[nubinetwork]

The iPod was a product in an interesting time... if you ignore the screen, a modern mp3 player could be made as small as a SD card... as soon as you add the screen, you need a full operating system to manage files and run the screen. Nobody wants to put the effort into something that's going to be as basic as a mp3 player.

[Rohansi]

> as soon as you add the screen, you need a full operating system to manage files and run the screen

More software? Sure. An operating system? No. There were (are?) plenty of cheap MP3 players that had screens but just drive it with some budget microcontroller.

[nubinetwork]

And they're all e-waste nuggets sitting in dankpods' storage closet... :)

[trencedamp]

It barely needs a screen. I adored my minidisc players and they were all basically calculator displays

[youngtaff]

I adored my MiniDisc too but the limited storage of a single disk makes it easy to find the music you want

Given how much we can store in solid state not sure I’d want to navigate my library without a screen

[ezst]

Would you still adore it as much today, though? I know I don't adore my iPod classic as much now as I did in 2006, and that's inclusive of the nostalgia kick. It's just not very practical and usable in today's world.

[thejazzman]

I still adore the hell out of my 512GB (SD) iPod Classic/Minis

You can buy new shells, colors, storage adapters, batteries, etc.

https://github.com/jmonster/podhnologic

[ezst]

The tactile experience is a nice throwback in a touchscreen mostly/no physical buttons present, but the display is garbage by modern standards, finding specific tracks sucks, and doing any amount of playlist management is an exercise in frustration. And that is with replacing the firmware with rockbox, which significantly improves on those areas :-)

https://www.rockbox.org/

[SpecialistK]

I don't use it daily, but I enjoyed rediscovering and using my MiniDisc stuff that I was inspired to build a pretty popular website around it :)

[ezst]

I would really love to try MD: besides the "tactileness" of it, the storage limits imposes to actively curate playlists and make compromises on how much/what music you can carry with you given the circumstances. An iPod classic already has so much storage available that this thought is secondary and you don't have to engage with your music to the same extent.

[SpecialistK]

Absolutely, and that's something I've tried to highlight in the FAQs on the site - limitation breeds creativity. It makes you appreciate the media just a little bit more.

One of the best places to have MD is in a car. You can quickly identify (by unique color or label) each disc, which is either a full album presented as the artist intended or a playlist you curated. There's no "shuffle all 5000 songs" or "here's a playlist Spotify calls 80s kitchen songs but is half 90s pop you've heard before"

[steveBK123]

The other place I've thought I'd like to go back to MD is just sitting in bed and listening to some music.

I don't want to fiddle with my phone and get blasted by light from the screen.

I don't want to swipe through an infinite list of all music known to man.

I don't want to wait for an app to update, page to load, song to buffer or pop-up upselling me to need to be dismissed.

I want to listen to music I own, on a device I own, which instantly responds when I press play. That's it.

[Melatonic]

What's the website ?

[SpecialistK]

The MiniDisc Wiki at minidisc.wiki [didn't mention it before because self-promo]

[ezst]

Amazing resource, indeed, Good job there!

[trencedamp]

Hard to be objective through the nostalgia tbh. I would expect more today I guess

[Cthulhu_]

So like the original iPod Shuffle? Just buttons, a clip and a headphone jack, no screen.

(I do think they need a minimum size to be usable but companies can be creative with the form factor)

[fortyseven]

I find this seriously underestimates what jackets 6 will undertake for fun, even unpaid.