Those were something, weren’t they? I thought it was the coolest thing ever as a kid, just the absolute peak of technology.
And in hindsight… Yeah, it was a pretty comfortable way to play videos and music, wasn’t it? And the click wheel iPods even had a surprisingly decent selection of games.
While I’m here, whatever happened to those Kindle e-readers with the physical page turn buttons and keyboard? I kinda feel like they stopped selling those, but I feel like that was kind of preferable to a touch screen, too.
I guess just in general I don’t like touch screens and it’ll be a good day when they stop being integrated into things that don’t actually need them. I’m out here thinking that flip phones beat smartphones still
My car has a touch screen for audio stuff including volume. I HATE not having a knob to turn it up or down. Yes it has two buttons to go up or down on the steering wheel. No I don’t like them and I would still rather have the knob thank you very much.
I use a ~5 dollar usd mp3 player I got from aliexpress instead of my phone for when I am working out and I really like having buttons to press and it is way better than I expected for 5 dollars. It has a sd card slot, a headphone jack and even picks up the local radio
I remember when I first got a first gen ipod nano and it was the first ipod I’d ever actually touched, I tried a lot to do linear swipes across the click wheel and thought it wasn’t working right before I figured out that you’re supposed to swipe your finger on the touch surface in circular motions instead.
Anyway, the sansa fuze was an ipod nano but better in every way.
I, too, despise touch screens and refuse to use them unless they actually suit the device or I’m forced to.
Fuck touchscreen stoves! Fuck touchscreen stoves! Fuck touchscreen stoves! Fuck touchscreen stoves! Fuck touchscreen stoves!
That sentiment deserves repetition a bit more than five times.
The fact that cars are moving towards non-tactile touch screens as the ONLY way to interact with the stereo and climate controls makes me want to do fun legal things to an R&D lab.
Is there any fucking reason for a “touch screens for everything” consumer product mandate besides The Gospel of St. Steve Jobs?
At scale it has less discreet components so it is cheaper to produce
I can see that. It fucking sucks, but I see it now.
I don’t have a keyboard on it, but my ereader has physical page turning buttons. And it’s open source and I don’t have to jump through hoops to put pirated content on it.
An open source e-reader with physical page turning buttons? Do go on.
Yeah I have a kobo, like the other guy said
There’s one in development that I’m considering building, it’s called the Open Book and here’s the project page https://theopenbook.is/
I think the mainstream option is probably a Kobo Libra with something like KoReader installed.
Bring back the slide out physical keyboards on phones.
This but with a smartphone and I’m good on mobile forever.
Actually, one thing I will concede is that I do really like Dessalines’ Thumb-key. There is a certain level of satisfaction that comes from a physical keyboard, but flick input is also pretty satisfying in its own way… Alas, if only there were a way to have the best of both worlds, right?
The best part of those old ipods was the music quiz game that i’ve never found a replacement for in the smartphone era. all the “music quiz” games i see are just for random popular songs and not sampling from my own library
Damn, I don’t even remember that, that would’ve been fun to play.
I remember that game.
I also remember always losing it because I never listened to every single song on my iPod.
The Sandisk Sansa e200s had the worst software ever (hey let me spend 10 mins rebuilding metadata indices every single time you add or remote one track) but the clickwheel felt so goddamned good.
Modern consumer technology design has largely stripped away our ability to experience devices as things in the natural world/as designed things. Its all this freaking software crap!!!
the wheels are like a funny little hack to this problem
While I’m here, whatever happened to those Kindle e-readers with the physical page turn buttons and keyboard? I kinda feel like they stopped selling those, but I feel like that was kind of preferable to a touch screen, too.
the kobo i bought like 2 years ago still has those page turn buttons :) no keyboard tho
If you srill have your e200, Rockbox makes it smooth and you can run Doom.
The wheel went bad on mine so I swapped it for a later wheeled model and 2x the price of a generic MP4 player of similar size, but it wasn’t the same; I found it in my box of dead phones a few weeks ago, the soft-touch coating all sticky yuck.
yea i found the e200 wheels were nice to start but they got really mushy after a while. i can see why you replaced it
Omg you just reminded me I had a sansa fuze and it had a wonderful physical click wheels. I think the software on it was better than what you described but I put Rockbox on it once I learned that I could. It ran Doom quite well.
I also had a Fuze, that physical wheel was fantastic. I also Rockbox’d it, worked great.
Lol oh shit I had one too! My cheap dad refused to pay for an ipod, so we had a rotation of off brand mp3 players
Mediocre touchscreens are far cheaper for manufacturers than good quality physical buttons these days. I much prefer physical Interfaces for most things, and touch screen controls with really good haptics like Apple’s touchpads or even the older iPod touch wheels can be great too and sometimes as good or better but but those still aren’t touch screens. In fact the only reason the touchpad works well is that it has force sensors under it so that it’s not just based on touch.
I dread ever buying another car since they all seem to be replacing the vehicles entire dash, status monitors, and UI with one cheap iPad knockoff.
I test drove a 2024 Prius and the amount of screen was not preferable. I especially didn’t like that the car reads speed limit signs, displays them on the dash, then turns red if you exceed that speed. I know I’m speeding, car, fuck off.
Bought a 2013 Mazda with dumb features (but with Bluetooth) and it’s just right
Still have mine. Still clicks. For a while I was using it as a FireWire drive. Then I threw it in the “white cords and apple stickers box.”
I was cleaning out stuff this summer and kinda just set it aside because I could think of a reason to throw it away.
That is why I am bad at declittering.
the brick game (i think that’s what it was called) on the old ipods was awesome, i spent so much time playing that as a kid
Death to America
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
It’s amused me since the Metal Gear Solid 4 came out that Snake has an Apple iPod, fully simulated with that exact click wheel design. And it was a good design.
I recently brought out my iPhone SE to use as an audio player. It’s basically a glorified iPod Touch, but it at least has a headphone jack
E-readers with physical buttons still exist, but the companies price gouge for the privilege, since they’re only on the top end models. I’d take the old style with only buttons if they still made them. E-Ink shows fingerprints worse than LCD’s so it’s kinda dumb to have a touch screens.
I never had one of the iPods with an actual HDD, but did have one of the earliest Nanos, and the click wheel was really nice.
