Story time:

I was over in rural Western Ireland at the end of 2023 when I was given a white 1st gen iPod touch by a relative who was cleaning some junk out of the house. I had previously expressed my soft spot for tech history, so this wasn’t completely random, and they would have binned it otherwise.

It was seemingly unharmed by the intervening years albeit missing a charging cable. We had no plans that day. The weather outside was what the Irish describe as “a soft fine day” – what I would refer to as “a relentless bone-chilling mist”.

So I found a computer shop, a tiny place in the nearby village, thinking they might have one. I make the drive, tell the guy (who presumably owns and runs this tiny shop) what I’m looking for and he has no fucking clue. I couldn’t really blame him, though, because Apple had just gone to the USB C standard at this point, at least in Europe.

This was a cable 2 generations of proprietary connectors ago. Not the previous “lightning” cable with 8(?) pins, but the OG one, the wide fucker with hella pins. Some of you might remember these, as they were seemingly everywhere circa 2010.

The guy had a pegboard on the wall behind him with all his wares hanging up. I scanned the various cables, adapters, and peripherals until I spotted my quarry, a small white box containing “cable: 30-pin apple dock connector to USB A” in trademark Apple white. It was the very last one. Forked over 8 euros for the thing and went back home.

I started charging up the iPod. Not only did it take a charge and boot, it was unlocked too, and worked flawlessly. The thing was a veritable time capsule from 15 years back. Chock full of era-appropriate pop music, mundane notes and voice memos, even some silly photos and videos taken with the shitty little onboard camera.

My wife still ribs me for this one: the time I “spent a whole day of our Irish holiday ignoring everyone to play with obsolete tech”, but for me it’s a very fond memory. I still have the device in its unaltered form and I go through its contents now and again, and it brings me joy. All because some dude decided to hang onto a single cable for 15 years thinking someone might eventually need it.