16GB iPod Nano 3G Upgrade

160 pointsposted 4 days ago
by Ivoah
(tuckerosman.com)

32 Comments

int32_64

2 days ago

Apple should really do a 25th anniversary edition iPod with a scroll wheel, modernized battery, and modernized storage.

Do some nice nostalgia marketing for the zoomers and people that had one back in the day and it would sell like hotcakes.

unsupp0rted

2 days ago

They'd sell hundreds of units! Thousands even.

Although I can see them selling an original 2007 iPhone Anniversary Edition, fully upgraded under the hood and with a modern screen/camera/wifi/5G

But I'm only saying that because I don't like giant phones: I'm in the 2% minority.

trentnix

2 days ago

Yes, the MBAs won’t like it. But maybe, once in a while, companies should do things because they are cool and not because it clears some threshold on a magic spreadsheet.

I’d even settle for Apple opening up the Music app so I can upload music to my iPhone from Linux. But once again, that doesn’t make the spreadsheet sparkle.

dijit

2 days ago

They did that once.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/108935

skrrtww

2 days ago

iTunes Match (these days it's just under the umbrella of 'iCloud Music Library', I believe) is probably the greatest value Apple offers.

I have a local collection of over 30,000 mp3s, about half of which is not 'matched', and a sizable chunk of which is not available on streaming anywhere, and I have it on all my devices seamlessly, included with the price of an Apple Music subscription. (which I also use for convenience for listening to things I don't have my own copy of yet).

reaperducer

2 days ago

maybe, once in a while, companies should do things because they are cool and not because it clears some threshold on a magic spreadsheet.

The ghost of Steve Jobs has spoken.

crote

2 days ago

You might be surprised. Companies like HiBy have a rather healthy music player lineup[0], where "fewer distractions" is an explicit marketing point. Similarly, despite rather capable smartphones being available for as little as $100, the "feature phone" market is still doing quite well - and it definitely isn't just the grannies who are buying them!

Steve Jobs famously launched the smartphone industry as "We are launching three things: an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator. These are not three separate devices. It is one device, and we are calling it iPhone." Not having to carry a whole bunch of separate devices on a day-to-day basis was groundbreaking, and it was immediately clear that the synergy between the until-now separate features would open up a lot of new possibilities.

But since then the smartphone has mutated from a device of convenience into a grotesque attention-stealing privacy-invading Everything Device, which is used primarily as a proxy through which companies are doing massive harm to our society. For many people smartphones have become a necessary evil, and an increasingly-large group (many of whom Gen Z or Gen Alpha!) is deliberately refusing them out of self-preservation.

Sure, the market for a modern iPod refresh might not be gigantic, but I reckon it is definitely larger than the market for Apple Vision, or Meta's pervert glasses. The demand exists, the question is just whether it is large enough for Apple to care - especially when it means undermining their own golden goose app ecosystem.

[0]: https://store.hiby.com/collections/music-player

cosmic_cheese

2 days ago

> But since then the smartphone has mutated from a device of convenience into a grotesque attention-stealing privacy-invading Everything Device, which is used primarily as a proxy through which companies are doing massive harm to our society. For many people smartphones have become a necessary evil, and an increasingly-large group (many of whom Gen Z or Gen Alpha!) is deliberately refusing them out of self-preservation.

Right. The Jobs vision was still an accessory. An advanced and staggeringly capable one, but an accessory nonetheless. It hadn't yet become an inescapable, addictively-designed pillar of daily life.

People are also coming back around to the idea that convenience isn't the only thing that matters and that a "split device" lifestyle can even provide hobbies with associated communities for those who partake. Curating a music collection comes naturally after picking up a dedicated offline music player and getting into photography more seriously follows buying an old secondhand standalone digital camera, for example.

KeplerBoy

2 days ago

That would at the very least have to have Bluetooth (and at that point they might as well add wifi, since that is more or less the same modem).

That would make a damn nice 149$ apple music machine, slap some stripped down firmware on it, so they can argue why it only supports apple music streaming.

haritha-j

2 days ago

That price may be wishful thinking. Aren’t even their base ear buds $130?

KeplerBoy

2 days ago

Yes, you're probably right. Ipod nanos already started from ~150$ 20 years ago.

haritha-j

a day ago

I miss my $50 shuffle. It was suc a beautiful bit of engineering!

Marsymars

2 days ago

FWIW, the last-gen iPod Nano had Bluetooth already.

sandreas

21 hours ago

I think the iPod is a strongly underestimated device. Unfortunately the iPod Nano 3rd gen lacks first class support for audio books.

