iPod

Lost in the big Apple announcement this week is the fact that they've dropped the iPod Classic from their product list.

I don't see anyone else still carrying these around, but mine is indispensable, and I spent the better part of a day distraught that I'm one hard drive failure from not having one any more.

I know: join the 2010s and stream that shit. Here's the rub: I'm out and about most of the time. The bill for the bandwidth I use with my cell company would make you choke on your own spit. I don't need to add several gigabytes every month for something I already have now.

May this iPod last for many, many more years.

Also, I have enjoyed and I intend to continue to enjoy being hundreds of miles from civilization. I do not intend to supplement that enjoyment without the option of listening to some tunes. And I can't be expected to predict which 200 or which 2000 tunes I might want to hear, once I'm out there, so preloading them isn't the answer either.

Apple is going to charge me a monthly fee to stream my own music through the cloud. That's bullshit -- no, that's BULLSHIT.

All is not lost. I did a little analysis last night, and from day to day, I'm taking about 50GB of music (and other audio) with me on my iPod. That number is growing month by month, but at least I'm not counting on my iPod's full 160 GB capacity. My phone is using about 35 GB, which is at least half pictures and probably includes a good number of apps that I'd be all to happy to get rid of. Depending on the true capacity of the 128 GB version of the new phone, I might be able to get by for a while.

A couple of related music notes:

I appear to be the only one in the world who feels this way, but Apple can deliver a free U2 album to my library any time they like. I haven't listened to it yet, but I like knowing it's there.

I just bought The Physical World [+digital booklet]this album, which is the one that you can see in the picture. By a long way, it's my favorite album of 2014 so far. Use the link to the left to buy your own copy, and send a few cents in the direction of theskinnyonbenny.com.