Deinfluencing The iPod Mini. Nostalgic, Expensive, and Inconvenient

Last updated: 2025 / 09 / 19

I have always downloaded and played local files for my music. Streaming services never interested me for the simple reason that there was always an album or single missing. I know I could add local files to Spotify, but that always felt more like a bandage than a full solution.

My beginnings with Spotify started around 2014, interested by the novelty of the Discover Weekly playlist. But as time went on, more and more features were pushed behind the premium membership.

In 2015, I discovered that even the skip button and shuffle now required a subscription, and as a student of a limited budget of almost zero, I understood the writing on the wall and returned to play local files on my smartphone.

Today, the situation with streaming services has not improved. If anything, it has only gotten worse.

In the search of minimizing my phone usage, I thought in buying a separate music player. A sole purpose device focused in playing music, no distractions, no apps, no memberships, no notifications, nothing.

A quick search on Amazon for "music player" made it clear my search would not be so straightforward. Every listing was blurred together under the same generic listing name, Music Player HD Bluetooth Player FM Radio. Playback quality could be just as poor or worse. I recently bought one of these players for my father, and after transferring a FLAC song, the result was obvious, the playback wasn't better than the cheap music players you could buy on the 2000s.

At the same time, YouTube was pushing me this channel called Dankpods and all of his iPod repair and analysis videos, especially the iPod Mini review. I had recently seen these "iPods" music player recommendations before and the new attention they were getting in other technology channels and thought in buying one.

Subreddits like r/digitalminimalism and r/dumbphones were also talking about owning an iPod.

And as someone who joined in the lifestyle of the same name, I found they were talking about points that aligned with me at least at that time, a search for minimalism and freedom from our cursed smartphones, to alleviate or go through a technology detox by buying single purpose devices to de-centralize the functions of a smartphone.

Ultimately it meant buying dumbphones, digital cameras, music players, physical notebooks, retro gaming handhelds, etc. People knew it wasn't convenient as they had to carry two to five devices around, but at least they weren't using a smartphone, they were still using technology without the overengineered addiction, they were regaining control.

I already had been using a Bullet Journal for two years, tried using the CAT S22 Flip dumbphone for six months before moving to my current job, had been using a jailbreaked Kindle for most of my reading and had also been using a minimal launcher for my Android for well over three years resulting in a reduced time usage of two hours from six. I reckoned buying an iPod Mini would be the next step to reduce it below one.

Five months later, I realize buying an iPod (and it's upgrades) might have been a bad idea and investment.

I am not stranger to inconvenience, missing a couple of features here and there is trivial at best. I move workflow to workflow, I write on physical notes, I daily drive Linux from time to time.

But, the more I used my iPod Mini, the more I hated it, after spending upgrades and hours into it, I hated it even more, because I realized it wasn't the choice I expected it to be.

It is a device that is obviously becoming more and more inconvenient to use compared to most of its predecessors and it's also harder to justify in terms of the investments required to make it function at its best. It can't compete against Spotify or not even the simple music apps you can find in the Appstore.

It's a radical solution, a radical lifestyle, and these usually not last long for most people. I am used to them, and yet, the iPod Mini experienced remained unique. To say it challenged me would be saying that the iPod Mini was a" final test" of sorts, because it wasn't anything like that.

Everything surrounding the iPod Mini, from its accessories, its modding ecosystem, customization options, its music playback experience is, quite frankly, a mess of trade offs, risks to manage, big money to spend, and compromises to accept.

I'm not here to plead you in not buying an iPod Mini, you will make that decision on your own. But what I can offer is a glimpse into what it actually took to keep mine running, the frustrations, the inconveniences, the investments, the moments where I wondered why I bothered at all, etc.

Maybe, after reading this article, you will reconsider buying yet another romanticized device.

Upgrading and Buying

After buying an iPod Mini through Facebook Marketplace, I knew I would need to buy a battery and the storage upgrade. Batteries aren't hard to find or identify, you can easily buy them of off Aliexpress, however they take up to two weeks to a month to arrive.

When it comes to upgrading the iPod Mini's storage, you're left with three main options. The most talked about solution (and less recommended) is a filmsy CF-SD adapter affectionately known online as the "Red Adapter". Not only because it's the option the uninformed user will buy first, but because it's also the cheapest option they can find in Aliexpress.

It's notoriously unreliable. A handful of Reddit posts will insist they got one that worked without issues. But for every lucky experience, there's a long list of threads of unfortunate people who bought up to three adapters before getting one that worked.

And even if you do get lucky in getting a functioning card, there are other issues to know about.

There's a recurring iTunes issue that appears every time you factory reset if you use the red adapter.