I'm more into 6th and 7th gen iPods. These unforunately are missing the iconic click wheel in favor of a tiny touch screen. The 7th gen even has Bluetooth 4.0.

Trying to build one myself[1] with Linux, Rust/Slint and 3d printing made me realise what an engineering effort it took to build a device running more than 12 hours of music playback with a 220mah battery supporting ui animations - all that more than 12 years ago. My nanowave approach draws ~330ma, which would require a 2000mah battery to run 6h from full to dead.

I'm in the process of analyzing the TinyEmbedded Dual[2] to have better efficiency as my current solution (LicheeRV Nano) but progress is painfully slow because i have pretty much no free time and have to learn 3d printing, PCB design and Rust at the same time.

However, I think today it would be possible to build an iPod at home if you have the knowledge and time. Probably you're better off just using a HiBy R1 (which uses Linux under the hood, I already managed to compile my Rust/Slint player for it)[3]

1: https://github.com/nanowave-player/nanowave-ui

2: https://github.com/yuansco/TinyEmbedded-Dual

3: https://github.com/yetisoldier/Hiby-R1-Audiobook-Mod/issues/...

Quartzium

20 hours ago

I'd love to keep the form factor of the Nano 3G, it's just the nicest one of them all. It's a baby brother to the bigger Classic.

What would be great is to change to a custom PCB with USB-C and an OLED display. Not sure how Nano 3G case can be made to work with USB-C though.

For software I was quite happy with Rockbox on my bigger Classic.

gpm

2 days ago

Not sure it'd work without also bringing back the old iTunes... and that would probably be problematic business wise.

ihuman

2 days ago

The Music app still works with iPods, but only for songs you own

reaperducer

2 days ago

It's a weird hybrid. You load the music into Music, but then have to sync your iPods with Finder.

Glad to report that Finder still works great syncing music all the way back to the launch day Shuffle, and even iPhone 3G, which I did just yesterday.

lifestyleguru

2 days ago

Best they can do is larger but thinner device, with large extrusion, and obviously 8GB of RAM.

brnt

2 days ago

Apple is in the ad and subscription business now, so either it'll sell for 899, it'll be covered in add, or it won't sell at all.

Raed667

2 days ago

The iPod nano 3rd generation holds a special place in my heart, i was about 14 when my mom bought me one as a birthday gift and i still cherish it till today where I charge it maybe once a year and listen to my (very curated) metal catalogue from back in the day... it was the only ipod i ever had or needed

It obviously can't hold a charge anymore and every time i reach for it i'm praying it still works

RCitronsBroker

2 days ago

awe, my dad brought me one back from a conference trip to the US. was so proud of that thing

lifestyleguru

a day ago

Exactly the same here, it even still holds the charge because I stopped using it ten years ago. It has the playlist which was perfect that one time over ten years ago.

Kuyawa

a day ago

I still have my 2nd gen iPod Shuffle, one of the most convenient devices ever created by Apple, specially for joggers. I know everything has been replaced by a phone but that little thing clipped to your sleeve weighting nothing was the best thing ever. By that time there were no AirPods, but that combination would have been an absolute grand slam nowadays. I guess they put a strap on it an called it Apple Watch

Quartzium

20 hours ago

I was just looking at the Rockbox port status for Nano 3G, was surprised to see a progress update this month. Seems like only 4G flash works atm. I'd totally upgrade to 16GB.

germinalphrase

19 hours ago

I explored reviving an old iPod for my son, but that route proved cost prohibitive. Instead, I bought an Innoasys Y1. It supports RockBox (and, somewhat uniquely, Bluetooth with RockBox) and I was able to create a customized CoverFlow landing surface so my son (still learning to read) can listen to music and podcasts freely. It’s been great.

dmitrygr

2 days ago

Now this is HACKER news! Kudos to the author! Well done.

The NOP thing was predictable. Qemu is not great at limiting itself to actual requested emulated hardware, often allowing supersets of instruction sets and abilities.

And NAND....is always unnecessarily exciting.

locao

2 days ago

I'm low-key disappointed this article didn't end like the one from the good old Uncyclopedia.

The author described in details how to attach a 500GB IDE drive to an original ipod, with all the required schematics, process to open the device, where to solder, etc, everything. It was the first article I ever read on Uncyclopedia, so I wasn't expecting the kicker: a photo of the modded ipod, hold together with elastic bands and a graph comparing playing time: from 8 hours to 12 seconds, or something like that. Boy, that was a good laugh.

Edit: I can't open the original article, but it seems it was an iPod nano and a 200GB hard drive: https://uncyclopedia.com/wiki/IPod_Nano_200gb_Instructions.