Accidental Tech PodcastNew member special!
ATP Tier List: Every iPod
https://atp.fm/atp-tier-list-every-ipod
Yes, we actually ranked every iPod.
We're all wrong, but we can all agree that @siracusa is the most wrong.
Join now to listen! https://atp.fm/join
Nathan King
charlesesmith
joshhunt@atpfm oh im so eager to hear this because for the first time I have very strong feelings about this ranking.
AlanNever had an iPod, so the Creative ZEN Vision: M was my winner!
Michael Ball@atpfm
I am so angry.
Like irrationally so.
You missed the iPod Mini 2nd Gen
The HP iPods.
Also I do love the gum pack iPod shuffle! They made no sense but they are fun.
John Siracusa@_mball_ The mini 2nd gen is in there.
@siracusa I thought you went from mini to 1st gen to nano.
Though the mini 2nd gen wasn’t very different. And there’s some weird half gens like 5.5.
What’s truly weird looking back is just how short lived some of the models were. You had stuff being entirely discontied within less than a year. Don’t think Tim Cook would do that today!
@_mball_ the 2nd gen mini got a 16 second passing mention. Look at the chapters 🤣
@atpfm
Finally finished — I think you recovered by the end but I am a bit sad the Mini got dropped off. I never owned one but as an early teen when it came out, I think you missed just how big a deal it was.
IMO: 5th gen / video is my favorite overall, but the Mini was a “real” iPod priced for most people and the nano came and upped the cool. But the Mini and Nano were always more interesting to kids than the bigger ones.
But then the iPhone came and stole all the interest.
Alfredo Octavio
Scott Nourse@atpfm Love the iPod discussion! A big reason I got and loved the original iPod is that not only was it a revolutionary music device- it was also a good deal at the time for a decent performing external hard drive. I used a portion of the space to move things between my home and work Macs. Maybe ‘S’ Tier. Agree with @siracusa on the first Shuffle- ‘A’ tier. I shuffled anyways and I used the heck out of it- snowmobiling, on motorcycles & atvs, never skipped a beat and no worries. Still works.
Trent Shell@atpfm fat nano was robbed. It was perfect for my 11 year old hands!
yono mittlefehldt@atpfm oh my. I bought a Diamond Rio right before I went to college and I remember converting my entire CD collection to 5-6 CDs worth of MP3s. It was a lot easier to take those to college than all my CDs
@atpfm You guys completely passed over MiniDisc… which makes sense because I think I might have been the only person that didn't work for Sony that used them.
Michael Lewis@charlesesmith There were dozens of us! Dozens!
Thom Bullock@siracusa I’m sure this isn’t info you need, but - the U2 iPod was black and red because the whole HTDAAB era was black and red - album cover, vertigo video, staging, etc.
Joe Lion
FreediverX@atpfm @siracusa
I wish you'd have brought Marco and Casie up to speed on what “squirting" was. Classic cringeworthy Microsoft product design and marketing.
https://www.engadget.com/2012-05-14-robbie-bach-would-not-have-made-zune.html
https://www.engadget.com/2009-09-15-zune-4-0-software-is-out-ready-to-fulfill-your-dreams.html
sayrer@atpfm @siracusa I liked the 3rd gen’s glowing red buttons. I had the first one and the 3rd, which I just got because of the storage. It was not that fun to use, but it looked cool at night. I was taking the subway in NYC a lot at the time, and was still worried about looking cool. You missed the more rare artist editions too (Beck etc)... oh and the blue HP one!
https://www.reddit.com/r/ipod/comments/ipq9xb/3rd_gen_classic_is_arguably_the_best_gen_classic/
Edward J. Schloss MD
@atpfm @siracusa iPod 3rd gen 2003 deserves special notice, as it was first to have Windows compatibility with iTunes. This first brought me into the Apple ecosystem. It just worked, unlike the other crap Windows MP3 players I’d used. After that I got Mac mini with KVM switch to share with my PC. And with that, I’m all in.