What's the fix? Running the "Rebuild MBR Method" option from MiniTool Partition Wizard at the exact same time as the iTunes factory reset one. It's a race of progress bars.

It's required for every single time you reset the device mind you. This shouldn't be a huge deal, but in practice, it's the workaround that lingers in the back of your mind, reminding you that this is a struggle you bought to yourself for going cheap.

Reportedly, the Red Adapter factory resets without issues in Apple Macbooks, reportedly.

The second option is to use a proper CompactFlash card, the format the iPod Mini was originally built around. It's the logical choice, just find a modern produced one and slot it in. The problem, of course, is that the CompactFlash format has long since become obsolete, only used now in old cameras and laptops from the same times. The trustworthy brands stopped making them years ago. What's left are two extremes, the cheaply made and questionably cards from AliExpress, and the overpriced ones from the original era, pricied up simply because they've survived, take in mind not all true CompactFlash cards will not play well with the Mini.

The worst thing about buying these cards is knowing that, old or new, higher capacity always means higher cost, not better performance.

There was a time when a brand called Kingspec made CompactFlash cards that were reliable and recommended. Unfortunately, the days of regular stock are long gone.

So I took a chance on a card from "Clouddisk". Over 400+ units sold, first result in Aliexpress, best rated card. Nothing could go wrong.

But it arrived defective in the most annoying way...

For every time I wanted to boot the iPod, it would show the "sad face" screen and then go back to sleep.

Booting the iPod now had turned into a ritual of patience pain. Sometimes the iPod would successfully boot in two attempts, sometimes seven, and in the worst cases, which seemed to be common, up to almost fifteen times.

It stopped me completely in whatever I was doing, the world didn't resumed until the iPod managed to boot correctly because it needed my input to attempt booting again. If I wanted to boot into Rockbox I would had to go through the boot lottery again. So not only I was wasting time trying to get the iPod running, I would also had to weigh the risk in falling to the booting lottery if I wanted to switch operating systems.

The data transfer was also slow, limited to almost 4MB~ in speed, which meant transferring my library of 1,400 songs took an entire midnight. I paid a premium for that 128GB card, it took two and a half weeks to arrive and I already know I won't be getting an explanation off of Reddit or let alone a refund.

Could I buy another CompactFlash card? Yes. But if the best reviewed option failed this spectacularly, it's hard not to wonder whether a second shot at any other brand would be the same or worse. In the end, I gave in and bought the cheap red adapter. After all, one does not factory reset their iPod regularly.

The third and final option is buying an iFlash CF to SD Adapter, it's the one recommended by everyone. It works, it has better transfer speed, it doesn't feel as flimsy as the red adapter and it's the option I should had gone with from the start. Why I didn't buy it?

Shipping.

If you're outside the usual countries, the U.S, the U.K, Japan, or similar, the cost of upgrades from independent sellers inflates fast once international shipping is added, assuming the base price translated to your local currency wasn't already high. Sometimes it doubles, sometimes it triples. Whether it's eBay, Elite Obsolete Electronics, or iFlash's own site, the result is the same, the shipping costs overshadows the product itself. Aliexpress is still an option only if you're willing to gamble on off-brand CompactFlash cards.

I never bought the iFlash CF adapter. I couldn't justify paying shipping that effectively doubled the price, so as I mentioned earlier, I bit the bullet and went with a red adapter instead.

And even if you manage to get your hands on an iFlash adapter, there's still one final hurdle worth knowing, Rockbox likes to drain the battery when playing on CompactFlash adapters. A very well known issue since forever. I've seen it firsthand, battery drops from 86% to 65% in minutes by just playing a song while re-ordering a few playlists. It doesn't matter what settings you tweak, which database options you toggle, the battery life in adapters will suffer.

But to be fair, this could improve in future Rockbox updates. This same issue plagued the iPod Classics until very recently, so it wouldn't be surprising if the battery gets an optimization update for iFlash cards in Minis, this can take months.

Update: This issue has been reportedly resolved as of version 4.0 for the iPod Mini.

If you go with a CompactFlash cheap card, you're gambling no matter the brand because there's always a chance you will get a "dud", and even if you don't, you're still stuck with their slow transfer speeds. You could pay extra for a "genuine" performance legacy CompactFlash card from the times they were still popular, but those are just as likely to age into failure as the one your iPod Mini came with twenty years ago.

If you choose iFlash you will struggle with the battery drain if you wanted to use Rockbox, and if you live outside the usual countries, you'll pay just as much (if not more) in shipping.

