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It's a Breakout clone. I mean that's what they're generally called in case you did not already know this.

I remember loading this game on my video iPod back in 2005. It’s a tragedy that I never knew I could just play this through an Easter egg!

HOW DID I NEVER KNOW ABOUT THIS!!!!!!

Amazingg! I never owned an iPod, so this is my first chance to experience it, I had forgotten that I'd seen all those videos where you navigate using the wheel instead of the buttons

It’s called out in the macrumors article linked in the submission fyi

Also, holding down the menu key for a second turns on the "backlight", like the real iPod (for those that don't know).

Though it's cute that it's the 404 page, you can get to the page directly via https://music.apple.com/us/ipod.

We do still need it. Any time to need to scroll through any extremely long list in order to find a single particular item, the scroll wheel beats the manual binary search of scrollscrollscroll... too far... scrollscrollscroll back... too far... etc.

I would, unironically, use a device that had that iPod interface as a music device until my dying day. Make it only able to stream from Apple Music, make me load up songs through USB -- I'll do it.

We have evolved to iPhone dark pattern updating to suddenly starting Apple Music in my car bulldozing Spotify and me almost getting in a fucking car accident every time.

Touchscreens didn't make physical controls lose their value. Their widespread use is just a result of a tradeoff for many product designers, where a satisfying experience just didn't outweigh the dominating factors.

Some car manufacturers are in fact reintroducing physical user control elements. After reevaluating the tradeoff decision so it seems.

I grew up with mp3 players with physical buttons for volume, next song etc., and texting on phones with a t9 dialpad.

In both cases I could achieve the task purely by touch, without looking at the screen. Compare with now where I routinely mistype characters even while looking at the screen!

Maybe.. but someone thought that this exact format is better for kids to listen to music / audio books / podcasts from, a device that doesnt need internet access, you download what you want and need. Some people also noted (I think it was this device havent tried it) you can open the device up and put in a new SD Card to increase capacity.

On a roadtrip I doubt this stops playing music…

https://storybutton.com/products/storybutton-one

It kind of lives on, on the Apple TV remote.

You know that ring around the main button, that kind of functions like a D-pad with four arrows?

If you're paused while watching something, you can drag your finger clockwise or counter-clockwise around the ring to seek forwards or backwards. It's really nice, much finer-grained control than normal skipping forwards or backwards.

The wheel doesn't actually spin, but it also doesn't really need to.

Its spiritual successor is the crown on the Apple Watch. I never swipe to scroll on the watch. It's way more fluid (and you get neat haptics) to twist the crown.

I had a Gen 1 iPod with the physical, moving click wheel. It was amazing, and I remember the surprise I had when it would make that little piezo click on scroll. As the iPod aged, in my case around two years, I'd notice that my music was getting louder as I walked to class because the physical wheel was gaining momentum and scrolling. Luckily the iPod also had a hold switch.

extremely ironic comment considering there has been a Renaissance of personal music players lately, including ones with click wheels. look on Amazon for all the Chinese made ones. there is absolutely still a desire, perhaps a growing one, for dedicated devices, as everyone grows wearier of phones

I wrote a UIKit widget that acts like the wheel part of the interface[0].

It's cool, but I've never been able to find a place for it, in my software. I think it works much better as a physical control.

[0] https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/RVS_Spinner

My 2nd generation iPod stopped working last week. It had a spin wheel but its predecessor's actually spun.

The monochrome screen shows a folder icon with a warning sign. I haven't looked into it but I fear that something happened to the internal hard drive. It's one with spinning disks. It was truly a work of art, that device.

I feel like it’d make for a great interface for a physical controller for smart lights/speakers. I’ve got a Hue Tap Dial with a physically spinning wheel, but the click wheel would be great instead.

I’m half tempted to buy an old iPod and attempt to hack something together…

It's still the perfect interface for a dedicated music player

Yeah; I’m basically never going to upgrade from a BMW i3 because the i4’s jog wheel and UI was such a regression.

I guess I should be happy they saved me $10-100Ks, but it’s concerning that western engineering apparently peaked in the late 2010’s.

Customer needs and company needs are no longer aligned. The customer used to want the company to succeed in the long term. The company cares only about the next quarter.

One of the best and most elegant UX designs of all time. I can't think of anything that has beaten it since.

I’d like a ring with a wheel that clicks as a remote for something like glasses or a TV

Same with a lot of things. A synchromesh gearbox comes to mind. There's definitely something bittersweet about technology becoming obsolete and redundant.

I did not find pulling the wheel down to push the cursor up to be satisfying.

If they sold a modern "iPod Classic" with a clickwheel and headphone jack, there would be a small but devoted community.

If you're a trackball person, a lot of trackballs have a scroll ring that's similar to a click wheel. The Ploopy A+ has two discrete scroll wheels: https://ploopy.co/aplus/

I'm pretty partial to the Kensington Slimblade though. You scroll by twisting the ball itself - very satisfying once you figure out the technique. I hate the aesthetics (it looks kind of tacky) and the client software (bloated and buggy) but it's the only trackball I know of with this feature and I like it enough to put up with the issues. https://www.kensington.com/p/products/electronic-control-sol...

Lots of ‘phones’ have a camera wart on the back. Why not several other warts for additional functionality.

So long as it does effect the perceived thinness at the edges, I suppose.

The haptic trackpads on a Steam Controller use the same circling motion to perform scroll wheel actions, and the haptic feedback is superb at selling the effect both audibly and from the feeling on your thumb.

