Grid Studio disassembles well-loved gadgets and presents their rearranged innards as framed wall art. And its nostalgic collection for Apple fans just got two new entries.
The collection now includes a fourth-generation iPod Classic and a first-generation iPad mini for your aesthetic consideration.
Editor’s note: We originally published this illustrated history of the iPod to celebrate the device’s 10th anniversary on Oct. 22, 2011 (and updated it a decade later). We republished it on May 10, 2022, when Apple finally pulled the plug on the iPod.
The iPod grew out of Steve Jobs’ digital hub strategy. Life was going digital. People were plugging all kinds of devices into their computers: digital cameras, camcorders, MP3 players.
The computer was the central device, the “digital hub,” that could be used to edit photos and movies or manage a large music library. Jobs tasked Apple’s programmers with making software for editing photos, movies and managing digital music. While they were doing this, they discovered that all the early MP3 players were horrible. Jobs asked his top hardware guy, Jon Rubinstein, to see if Apple could do better.
There’s something special about old Apple gear. Maybe that’s why it comes up fairly frequently in Cult of Mac‘s Setups coverage. One of the most-beloved classics in Apple’s storied history of beloved products is the Cinema Display. Today’s featured setup sports not one but two 30-inch Cinema Displays, the big stunners Steve Jobs introduced to an absolutely dazzled Worldwide Developers Conference audience in 2004.
So, naturally, questions came up about how to best use them with a newer Mac.
An accidental collaboration with Apple saved NBC sitcom The Office from cancellation during its second season.
A fifth-generation iPod took a starring role in an episode of the comedy series. Then, the unlikely cameo spurred sales of reruns of the show on iTunes. And the rest is history.
A YouTuber hacked a 17-year-old iPod Classic to let it stream Spotify tracks, successfully bringing a relic from the MP3 days into the modern era.
To be clear, this isn’t just a software hack. Guy Dupont pretty much gutted the vintage Apple music player. He added components like a Raspberry Pi Zero W board, a new LCD color display, a haptic motor, and a 1,000 mAh rechargeable battery.
Apple has given the App Store boot to an app which transformed your iPhone into an iPod Classic, complete with virtual clickwheel.
However, the Rewound app’s developers say that they aren’t planning to go quietly into the night. Instead, they’re aiming to release a web app for their creation.
The iPod’s click wheel was once one of the most iconic UI elements in consumer electronics. Today, it’s gone to the great user interface retirement home in the sky. Or has it? A new app suggests maybe not.
An iOS developer has unveiled a nifty app concept which aims to transform your iPhone into an iPod Classic by incorporating a virtual click wheel. Check it out.
The iPod was an instant classic — killed off in an instant by the iPhone.
But the iPod has a Dr. Frankenstein in Remy Sternbach. The San Diego tech repairman is determined to bring two to life each week with shiny new bodies, solid state drives, new high-capacity batteries and a full terabyte of storage.
What Sternbach has discovered is the obsolete hardware has an enduring cool.
“I know this is a niche market, but there are people who really like the iPod and like Apple nostalgia,” Sternbach told Cult of Mac. “We also get a lot of audiophiles and people who travel a lot to places with patchy cell service. They want their music.”
iPod lovers have been waiting years for Apple to resurrect its portable music player, but a brilliant new concept case could give us the next best thing.
Designer Joyce Kang created a brilliant mockup of a case for Apple Watch that transforms it into a music player reminiscent of the original iPod. The tiny case even comes with a working click wheel — and still gives you access to Apple Watch’s best features!
Nick Wellings listens to music on his iPhone, preferring not to disturb any one of his 108 iPods.
He figures his collection would hold 231,000 songs, but only one has ever been touched or seen the light of day. They remain factory-sealed in their boxes.
The iPod’s status as an icon was brief but seismic, a sleek and at-times-colorful trigger of upheaval to the music industry in the middle of the century’s first decade. Soon the iPhone, which grew more powerful with each generation, relegated the iPod to junk drawers, closets and boxes, next to that cassette-tape-playing Sony Walkman.
