[sylens]

I think the author is correct to a point but I don't believe the examples they've chosen provide the best support for their case. Gen Z buying iPods and people buying N64 games again is not evidence of the monoculture breaking apart - it's a retreat into the past for the enlightened few because their needs are not being met by modern goods and services. You cannot buy a dedicated MP3 player today with the software polish and quality of life that an iPod had in the early 2000s (or even a Zune).

Instead, I see the growth and momentum behind Linux and self-hosting as better evidence that change is afoot.

[Aurornis]

> You cannot buy a dedicated MP3 player today with the software polish and quality of life that an iPod had in the early 2000s

I could see how many people would assume this, but it’s actually false.

There’s actually a big selection of dedicated audio players that do the job very well now. The battery life and audio quality are extremely good because there’s a niche market for them with a lot of competition.

If you think the iPod software experience in the early 2000s was good then you and I had very different experiences with iTunes during that time.

The resurgence of retro gear has a simpler explanation: Retro is cool. Vintage is cool. Has been for a long time. The reason we’re noticing it now is because the tech things we remember are finally passing that threshold where they go from being outdated to being retro. Just like clothes and styles that went out of fashion but are now retro-cool.

[californical]

I looked pretty hard - I specifically don’t want an android OS called an mp3 player. I want a dedicated media player that has physical button controls (not touch screen), is very snappy, has a good UI, and has a purpose-built OS specific to only playing songs and podcasts, and maybe movies, which I can sync with my computer (maybe with rsync or whatever else). No apps.

The only option that I could find was an iPod classic, modded with an SD card and better battery.

If something else exists, especially brand new, I’d love to know! But I couldn’t find hardly anything that wasn’t just an Android phone with no cell service.

[nobodyandproud]

I like Alan Moore’s take: A culture retreats into the comfort of nostalgia in especially uncertain times.

I feel retro fad of this generation is precisely this.

Edit: I’m sure that observation has more refined roots, but I’m far from well-read or well-cultured. But if someone happens to know, please let know!

[jhbadger]

Sure, you can find new MP3 players on Temu and Alibaba, but they are almost invariably nearly unusable instant e-waste (like most things on those sites) And iTunes was great back in the day -- it only got awful when Apple made it support iPhones, Apple Music, etc. When it just did what it was supposed to (rip CDs and put the contents, neatly labeled and organized on your iPod) it was unsurpassed to this day.

[rpdillon]

Agree. I think folks are romanticizing the iPod. It synced only with Mac via iTunes, had 5 GB of storage for $400 and had 10 hours of battery life and weighed 184 grams.

Today you can get a music player whose battery lasts five times as long, weighs one sixth as much, costs one-tenth the price, and stores 25 times as much, while also offering full wireless connectivity, supporting more audio formats, video playback, and reading books.

[bartread]

I agree on the some fronts. MP3 players that support a variety of other formats, including lossless, and have far better playback quality than any iPod ever did are out there.

But the last time I bought one I remember a mixed experience. On the one hand, it sounded incredible. On the other, as soon as I loaded all 9500 tracks in my library onto it, the UI ground to a halt. Storage wise I could have crammed many times the number of tracks on there but there was no way the user interface would cope.

And I had to organise it all manually on my computer in order to avoid a mess on the device.

And the sync experience absolutely sucked balls. There was nothing close to plug it in and forget about it.

So, with some regrets, I returned the device and got a refund. I still use Spotify[0] in the car, and CDs at home.

[0] Which I have a love-hate relationship with.

[lemax]

Yeah, I guess this take is tempting for a technologist, but Gen Z is buying iPods and walking around in wired headphones because it's cool and nostalgic, not because of usability. Cycles of nostalgia are well understood to be getting smaller. The creative industry is creating new things less frequently and referring back sooner (the old 20 year cycle of fashion repeating itself is contracting). There is an element of disenchantment, of wanting to disconnect from the present, but that has always sort of been there as people reached for vintage cameras, record players, and old clothes in the niche cultural movements that have preceded the current Gen Z 2000's obsession that's happening.

see https://www.npr.org/2022/03/01/1081115609/from-tumblrcore-to...

[at1as]

> walking around in wired headphones because it's cool and nostalgic, not because of usability

Can only speak for myself, but I purchased some $15 wired USB-C earbuds to use on flights while the Airpods were charging.

And I've been increasingly just using them. The Airpods would often not connect in one ear without a few tries, and the pairing was a pain (disabled the auto-pairing as that was even worse), even on a medium-length flight I'd have to charge them at least once, and I'd often find a way to fidget with the case and have everything disconnect.

I think I overestimated how much value their noise canceling or audio quality was bringing me when I mostly used them for podcasts.

[majormajor]

Aren't we roughly right on schedule for 20 years? Plus or minus a few years here and there (giant jeans, for instance, were more 90s, which is 30 years now. lots of 90s or even 80s influences still popping up in fashion that were definitely not there 10 years ago).

The article has a niche example of some pulls from 2014 too, but the dominant thread is older. 2004 kids not-infrequently went through Nirvana/Pearl Jam grungy phases too for a 10 year loop.

iPods certainly are 20-25 years ago. iPhones and iPod Touches are about to hit 20. N64s are 30.

