New iPods: Is iPod Classic Going Away?

David Weintraub (apparently) - 12:36pm Sep 10, 2008 PST
via email

I agree with your assessment about the iPod Classic. The original iPod
was a 5Gb device and seemed quite expansive at the time. The 160Gb was
probably not a big seller because it was simply too big. Does anyone
really need to store 40,000 songs or 170 hours of video. Heck, until
recently, you couldn't even get computers with that much disk space.

The only remaining iPod Classic is the 120Gb model (which is still
bigger than most laptops). But, we are seeing the Nano nibbling down
at the lower end. What was originally a 4Gb player, the Nano at 16Gb
is now large enough to store most people's music and video collection.
Next year, the 32Gb Nano will be out. Since there are few games for
the iPod Classic, it is mainly used to store songs, video, and photos.
Unless you have extensive collections of these, most of that diskspace
sits empty. I have a 30Gb iPod classic, and I have what I think of as
an extensive music collection, and almost half of my iPod sits empty.
Most of the kids I know seem to have no problems storing their music
on 8Gb iPod Nanos.

The iPod Touch is obviously the wave of the future for Apple. Now at
32Gb capacity, it really can do everything an iPhone can do except
take pictures and make phone calls (neither of these things are
standout features of the iPhone anyway). I look at it as about 10Gb to
16Gb to store most people's music collection, and the rest for games
and other applications. Within the next year, the capacity will be up
to 64Gb. With the new improved iPod Nano taking over the pure music
player market and the iPod Touch as a more complete Internet enabled
device, there really isn't much room in the lineup for the iPod
Classic anymore. By next year, it will go the way of the Plymouth and
Oldsmobile.

By the way, back in February, I was looking at the iPod Touch as a
replacement for my Palm PDA which I had stopped using. In June, the
third party applications were tempting me to go ahead and buy, but the
fact that it didn't have an external speaker meant that it couldn't
beep when I had an appointment. That's a showstopper when you look at
something as a PDA replacement.

Now, with an external speaker, there is no reason for me not to get
the iPod Touch as my next PDA.

--
David Weintraub
qazwartgmail.com