Also, in case you were wondering, there are no accessible silicone or plastic protective cases for the iPod Mini. Unlike the abundance of options you'll find on AliExpress or Ebay for the Classics, the Mini never had much of a market for cases, and none exist today. Housing replacements are available, yes, but actual protective cases? No.

No cases for the Mini.

Beware in Disassembling

Contrary to the optimistic claims floating around, the iPod Mini is not easy to repair or upgrade. It's incredibly easy to scratch the seams even with the right tools, you can puncture the wheel ribbon while removing the metal bracket retainer, you can also bend or break the Molex hard drive cable pins when inserting a new card, or snap a component when sliding the logic board in or out of the housing.

With care, most of these mistakes can be avoided, but it's the word "easy" that gives people false confidence.

Some of the parts can't no longer be replaced. They're either too old or too niche to be found, which means you're left with no choice but to buy another iPod Mini and either toss the damaged one, or salvage it for parts.

If you're a hobbyist, this kind of setback is always to be expected. But if you're someone with a set budget for hobby projects which, let's be honest, is most people, it means one wrong move can turn your restoration project into a vintage paperweight and eternal wait for the replacement.

Take, for example, the click wheel. If you snap any of the cables, you will have to buy a new one. However, the Mini's click wheels are rare and expensive to come by, and they're not interchangeable between the first and second generations. If the damage is only cosmetic, you can still buy a click wheel from a 5th or 6th generation, but you will have to sand it out to fit into the chassis, if it was an internal one, you will have to buy a brand new click wheel from either Ebay or Elite Obsolete Electronics, they're quite expensive. So if you're outside the U.S, U.K or similar, you will probably find cheaper to buy a brand new Mini.

The repair process is overall not that complicated, it's the way the device was overengineered and compacted into that leaves no room for mistakes.

The Music Playback Experience

The first wall of inconvenience you will find after using your recently upgraded iPod Mini is realizing that there is no quick "Shuffle Mode" button. If you're listening to an album or artist and wanted to enable Shuffle Mode, you will have to navigate through Settings > Scroll to Shuffle > Songs or Albums.

The way this is shown in the display is confusing, when leaving it on Songs, it shuffles the list of songs you're currently playing, if you leave it on Albums, it will play all the songs from an Album in your library in order, then shuffles to another Album, it will not shuffle the songs in your album. Once explained it makes sense, but it is very confusing to get at first if you're used to the convenient accesible button from a smartphone.

It's the same way for the Playback options (Loop, Play All). Return to main menu, Settings, choose your loop option and go back to "Now Playing". Mind the two options sitting way too close, "Shuffle Songs" and "Now Playing", one wrong click, and you will have to browse your desired song again.

There is no gapless playback. It did existed back then but very few portable devices had it at the time, so don't count on it, Rockbox does have it though.

To add songs to a playlist, you have to use "On-The-Go" playlists, but these playlists only work as new ones made on the device, if you want to add or remove a song to a different or past On-The-Go playlist, you will have to use a computer. This way it's very easy to end up with a lot of stray On-The-Go playlists, something normalized in the community.

There's no headphone inline control support on the iPod Mini. For anyone coming from a smartphone, this is an immediate downgrade. Volume levels across songs are always inconsistent, so if you're in shuffle mode, expect to pull the device out of your pocket, slide the hold switch, adjust the volume, then lock it and save it again. The "Normalize" feature on iTunes somewhat mitigates this.

Skipping a song, same ritual. Out of the pocket, unlock, skip or adjust volume, lock, pocket. It's a minor hassle that adds up fast, you cannot complain about this because this is how people had it back then, inline controls on headphones wasn't a standardized yet so this is all what people had.

You can however... spend extra cash in the official analog wired inline remote.

Think about it. A remote solely dedicated to control the pause button, the volume bar, you can even go forward or backwards for each song. It sounds like a good investment.

But once again, shipping costs rear their ugly head if you live outside the usual countries. Every remote sold on eBay comes with an absurd shipping cost, usually from the United States or the United Kingdom. You can try your luck on Buyee, Mercari, or Facebook Marketplace, but don't expect miracles.

Once you've finally acquire for the remote, skipping and pausing does get easier. That is, until you notice the long, tangled cord now wrapped between the iPod, your headphone cable, and yourself. It is ridiculous. If you believed people silently judged others because they were using wired headphones instead of Bluetooth, then now imagine them seeing you pull out yet another dangling cable just to perform the simple task of skipping a song.

Strap it down with a rubber band to stop it from moving around in your pocket, and you will quickly discover the remote's clip is useless thanks to its vertical design. It barely attaches to either your clothes or pants, and the moment you pull the iPod out to switch albums or playlists, the cord inevitably snags, shifts, or loosens back.