[jasonfarnon]

"Gen Z buying iPods and people buying N64 games again is not evidence of the monoculture breaking apart - it's a retreat into the past for the enlightened few because their needs are not being met by modern goods and services."

That seems like a charitable interpretation to me. Maybe it's just a retro fashion trend that is even at its peak a tiny blip in the market, like back in the 90s when bell bottoms were "in". Give it a few years and we'll see.

[lmz]

The iPod and N64 are about 20 (or more, for the N64) years back from now, no? So about as far back as bell bottoms were from the 90s.

[tgv]

> You cannot buy a dedicated MP3 player today with the software polish and quality of life that an iPod had in the early 2000s

Tell me about it. My iPod Classic was in a terminal phase, and since I like to carry my music around instead of streaming arbitrary stuff, I bought a Sony Walkman mp3 (+ other formats) player. It's bad. It takes a long time to boot, the battery life is mediocre, the UI is mainly lists of things, searching always misses tracks or albums, the volume defaults to a pretty low level, and when you increase it, it interrupts you asking if you're sure.

And when I started copying my itunes collection to the "walkman" (it is branded Walkman, but not worthy of the name), it would constantly stop copying. The included software was useless, and wouldn't copy a single track, giving up after 5 to 10 minutes of scanning. I had to write a Python script to overcome problems with long directory and file names and copy them to the proper directory.

Worst of all: there's a very loud click when you stop a track (using wired headphones). It's as if they never even used it.

[claudiulodro]

AGPTEK makes decent and affordable MP3 players that still have buttons, and the battery life is really solid (~40 hrs!). I think they also use a dedicated MP3 player OS rather than an Android reskin. That's my recommendation if you want a 2007-style MP3 player with more modern hardware.

[adolph]

I looked that up. This does not have the smooth textual UI of an iPod. It does seem better than many things. AFAICT those are buttons in a circle, not a jog dial, which is the key affordance.

I'd be awesome if ModRetro made an mp3 player that mirrors the iPod similar to the Chromatic's GameBoy.

[rendaw]

I had a few. They advertised ogg support but it didn't actually work. The directory ordering was random, and it would lose metadata or not show tracks with non-ascii characters in the filename. It didn't remember position on stop. IIRC the sorting didn't work either. The buttons were awful, it felt cheap. It was typical Chinese manufacturing slop. But it had solitaire or some other game installed.

[hshdhdhj4444]

Yeah, the author’s examples point to nostalgia-core, kind of like why Stranger Things is so popular. They’re not evidence for the tech monopoly breaking.

[reaperducer]

As pointed out by Saturday Night Live, Stranger Things is the new Star Wars.

[stronglikedan]

> You cannot buy a dedicated MP3 player today with the software polish and quality of life that an iPod had in the early 2000s (or even a Zune).

What the what?!? There's tons of DAPs on the market, and more than a few that would put "an iPod had in the early 2000s (or even a Zune)" to shame.

[sylens]

As someone who would love to buy one - can you recommend a few?

[echelon]

> growth and momentum behind Linux and self-hosting as better evidence that change is afoot.

Linux is still not user friendly enough. Products from two decades ago are more user friendly than modern "mainstream" disros.

Look at Matrix and other OSS that wants to be mainstream. It's got awful UI/UX. And it's never taken off.

Gimp is an ugly beast with a bad name. Nobody's using that unless they're a Linux nerd.

I do see lots of people building retro game collections. Analogue 3D was a huge hit. Massive demand. It's sold out instantly five times. Palmer Luckey has a company building a similar product, and that's also sold out.

The clothing stores sell cassette tapes and vinyl. iPod and Zune are venerated.

My wife is Gen Z and into mainstream culture. She's all about retro. Polaroid, Instax, 2000's era digital cameras. The low end consumer digital camera I bought for $100 or so in 2004 is now selling for more than that. These things are wildly popular.

They're even hunting down old disposable one-use film cameras to pop off the lenses.

In any case, my wife knows this stuff. She doesn't know what Linux is.

[pizza234]

> Linux is still not user friendly enough. Products from two decades ago are more user friendly than modern "mainstream" disros.

> Gimp is an ugly beast with a bad name. Nobody's using that unless they're a Linux nerd.

It depends on the use case. The vast majority of computer users nowadays use only the browser and an office suite. Even email clients are a thing of the past.

It's true that Gimp doesn't have a great UX, but who spends time photoretouching on the computer, when one can do it in a few seconds on the phone?

[8note]

> Linux is still not user friendly enough

have you not touched a steam deck? it does the job well.

when the gabecube comes out, linux as a desktop i think will gain a lot of popularity

[nephihaha]

Gimp is alright in my experience. It took a while to play around with and get used to... But I was able to use it to edit some of my photographs for a public art exhibition.

I'm not a Linux nerd by the way. I struggle to use it but Gimp did the job, whereas a couple of alternatives wouldn't. (One of them was RawTherapee and I didn't find it user friendly.)

