I went back to my ex...

This is Strict_Machine, my iPod (6th gen)

The iPod debuted the year I graduated high school. Every single day of my school career from elementary school onward, I had headphones in my ears that connected to a Walkman (sometimes cassette, sometimes CD). The invention of MP3 players that can hold ALL of your music and playlists is still something of a jaw-dropping fantastical WONDER of the world to me. There is something magical to sit with a device in your lap that is the size of ONE cassette tape containing ALL of your music. ALL. of. it. That is still so cool to me, and I think I will always want a DAP (digital audio player) in my life. This is a device that doesn't connect to the internet, doesn't distract you with notifications of emails and social media messages. It simply plays sound. Though this device didn't always exist-- to me, it feels timeless.

I bought a Creative Nomad Zen Xtra in 2003. It had 60GB of storage. I digitized all my CDs in 128kbps because I didn't know any better yet. Luckily, I kept my CDs. In 2009 I got an orange iPod Nano. The 160GB beauty in the image to your left was acquired in January of 2011. In February, by some divine intervention (was it because I had more space on this new iPod?), I decided to re-digitized all my CDs in 320kbps. Less than three months later, most of my physical media was destroyed in the Great Wind of May 2011. I found the iPod under my dresser, wet and covered in insulation. But it still works to this day!

Despite our history, six months ago I left my iPod for a Fiio X3 II. I liked the Fiio, but that damn thing took hours and sometimes DAYS to sync. The initial sync with the Fiio, my iTunes, and a program called Dapper took 3-5 days. This one time, my iTunes deleted ALL the playlists I had put in a special folder for my Fiio to be able to recognize them. I had to recreate about 50 playlists in my iTunes. Thankfully, I have all my mixes written in a special mix journal, so that headache was more about time than anything. In the end, the Fiio was just too big of a pain in the ass. This week I wrenched my iPod back from my Michael and sold the Fiio. Hello, old friend.

Here's a list of things about my iPod that I really missed:

1. being able to use the many iPod docks in my house
2. volume control on headphones
3. on-the-go playlists
4. podcasts
5. audiobooks
6. lastFM stats
7. album shuffle
8. syncs that take less than five minutes instead of a few hours/days

If you want to see an even longer explanation of my iPod praises/Fiio woes, go to here.