What to Replace an iPod Classic with
If you're old enough to have grown up buying CDs, or – like me, old enough to have grown up buying records and then CDs and you don't refer to records as “vinyls” 😉, then you probably have a large selection of music in your iTunes Library, a 120 or 160GB iPod Classic, no need of Spotify or Apple Music and a nagging concern about what to do when your Classic fails.
In an ideal world, you'd buy another Classic, but since the Classic is no longer available, the best advice is to accept that and move on. It does however, address one concern: if you were prepared to spend your money on another iPod Classic, then you can probably justify the money on a 128GB iPod Touch, even if it means going without breakfast a few times.
The question now is “will the features of an iPod Touch be enough to outweigh the limited 128GB storage with its unused and unwanted apps that take up valuable storage space?”
Well, I've had no option but to find out, and based on my experience so far (a couple of weeks), the short answer is yes. An additional question may well be “but how do I fit 134GB of music onto a 128GB iPod Touch?” Obviously, that can't be done but it is possible to manage it in an easy and convenient way.
- What's the point of this thread? Wouldn't it be better placed in the iPod Touch community?
Anyone already using the iPod Touch already knows, one way or the other. The point here is to help Classic users decide on the best way to to replace their Classic and as the Classic reaches the end of its life, there's never been a better time to consider your options.
- Now I've had to move on, I have discovered that the most suitable replacement for me is the 128GB iPod Touch but what alternatives are there for the undecided?
Other brands of high capacity mp3 player. (They cannot use iTunes.)
- Buy a kit to convert the broken Classic into a solid state hard drive. (Probably more suitable for gadget freaks who like hacking stuff. Also, some later versions of the Classic can only use up to 128GB of storage, no matter how much storage you add to the device.)
- Give up on music. ( 😮 Not to be recommended!)
So the point of this thread is to help iPod Classic users decide whether the iPod Touch will work for them and one thing we can do is to compare the two devices to see if the features of the Classic are present on the Touch and whether the Touch has additional features that make up for the loss of a Classic.
Let's start with the limited storage capacity of the Touch at 128GB.
a 128GB Touch cannot hold a 145GB (or larger) Library.
No, you're right, it can't. However, if you think of your music as two types; the Must-Have music that you might want to play at any time and therefore want available on the iPod and the Nice-To-Have music that it would be nice to hear every now and again. Once your Must-Have list is less than roughly 90GB, just put it on the iPod. Then create a Smart Playlist with the Nice-To-Have music in it. Smart Playlists use rules to include or exclude songs from them and we can use these rules to limit the Playlist so that it can fit on the iPod. More than this, we can design the Smart Playlist to remove and automatically put back songs at every Sync, based (for example) on when they were last played. By using the additional Nice-To-Have Playlist, every Sync would remove recently played nice-to-have music and replace it with a new selection.
By the way, 90GB of music is approximately 12,000 songs which will play continuously for 40 days!
A point to note: even if you never use Playlists, you can use them as the control method to add music to your iPod and with a big Library, it's the only way. Manually Managing would be a nightmare. You don't have to “play by playlist”, you can still play albums or songs in the same way as you are doing now.
Let's have a look at the limitations of the Classic and the things we always wanted but never got on it:
- An obvious one to begin; when browsing Cover Flow on the Classic it's not possible to add a song to the On-The-Go Playlist:
On the iPod Touch, while browsing any of the music lists, you can tap-and-hold a song title and a pop-up enables adding to the Play Next list. You can even add a complete album in one go. Play Next is like the Up Next in your iTunes Library, you're adding it to the queue. Play Next is similar to the On-The-Go, but the songs played are not saved as a list once played. It is superior to the Classic's On-The-Go feature. (it does have a slight quirk though, added songs go to the beginning of the list rather than the end of it.)
- The Classic has a rubbish way of playing Podcasts (only from newest to oldest):
I haven't explored the Touch's Podcast App fully yet, but one thing is for certain, you can choose to play oldest to newest if you prefer. Podcasts can be downloaded directly to the Touch.
- Improve the Lyrics display:
The Touch has a much better Lyrics display. Lyrics are just below the play controls on the Now Playing screen, just scroll down the page.
- It takes forever to scroll through the Cover Flow menu on the Classic:
The Touch displays four album covers in the window, you can scroll up and down the list, it's faster to respond (no wait-for-cover image to load as you scroll) and there is a quick A-Z index on the right hand side for faster scrolling.
- Compilation albums are at the far end of the Albums menu, which takes too long to reach:
Compilation Albums have their own menu on the Touch as well as appearing on the main Albums menu. Scrolling through the full albums list is quicker than on the Classic.
The improvements in the Touch compared to the Classic include:
improved browsing by album cover and a larger image of the cover
- a Now Playing banner at the bottom of every music menu window. Tapping it brings up the full Now Playing screen
- the ability to see and change the rating of a song while browsing, even if it is not currently playing
- a quick index to allow finding one item in a long list. It does not appear on my Playlists menu, but that may be because I don't yet have enough items on the menu
- on some menus, choices of sort order (e.g. on the Artist menu, sort by title or oldest first/newest first and on the Albums menu, sort by Artist or Title)
- Create Regular playlists on the iPod
- Edit existing Regular Playlists on the iPod
- Add a description to both Regular and Smart Playlists
- Wi-Fi and access to the iTunes Store (I haven't explored any of this - in fact, I've turned my access to it off).
- Bluetooth. You can now Bluetooth your music to a compatible Bluetooth speaker or headphones. It still has the 3.5mm headphone jack, for wired headphones.
- A Notes App (not part of the Music App). This could be useful for making notes about managing your music library (for example).
In addition, although the Touch has the lightning connector, you can buy an optional adaptors or cables with lightning to 30-pin connector for physical connection to your existing dock.
This a is a very brief account of a very complex device. If you have a specific question about replacing your Classic with the iPod Touch (such as does it do so-and-so, or can I do this on the Touch), ask here and I'll see if I can find and describe the facility.