[mistrial9]

Gimp and on the other side Adobe itself, are a special kind of sad story IMHO

[Onavo]

Well, there's SV's favorite minimalist hardware (along with the overpriced woop band):

https://bemighty.com/

[patwolf]

I got one of these for my kid a few years ago. He liked to browse Spotify on my phone, and I thought it would be a good screenless alternative. But honestly it just sat in a drawer, and I didn't have the patience to maintain and sync playlists to it.

It's easy to be nostalgic for the iPod era, but having to sync music is something I'm fine keeping in the past.

[rambambram]

That's an MP3-player, right? It looks like they go overboard to call this an offline Spotify device, instead of what it is. Or am I missing something?

[thaumasiotes]

Why is it $130? It's a small mp3 player. It should be more like $30.

[whilenot-dev]

"Playback Requirements: Spotify Premium or Amazon Music" -> hard no.

[idiotsecant]

>You cannot buy a dedicated MP3 player today with the software polish and quality of life that an iPod had in the early 2000s

wat. I'm curious how an ipod from 2000 is better than, for example, the Fiio jm21. It's worse in pretty much every possible way, other than the ipod might be appealing to a certain kind of 'old man shakes fist at clouds' type of user.

[bufordsharkley]

I can't speak from personal experience with the Fiio jm21, but I was a big user of a previous generation of Fiio, and while I imagine some technical leaps forward have been achieved with this generation (the Fiio M1 never, for instance, achieved gapless playback from 2015-2021, even though this was promised with every new software version), taking a quick look at it... this is just an android phone interface! App store? Chrome? I certainly don't want this from a dedicated music device

Beyond this, I'd say that the true advantage of the iPod Classic was a matter of polish and UX:

* Dedicated buttons/wheel/etc that are tactile instead of a touchscreen interface (the Fiio M1 was button-and-wheel based, but it never approached the quality of Apple engineering); I see the jm21 has some side-based buttons for pause/forward/back, which is nice, but a touchscreen as main interface still grates * A way to interface with your albums that was delightful and visually dense (Cover Flow remains the single greatest music UI put forward)

[majormajor]

Took a quick look. All screen. Usability downgrade.

And near-200 bucks is WAY more than a lot of used iPods for budget-conscious groups that are also looking to make a fashion statement on the side.

Going to all-glass made sense for adding "app" functionality. It's a loss if you want a dedicated device.

[sylens]

The jm21 runs Android, does that not make it a multi-purpose device without tactile, bespoke controls and against the main focus of the article?

I'd also argue that the manual[0] leaves something to be desired compared to those original iPods.

[0] https://fiio-user-manual.oss-cn-hangzhou.aliyuncs.com/EN/JM2...

[wao0uuno]

It's just a clunky android phone without modem. Looks terrible.

[alephnerd]

> Gen Z buying iPods and people buying N64 games again is not evidence of the monoculture breaking apart - it's a retreat into the past for the enlightened few because their needs are not being met by modern goods and services

It's simpler than that - retro is an (a e s t h e t i c)

Those of us who are Zillenials, Gen Z, or Gen Alpha were still in elementary school or not around when those products were mainstream.

It's the same way you saw Millenial hipsters wearing flannel, drinking PBR, started classical rock inspired indie bands like "Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah", renovating abandoned lofts in bRoOklYn, and making 70s and 80s references in Venture Bros.

Most HNers skew old [0] - late 30s to early 40s at the youngest based on most of the references I've seen - so to you guys the iPod or N64 evokes a similar emotion response to what a Nintendo Switch, Bucket Hats, and SnK will in the 2035-45 period.

Nostalgia marketing is the name of the game now [1][2][3].

[0] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5DlTexEXxLQ

[1] - https://www.uschamber.com/co/good-company/launch-pad/busines...

[2] - https://www.hbs.edu/recruiting/insights-and-advice/blog/post...

[3] - https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/how-to-retain-customers

[pretzellogician]

Your points about nostalgia marketing are quite valid.

But fyi, the Venture Brothers creators (Publick, born 1967, and Hammer, born 1971) are firmly in Gen X.

[nekooooo]

not sure if you mean sonic and knuckles or the company that made king of fighters or something else.

[at1as]

> It's simpler than that - retro is an (a e s t h e t i c)

I think I agree. But I also think a second order consequence of this is chipping away at the standalone ecosystems (Apple, Google, etc). Even a small contingent of user demand spins up new (or renewed) categories, and that fuels a healthier tech environment

[diceduckmonk]

> Gen Z buying iPods and people buying N64 games again

And Pokémon cards because this generation has less ability to afford big purchases like a house or having a child

[NeutralCrane]

I don’t think that has anything to do with not being able to buy a house or have a child. TCG cards are the perfect mixture of consumerism and gambling, and Gen Z has been submerged in both for the entirety of their lives

[pezezin]

I have seen some rare Pokémon cards going for the price of a small car...

[tom_m]

You can pay a lot for a DAP and have an infinitely better experience than any iPod or Zune. Just saying as an audiophile who has owned all of these devices. But yes, you are correct.