with the ipod.
- Instant on. Since it (apparently) never really turns off, and has no need to scan your drive (since iTunes stores everything directly into its database), it’s ready to go as soon as you press any button to turn it on.
- Pretty good sound quality (this is the iPod Classic, reportedly earlier players were not so good)
iPod’s shortcomings:
- You must use special software to load it with content. iTunes is recommended (yes, even by me) since it’s the most stable, reliable (this is really important), and feature-loaded (!)
- It’s buggy. But then again who’s perfect?
- It doesn’t support the “Group compilations when browsing” feature of itunes. So what’s the point of marking songs as “Part of a compilation”?
- You can’t (as far as I know – will this ever change?) replace the firmware with something _good_, such as Rockbox, since Apple have somehow encrypted the system
- Doesn’t remember what I was playing after being plugged into the computer
iTunes shortcomings:
- Unless you tell it otherwise it will create its own library of all of your music
- Unless you tell it otherwise it will automatically sync your iPod to your library, and manage everything on its own
- It’s very touchy and will reset all view settings (which columns I want to see when I view my library) on a whim, such as after upgrading to a new itunes version or if, God forbid, you used another software to modify you iPod’s library
- It’s oriented at working on your library, not your ipod. I use my iPod at work, but I have no intention of loading my work computer with all of my music – no reason to, either. But iTunes can’t do some of its tricks on the iPod’s music, only on the library. For example: iTunes DJ
- It’s buggy. But then who’s perfect?
iPod + iTunes combined shortcomings:
- Your _files_ are organized in an obfuscated structure, losing any filenames, directory names, and organization that you may have had (I had a lot!)
- You cannot organize things the way you want to. You have to use their idea of organization, which is limited to Name -> Artist -> Album. What if I want to put a group of files together, as my own private compilation, but don’t want to run-over the album names? You might say: easy – playlists, but that’s simply not good enough:
- They’re unstable (see above)
- The files still show up in the general Artist/Album lists. And no, tagging the files as “Part of a Compilation” doesn’t work: It only groups the artists, not the albums, and even that only happens on itunes – the ipod still gets cluttered (160GB!). Additionally you might suggest using the Sorting Album field, which seems to solve the album issue (really, why do I have to work so hard for something that simple filesystem directories would have solved?), but that doesn’t work well, either: It only groups the files on itunes (on the ipod I see an “album” entry for each of the 500+ files I have grouped as “Misc”), and both on itunes and on ipod I don’t see the Sorting Album name in the album list – I see the album name from the file’s tag!
- You can’t remove files from the ipod by viewing the playlist – this interface only allows removing files from the playlist, but they will remain on the ipod.
What I miss about my iriver H340 + Rockbox:
- Organizing my stuff the way I want to
- Crossfading playback
- Ogg vorbis support
- Lots and lots of customization options
So, to summarize, I’m not truly pleased. I wish I had the time and equipment to reverse engineer the thing in order to be able to put Rockbox on it, but I don’t. I’m staying with the iPod since I don’t have any better choice at the moment, besides maybe getting an iPod 5.5, replacing the hard drive with a 160GB (from the Classic?) and putting Rockbox on that.
I remember being frustrated with the above issues back in 2004 with 1GB iPod shuffle. I recently bought a 160GB Classic, assuming there is absolutely no way Apple would not let you organize music in folders. It is just plain ridiculous to expect one to scroll through a flat list of 160 GB of songs!
Well, I learned I was wrong, the hard way. I’m not really sure what to do with this iPod, as the lack of this feature alone renders it practically useless.
Some ideas that come to mind is to start a consumer activist movement and send a petition to Apple, or hope the guys from RockBox will figure out how to replace stock firmware.
I would sign any petition that came up on this matter. But I hope that the Rockbox guys figure out a solution. I don’t have the hardware for it, otherwise I’d work on the solution myself.
I hate the folders thing as well. What I did was to go through my folders of music I have saved on an external drive, and change the “Genre” setting on the ID3 tags to the name of the folder. Then I use the Genre setting in iPod to search for the music I want…
Goat: Had a thought about that and then I decided against it. Hearing this from you I think I might reconsider!
Still – this only gives us one layer of folders…
I know I’m responding to an almost year-old post, but here goes anyway…
I also have the 160 gb classic, have owned it for over a year. What has transpired over the year is apple is again selling the 160, now as the only flavor of classic.
I concur with all your observations. Plus, what you didn’t mention, but drives me nuts…
Anyone with 160 gb of content on a device probably isn’t intimately familiar with every item on that ipod. Most of us are probably explorers, with lots of new unfamiliar content waiting for us. But the gui of the classic ipod does not scroll album titles or artist, nor is there an info screen to show us the metadata. So if we don’t have the artist and album title memorized, too bad! The ipod only shows a word or two of those fields. Year? Label? Etc?? Too bad, not viewable.