I'm glad I'm not the only one :-)

Yeah I miss the old Apple ethos, I hope some whimsy comes back now that Ternus is here.

There appears to be different URLs for different territories. For anyone curious, I've fed a few of them into an agent and they are largely consistent.

US 1,029 Songs 682 Artists 39 Unique tracks

GB 1,156 Songs 727 Artists 12 Unique tracks

FR 1,217 Songs 797 Artists 132 Unique tracks

DE 1,062 Songs 709 Artists 62 Unique tracks

ES 1,155 Songs 724 Artists 7 Unique tracks

Huh! Alright, that explains why this damned thing had so much music from my own Apple Music library yet was missing so much more! I’m mildly disappointed that it doesn’t just load a user’s Apple Music library.

It's been happening, but just like all fads, especially nostalgia driven ones, it'll die soon. Every few years a new batch of people enter their higher earning years where they have more disposable income (mid to late 20s for some, early 30s for some, late 30s for others, etc) and nostalgia hits and they go crazy for a piece of their childhood or adolescence or their crazy 20s. If enough of said batch line up, you get a phenomena or a fad.

The sudden growth rate in sales derive some people to capitalize on it. Mostly either Chinese manufacturers or drop shippers though sometimes big names get swept up in the frenzy too. Then the market is flooded and it's not cool or unique anymore, or the target audience is saturated and then it's forgotten. I suspect something similar is happening now with screenless fitness trackers right now (even though I bought one because I hate smartwatches but want a fitness tracker)

It's especially funny seeing people who are into "MP3 players for digital detox" speak on podcasts or online. "I love that it's not a phone. I just wish it had <insert random ass app(s)> so I can take it on walks and leave my phone behind" then those random apps are different per person. It's really funny.

Similar thing with the screenless fitness trackers I mentioned. On every single review or discussion board for them, you will find people complaining that a screenless fitness tracker is, in fact, screenless and that they wish it just had a small screen for their important notifications or if it can answer calls or get phone notifications or connect to LTE.

Also for the troops. Have some friends that cannot bring devices that emit RF / BT on base or ships during certain operations and exercises.

It's extremely hard to find a new production MP3/FLAC player with upgradable storage that don't suck for one reason or another. Plenty of perfect new ones, but they will have onboard BT or Wifi still.

There's a bunch of options from Chinese companies as well as from more traditional companies (like Sony), but the majority run Android (some skinned to be "simple", some basically like the Android counterpart to an iPod Touch) and are built with super overspecced hardware which kinda defeats the point in my opinion.

Part of the appeal of the iPod is that it only had just as much hardware and software as it needed and was simple, which lends to its extreme mod potential that's fueling its continuing popularity today. A good modern iPod analogue needs to deliver on those fronts, too.

There's even a product that lets you retrofit an old iPod with a modern motherboard

https://certainthings.studio/sprout

My friend's grade-school kid gets exuberantly excited by CRTs and VCRs, and I know a few Gen-Z's with record collections. Maybe there's truth to the Dennis Duffy joke on 30 Rock: "technology is cyclical" :)

I've been using bone conducting headphones with on board storage so I can listen to music without carrying my phone everywhere for about 2 years now.

I think I asked in HN last year if anything was happening in this space now that the click wheel patent expired. I ended up buying a $50 Chinese knockoff for one of my kids. It...feels like a $50 knockoff, haha.

There's a whole product segment for this that seems to be gaining some traction. "Digital Audio Player" aka DAP.

Sony still makes Walkman

That’s already the case since a few years

You can if you long press the link and then choose to open in new tab.

You can prevent it on Safari for macOS by right clicking > open (instead of Open in Music)

Typing the url directly into Safari mobile worked for me.

ah.. that awkward Tim + Bono.... finger whatever that was

you can even turn it off and on in the settings

I enjoyed that Fall Out Boy has `Thnks Fr Th Mmrs` and `Thnks fr th Mmmrs` which are the identical songs.

No explicit filter either!

Long click and choose open

long press the link

I probably wouldn't want a Raspberry Pi-based battery powered device. There are other lower power (and less expensive) options out there.

These are all from iPod commercials

It's all from the Apple Music 2000s playlists. Period accurate, I love it.

Apple Music hires really good DJs

Nice to find some 00s electronic classics there like Alter Ego and Âme, that really took me back to my iPod mini days.

> creative.com/nomad

That URL doesn't exist

Somehow apple does not want users to turn off their devices. They removed the “hold the lock button long to show the shutdown slider” and buried it deep into the settings as well…

Soulless.

Using the haptics in the MacBook touchpads for this would've been next level.

I think most (if not all?) of the songs are 90 second clips. I imagine for licensing purposes.

It is an almost perfect replica of the iPod, one of the most generation-defining products ever released. We've grown out of these as a society, but I'd say that's something special.

There's not a way to give evidence for this kind of stuff but that's feeling it gave me too. I suspect a lot of superfluous stuff implemented in recent software is implemented by an agent. I haven't formed a concrete opinion on how I feel about it though.

Do you have any particular evidence to support this claim?

Implemented, sure. Conceived of? Probably a human was involved somewhere

source?

They probably did use AI to assist but there’s a lot of detail and nuance with it that AI is just awful at.

This is becoming such a lazy and predictable retort. Do you have any other quibbles that might of substance?

Who the fuck cares.