I bought a new iPod

One of my first-ever posts here was about my original iPod (and all my troubles getting it to work right).

Well, four years on it kinda died a little bit, at least to the point that I had to finagle some stuff every time I wanted to charge or sync it. So I bought a new one. It's an iPod "Classic" - love that name, as if it's an antique - which they only produce in 120GB capacity and black or silver. Obviously not Apple's favorite iPod model right now, but it's the only model I'd consider. Mine's black - it looks kind of silver in the photo above, but that's just a trick of the light bouncing off the Griffin iClear case I bought for it.

I'm highly enjoying watching video on it, even though the screen's sort of tiny and sometimes I have to squint to read subtitles (catching up on my Nana and Cowboy Bebop!). But I wanted the Classic over the wide-screen Touch (or the iPhone) because I need storage space and I hate hate HATE touch screens. I'll never buy a touch screen. You hear me, Apple? This will be my last iPod if you go exclusively touch-screen (or exclusively flash memory).

I'm a little annoyed at one change they've made to the interface since my 4G iPod, which is that the screen switches to a clock after 20 seconds or so while playing music. I use shuffle mode a lot and honestly, I don't know half the songs in my collection (or I can't identify them immediately) so I've gotten in the habit of just glancing down at the iPod to see what I'm hearing. I still instinctively do that and it is highly annoying to see that clock staring back at me instead of the song title. On the plus side, I always seem to know what time it is.

Well, whatever. The pros outweigh the cons, and that's all that matters.

Before anyone asks, no, I did not want a Zune or a Zen or whatever else. I actually like the iPod and iTunes - my problems of four years ago were temporary. Everything's got pluses and minuses, but at least the iPod doesn't brick itself on random days.