Calling iPods ‘vintage’ makes me feel old. I remember buying the first gen one the day it came out, damn that was a long time ago.
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I have two refurbished ipod shuffles I bought when my old one finally died after years of faithful service. The shuffle is the size of a postage stamp and doesn’t weigh much more. It can be loaded with hours of music and podcasts, clips to your lapel, and doesn’t require any wireless or internet connection. It is entirely tactile, so you can choose files and adjust audio without having to look at another god dang screen. Discontinuing these clever devices so that people would instead need to carry around a phone that extracts rent, cuts out in bad reception, ties you to the surveillance system, demands that you look at it every ten seconds, and weighs you down is a glaring example of enshittification.
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They write, whilst reporting on the new trend.
I put a new battery in my fifth gen iPod last year. I love that thing, and it was super easy to pick up a new sync cable for it from Amazon. I like to joke to people who say you can find everything on streaming services that that’s not true until I can play my favourite Psychick Warriors ov Gaia album.
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… what kind of software would we need to manage them? IIRC we can’t just move files into a folder like with the generic players
and that was many versions of iTunes ago 
The interface is a little more clunky these days, but mounting an iPod opens a weird Finder window that’s half iTunes, half diskutil. You can use this to do all the same old tasks. Pick albums, artists, playlists to sync, sync a random selection of music up to a given size, top your iPod off after syncing the stuff you’ve picked. The only thing I don’t really know how to do is manage podcasts, but I haven’t looked. It’ll even download from iTunes Match if a file you’ve picked isn’t local.
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I use them most of the time, but I find there is a noticeable trade of in sound quality. A Fiio DAC and Sennheiser ear buds sound so much better than any Bluetooth headphones I’ve tried. But if your listening is mostly audiobooks and podcasts the sound quality isn’t an issue.
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I’m sure my old Zune is around here somewhere…
We’re spinning the wheel. Full circle, every couple of years.
Also, I still have some tapes somewhere. And some minidisks. Oh, and super 8 film. Plus the hardware to record, and play back for all of those.
(Yes, I feel old. But then, I accidentally broke the shellacks at some point in my youth, and made others feel old, too.)
This turned 25 years old a couple of weeks ago:
And so did this - which is what I played it on:
World’s first MP3 player, stored about 10 tracks as I recall. Wish I knew what I’d done with it - but I’d need a USB to parallel port adapter to load tracks!
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That might be true, but if there is one thing I don’t care about, it’s audio quality. I almost never listen to music, only podcasts (I also don’t listen to audio books, because I like to read books instead).
If I did care about audio quality, using earbuds while walking (often along a busy street) probably wouldn’t be the best way to experience music anyway, cable or no. Not to mention that my music comes from Spotify, who probably compress it anyway.
I’m thinking about getting the SanDisk “Clip Sport Plus,” can’t say it’s the size of a postage stamp but it’s meant to be clipped on; physical buttons, Bluetooth or 3.5 mm jack, FM tuner, 32 GB for $40ish at major retailers.
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Do you know off hand if they will do upgrades? I’ve long wanted an ipod with astronomical storage but my hands just aren’t up to the task anymore.
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