And this from a company that prided itself on gui, from the birth of the Mac, over 20 years ago. And after a decade to refine this “classic” ipod interface.
I would fairly happily put up with the file organization limitations you mention, if only the gui were not so limiting,
I still use the 160, and still have the 5.5 60 gb it replaced. The improvement in battery life is truly impressive between 5.5 and 6. I get 40 hours of music playback, vs 8 before. and having almost 3 times the disk space.
I have used Apple products since my first computer, a Mac SE bought in 1987. I still have two macs and two ipods, but I look forward to the Oracle retiring and turning over the reigns to someone who just might be open to feedback from customers, not just his or her own pronouncements of what is best, what will be. All the recent awards naming Steve Jobs as CEO of the century, or whatever they are, only compound the problem of not listening to us. I’m glad he brought Apple back from the brink, but look forward to what will be next.
By the way, anyone come up with third party stuff to deal with ipod classic limitations since this thread first appeared?
I agree with you, although differently from you I wouldn’t be satisfied with this only this issue being resolved. After carefully trying everything else I can think of there is still no good workaround: I seriously need folders.
Steve Jobs and Apple are a big success. So are Microsoft. In both cases this success is not really related to product quality, but to the sad truth that good marketing and good exterior design are all you need to close the deal. Both Apple and Microsoft are excellent in both these fields. Both sell mediocre (at best) products under the hood of a beautiful exterior. Again, this is very sad, but such is life.
More sad news: Apple have been incorporating encryption in some way into their devices for the last few years, which has made replacing their software with indie code very very difficult. People have managed to worm their way into the iPod 2nd generation Nano, which is supposedly similar to the iPod Classic, but not much progress has been made with the Classic so far. If we had Rockbox on the Classic I would be the happiest iPod owner ever, but that’s just a wish of mine for now.
I concur. I have been hoping Rockbox might find their way into the 160GB, not just to improve the folders issue, but to get me out of using iTunes.
Aside from it being clumsy and annoying to use (Rockbox lets you drag and drop directly onto the iPod and thereafter browse your folders, a far cry from loading into iTunes, checking metadata is correct and then transferring to the device) the latest announcements from Apple indicate that with the latest version of their software for the iPhone they are going to be recording real-time location data.
I no longer wish to be involved with a company that indulges in such Orwellian behavior, but who else makes a decent 160gb player out there?
I have had my classic for about two years now and am almost willing to trade it for a 5.5 just to break the software lock….
There is option to create ‘playlist folders’ and I use those folders to keep about 100 GB of my music organised on the iPod and iTunes.
Any folder can have any number of subfolders. So it is same as normal filesystem – only each file is a playlist and each folder in a playlist folder.
Works perfect but needs one time setup – u need to create those playlists to start with.
I find iTunes quite good as a music org. software – better than any other I have come across atleast if the library size is >100 GB.
Only issue is the sound quality of iPod classic- very bad. My Philips GoGear sounds a lot better.
The eq in iPod does not let you set it manually – only presets, and most songs with high bass have to be played with eq turned off or flat to prevent distortion because the gain (preamp) in ipod and itunes is too high.
Also there is no linux version of iTunes. Hope sometime they release one for linux…
Dev: There are two problems with this:
1. As you say, you need time to create all of your folders. I have _already_ created all of my folders, in my filesystem. It’s taken me years to accumulate and organize everything. However there is no easy way to transfer this directly into the iPod.
2. My iPod (the 1st Classic generation, 160GB) does not support folders, or else iTunes will not transfer them to it. I’ve tried everything except the automatic sync, which I will not use on principle, since I don’t want iTunes to hold my music, nor do I want it to do its own organization of it on my iPod.
It would seem that Apple have no real intent to support older devices. For example: the software of the newer iPod Classics has several features that my version does not. Yet they have issued no software updates or anything for years. It’s a shame that they are so anal about protecting their devices from being flashed with alternative firmware. Rockbox would have been so much better than this crap.
There is an unstable port of Rockbox to the 80GB 1st gen Classic, but this does not work at all on the 160GB Classic because there is no driver yet for the disk controller in the 160.. I was surprised to find out the two have significantly different hardware. I’ve had both, and the 80GB has a slightly more responsive interface so… I’m keeping my fingers crossed and hoping there will be a port soon for the 160..
This is great news! I will be looking forward to it, or perhaps I would even be able to contribute, if and when time allows it.
Big thumbs up – thanks!
[...] been a while since I wrote my iPod review / rant. At the time I was wishing for Rockbox to be my salvation, and it’s finally possible! [...]