After years without updates, September 9th was a sad day for iPod fans: it marked the formal extinction of the iPod Classic, the last of Apple’s chunky, non-flash-based music players.
Three months after the last iPod Classic was sold through Apple.com, though? The iPod Classic is more in demand — and more expensive — than ever.
After pulling the iPod Classic from the market, Apple’s beefy 160GB MP3 player is selling on eBay for up to four times the original retail price. Prices of the 160GB iPod Classic sold as new cost as much as $1,050 right now, and over 3,000 have been sold on eBay since the iPod Classic was retired.
Strangely, it’s much cheaper to get a brand new 160GB iPod Classic on Amazon, where one will only cost you $499. And if you don’t mind a little wear and tear, you can get a used iPod Classic for less, even on eBay.
Still, what these numbers all suggest is that there’s still plenty of demand for a tough-as-nails music player that’s hard to break, easy to use, has great battery life, and can fit your entire music library. Did Apple kill off the Classic too soon?
Source: The Guardian
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
19 responses to “Maybe Apple killed off the iPod Classic too soon?”
Yes
I agree.
Am I the only one getting by on a new 128GB iPhone?
Absolutely. There are a ton of people (like me) who don’t want to (or can’t afford to) stream their music everywhere they go. Especially if they are frequently away from a high speed connection. Thankfully I bought a backup new one on ebay the day they discontinued it so I got a great price.
Totally with you on steering clear of crappy streaming music. I upgraded to the 128GB iPhone and thats working out just fine.
Odd thing is I bought a car like three weeks after they killed it, and one of these would be a perfect solution to carrying my entire music collection for the car, since streaming everything has impacted my data usage. Haven’t gone over my cap yet, but it’ll probably happen eventually. Can’t get one now, not without paying THOSE kinds of prices. Bloody hell.
Wish they’d reissue it only with flash memory instead. I’d get an iPod Touch, but they don’t have one with that much memory.
You can get used ones on Amazoon for about $250.
128GB iPhone 6 works for me.
They said they couldn’t get the parts. Makes sense, who else even uses those little hards drives anymore with flash memory so common these days? Still bummed, tho. It was a nice, solid iPod.
That’s why I thought changing it from the physical drive to flash media could have been a choice. Or just give the Nano a giant storage capacity.
My read on what Tim Cook said is that it was selling just enough over the years to continue manufacturing it as-is and keep selling it to the remaining people who still want iPods (like me, I got an upgraded one last Christmas) but not enough to put in the engineering and design effort necessary to even swap out one part like the hard drive.
But hey, maybe they’ll pull a “Coca-Cola Classic” and put out a new one with flash memory. Or at the very least maybe some other company can make an iPod-like device and license the right to sync with iTunes.
The other thing that occurred to me is that the iPod Classic, along with the 4S, were the last devices Apple made with the 30-pin connectors. Killing them both off at the same time means they can go 100% to lightning connectors for their iDevices.
Exactly. Imagine a revamped iPod Classic that has 160GB flash storage, Lightening port, and wrapped in a form factor that uses an aluminum unibody casing, is thinner and lighter and comes in different colors.
I’d be down with that.
Let’s see what they’re fetching in a year. The effect you’re seeing could just be eBay speculators. Or just the natural price jump when something suddenly has scarcity.
It would be great though if the market told Apple to bring it back.
The iPod mini uses standard CF cards and is relatively easy to disassemble and update yourself. A 128GB CF card can be had for under 100 dollars. A 256GB for 300. New batteries under 10.
wth is the Ipod mini?
Wait, the one from 10 years ago?
Yup.
Absolutely. This is/was one of the best iPods available. I have two and use one in car and one at home in a bose sounddock. I have the 30 and 80GB model and it’s really nice just having an iPod for music and nothing else and it holds a TON of it too, I set it and forget it. hardwired into my locked glovebox and never have to pull it out until I load new stuff. an iPod touch is more for people who want apps and games but I’ve never owned one.
YES!!! Of course, just this week, I started to get the “cannot read or write to this drive” message on mine. Super bummed.