@atpfm I know the horse trading is part of the point of these episodes, but seems like you would get a better representation of everybody’s personalities if each of you filled out your own tier list
xeuTV@atpfm @siracusa @marcoarment @caseyliss
as someone who had 10 ipods, i LOVED the 3rd gen shuffle and it would be S tier for me. Like the 4th non color classic and the 2nd nano :^)
the only downside of the 3rd gen shuffle for me, was that it had no internal clock and it wouldn't sync "last time played" data (non of the shuffles did)
as someone who had 10 ipods, i LOVED the 3rd gen shuffle and it would be S tier for me. Like the 4th non color classic and the 2nd nano :^)
the only downside of the 3rd gen shuffle for me, was that it had no internal clock and it wouldn't sync "last time played" data (non of the shuffles did)
Darth Aloha 🌺
Sunny Walker 🤦♂️@DarthAloha @atpfm I spent most of that episode perusing ebay to see what was available and almost made multiple purchases. I’m with @siracusa on the long edge shuffle being S tier, but mostly for sentimental reasons.
Jakob Bäck@atpfm
The iPod 3rd gen is my favourite – and first – model. The backlit buttons were so cool, the rounded corners made it feel so good to hold. Also, 30 pin and iTunes for Windows!
The iPod 3rd gen is my favourite – and first – model. The backlit buttons were so cool, the rounded corners made it feel so good to hold. Also, 30 pin and iTunes for Windows!
Andreas Hartl@atpfm I won’t defend the gum pack Shuffle, but it was great for one use case: as the electronic heart of the waterproof H2Audio https://www.ilounge.com/index.php/reviews/entry/h2o-audio-interval-waterproof-headphone-system-for-ipod-shuffle-3g
I got the iPod at a fire sale for really cheap (it didn't seem to sell well), the multi-click controls matched to the problem space. I remember listening to the first ATP shows on this - syncing iTunes to it and the iPhone so I could continue where I left off.
Christian Kent 𝘊𝘒 :＼﹥@atpfm @siracusa Hi, um, I know I complained about the 480p in the YouTube comments …
But actually I only really wanted enlarged photos of whatever you were talking about when arguing over a detail! Specifically the backs of the large iPod. I can't really remember what these looked like but I'm sure I had / have a strong opinion, and … well … the way these shows work is, you wanna join Team John or Team Marco, y'know?
I really think @marcoarment had a valid point about the old design of the large iPod! Or — he was a total fool about that! It's definitely one of those polar opposites though!!
I just can't see the backs of these devices — and is it true, in your Zoom meeting you were looking at these images already?
It's not even that easy to Google this sort of thing because of the naming conventions, and you'll as often as not get a search result with only the front side in an image.
Dan "So this is 50" Pierce@atpfm @siracusa @caseyliss @marcoarment I bought and returned the Rio PMP300.
Reason 1: You could fit an album but only by encoding at a terrible bit rate.
Reason 2: You used a dongle to connect it to the printer port and so file transfers were just too slow.
Rob Howard@atpfm @siracusa Maybe this was just a thing in my friend group, but before the iPod went mainstream nobody I knew had an MP3 player. Everyone had a minidisc Walkman, with a 70- or 80-minute disc. If you used the maximum (4x) MDLP compression you could have 4-5 hours on a disc. You could shuffle but there was no structure other than the order you ‘taped’ the music. The sound quality was bad but with the earbuds we used you couldn’t tell the difference anyway.
Nathan Bottomley
ReidPretty sure I’m a couple years younger than you guys but I had a first gen spinny wheel iPod and went straight to a non-U2 4th gen click wheel version. IMO the click wheel was S tier. The ultimate hard disk iPod. Used it for 10 years; once it outlived its portable use it became the MP3 player in my M Coupe. Up until I got the click of death the morning we were leaving for a roadtrip.
And yeah, aluminum nano way better than plastic scratchy nano.
outadoc 
@atpfm Okay, I'll bite: ranking the Nano 4G on the same tier as the 7G is absolutely disgraceful. The 7G should be F-tier, and the 4G is obviously a perfect S. 😭
Chris Poole@atpfm @siracusa
@caseyliss @marcoarment So I’m super late to this party, but it did prompt me to dig out my original iPod 3rd gen, and Shuffle. Forgot how nice the iPod feels in the hand. Both, S tier. (No scratches on either: I have the iPod sock to thank for that.)
I think I’m with @ismh86: 3rd gen best gen.
Stephen Hackett