Apple should really do a 25th anniversary edition iPod with a scroll wheel, modernized battery, and modernized storage.
Do some nice nostalgia marketing for the zoomers and people that had one back in the day and it would sell like hotcakes.
unsupp0rted 5 hours ago [-]
They'd sell hundreds of units! Thousands even.
Although I can see them selling an original 2007 iPhone Anniversary Edition, fully upgraded under the hood and with a modern screen/camera/wifi/5G
But I'm only saying that because I don't like giant phones: I'm in the 2% minority.
trentnix 4 hours ago [-]
Yes, the MBAs won’t like it. But maybe, once in a while, companies should do things because they are cool and not because it clears some threshold on a magic spreadsheet.
I’d even settle for Apple opening up the Music app so I can upload music to my iPhone from Linux. But once again, that doesn’t make the spreadsheet sparkle.
You might be surprised. Companies like HiBy have a rather healthy music player lineup[0], where "fewer distractions" is an explicit marketing point.
Similarly, despite rather capable smartphones being available for as little as $100, the "feature phone" market is still doing quite well - and it definitely isn't just the grannies who are buying them!
Steve Jobs famously launched the smartphone industry as "We are launching three things: an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator. These are not three separate devices. It is one device, and we are calling it iPhone." Not having to carry a whole bunch of separate devices on a day-to-day basis was groundbreaking, and it was immediately clear that the synergy between the until-now separate features would open up a lot of new possibilities.
But since then the smartphone has mutated from a device of convenience into a grotesque attention-stealing privacy-invading Everything Device, which is used primarily as a proxy through which companies are doing massive harm to our society. For many people smartphones have become a necessary evil, and an increasingly-large group (many of whom Gen Z or Gen Alpha!) is deliberately refusing them out of self-preservation.
Sure, the market for a modern iPod refresh might not be gigantic, but I reckon it is definitely larger than the market for Apple Vision, or Meta's pervert glasses. The demand exists, the question is just whether it is large enough for Apple to care - especially when it means undermining their own golden goose app ecosystem.
That would at the very least have to have Bluetooth (and at that point they might as well add wifi, since that is more or less the same modem).
That would make a damn nice 149$ apple music machine, slap some stripped down firmware on it, so they can argue why it only supports apple music streaming.
haritha-j 6 hours ago [-]
That price may be wishful thinking. Aren’t even their base ear buds $130?
KeplerBoy 6 hours ago [-]
Yes, you're probably right. Ipod nanos already started from ~150$ 20 years ago.
Marsymars 3 hours ago [-]
FWIW, the last-gen iPod Nano had Bluetooth already.
lifestyleguru 2 hours ago [-]
Best they can do is larger but thinner device, with large extrusion, and obviously 8GB of RAM.
brnt 6 hours ago [-]
Apple is in the ad and subscription business now, so either it'll sell for 899, it'll be covered in add, or it won't sell at all.
Raed667 10 hours ago [-]
The iPod nano 3rd generation holds a special place in my heart, i was about 14 when my mom bought me one as a birthday gift and i still cherish it till today where I charge it maybe once a year and listen to my (very curated) metal catalogue from back in the day... it was the only ipod i ever had or needed
It obviously can't hold a charge anymore and every time i reach for it i'm praying it still works
RCitronsBroker 10 hours ago [-]
awe, my dad brought me one back from a conference trip to the US. was so proud of that thing
dmitrygr 4 hours ago [-]
Now this is HACKER news! Kudos to the author! Well done.
The NOP thing was predictable. Qemu is not great at limiting itself to actual requested emulated hardware, often allowing supersets of instruction sets and abilities.
And NAND....is always unnecessarily exciting.
peterburkimsher 9 hours ago [-]
Congratulations on figuring out the NAND upgrade! I tried soldering another flash chip onto the Nano 1G, but gave up when it didn’t detect:
Do some nice nostalgia marketing for the zoomers and people that had one back in the day and it would sell like hotcakes.
Although I can see them selling an original 2007 iPhone Anniversary Edition, fully upgraded under the hood and with a modern screen/camera/wifi/5G
But I'm only saying that because I don't like giant phones: I'm in the 2% minority.
I’d even settle for Apple opening up the Music app so I can upload music to my iPhone from Linux. But once again, that doesn’t make the spreadsheet sparkle.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/108935
Steve Jobs famously launched the smartphone industry as "We are launching three things: an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator. These are not three separate devices. It is one device, and we are calling it iPhone." Not having to carry a whole bunch of separate devices on a day-to-day basis was groundbreaking, and it was immediately clear that the synergy between the until-now separate features would open up a lot of new possibilities.
But since then the smartphone has mutated from a device of convenience into a grotesque attention-stealing privacy-invading Everything Device, which is used primarily as a proxy through which companies are doing massive harm to our society. For many people smartphones have become a necessary evil, and an increasingly-large group (many of whom Gen Z or Gen Alpha!) is deliberately refusing them out of self-preservation.
Sure, the market for a modern iPod refresh might not be gigantic, but I reckon it is definitely larger than the market for Apple Vision, or Meta's pervert glasses. The demand exists, the question is just whether it is large enough for Apple to care - especially when it means undermining their own golden goose app ecosystem.
[0]: https://store.hiby.com/collections/music-player
That would make a damn nice 149$ apple music machine, slap some stripped down firmware on it, so they can argue why it only supports apple music streaming.
It obviously can't hold a charge anymore and every time i reach for it i'm praying it still works
The NOP thing was predictable. Qemu is not great at limiting itself to actual requested emulated hardware, often allowing supersets of instruction sets and abilities.
And NAND....is always unnecessarily exciting.
https://peterburk.github.io/blog/