There's also Bluetooth Receiver you can plug into the remote to remove the headphones out of the equation, great idea you might think, one less cord to worry about...

But when you think about the full setup, one thought lingers your back, is this a better experience than playing music from your smartphone? Was this investment truly what you needed for getting off your smartphone?

Because, it's not minimal, it's not simple, it's not hassle free. You've likely spent more on this bandage setup than a year worth of Spotify Premium or a decent haul of Bandcamp albums. You've dragged an aging device into the modern world and tried to fit it into a lifestyle that is easily surpassed by any other modern device, whatever objective you had in the beginning has been overlapped itself in money and time spent.

Grab your iPod. Plug in the wired remote. Attach the big Bluetooth Receiver. Wait for your wireless headphones to pair, remember that not every Bluetooth Transmitter in the market is reliable. Strap the remote down with a rubber band. Choose between an Album or the "Shuffle Songs" option. And finally, shove it all into your pocket.

Perhaps, you tell yourself, there's still a way to turn this into a fully Bluetooth device. You've heard the word "modding" before. You know there must be a Bluetooth mod made for the iPod Mini...

However...

Bluetooth

Don't count on it.

Historically, Bluetooth wasn't something built into most iPods, except for the iPod Touch 2nd Gen and the iPod Nano 7th Gen.

You can still mod Bluetooth into almost any other iPod, but the skill ceiling required to solder, connect, separate, and install a transmitter circuit board is difficult enough to discourage even those who were brave enough to open their iPod for upgrades.

It's somewhat doable on the iPod Classics since there's still enough space inside the device to store most components. That extra room also means there's less risk of damage when soldering or reassembling the device.

But for the iPod Mini, it's a little bit more than that. The device design is already excessively compacted, turning the whole process into more of a proof of concept experiment than a reliable solution. It involves supergluing components and wires to either the logic board or the battery's back, cutting the metal retainer bracket to make room for a pairing button, peeling back battery tape to draw power for the Bluetooth transmitter and soldering wires to it, all before hoping you can slide the modified logic board back into the case without snapping anything.

For someone experienced in soldering and hardware mods, it's a meticulous but manageable process. For anyone else it's a technical, fragile, and risky process that's easy to mess up and nearly impossible to undo. Even if it works, opening it back up for repairs later might be a nightmare all on its own depending in how you slotted the components back into the chassis.

Skim through this YouTube tutorial to give you an idea of what someone who just upgraded their iPod should do next if they want Bluetooth without a Receiver...

Sure, you can buy the Bluetooth Modded Apple iPod Mini 2nd Gen from PartsPlusPods, sure you can commission someone in your city to install the module for you, but these alternatives add up to the sustantial amount of money you have already spent in other stuff.

Returning to the iPod Classic, which is one of the more popular models for modding, it has plenty of tutorials online showing how to install a Bluetooth circuit board. It still involves soldering components inside the device, but out of all the iPods, the Classic has the most documentation by far, making it relatively easy to find your own path forward if you are brave enough to try it.

If you want to go extra with it, with more than just some money left, you can buy a kit with the circuit board already installed and soldered to the backplate. PartsPlusPods offers one, and it's the most basic but sufficient solution out there. But if you're looking for something more customized, something with style, the Moonlit Market store sells a version that not only includes Bluetooth, but also haptic feedback, wireless charging, and USB-C.

However, if you want USB data transfer when using the Moonlit's kit, you still need to solder three wires, three wires that need microsoldering skills to connect.

Unlike the PartsPlusPods solution, the Moonlit Market kit requires you to superglue the backplate to the iPod front, since it lacks the clipping tabs needed. If you've got the budget, and can stomach yet another shipping, this might be your best Bluetooth solution.

But since we are talking about the iPod Mini... we're stuck with the wired remote, the Bluetooth hanging transmitter, and a nearly impossible to undo mod, and nothing more.

Related Dankpods video.

Rockbox

Rockbox does ease most of the inconveniences written on the The Music Playback Experience section.

In general, Rockbox it's fine. More than fine.

Most users are content with the stock OS at least when it comes to the iPods Classics. It serves its purpose and while iTunes has its faults, it remains manageable. Really, the only thing in this article that it's worth using is surprisingly, the iTunes software.

The iPod Mini though, since it's an old model with old features and scope, a large group of people also seek and look for Rockbox. It's the only way to unlock what are now considered basic features on the Mini, loop and shuffle, proper playlist handling, plugins, album art, and above all, customization.

Some users arrive at Rockbox expecting improvements, however, they are instead greeted by menus within menus and toggles within toggles. For advanced users accustomed to this kind of software, this is normal, if anything, it feels thorough and complete. But for others, it quickly becomes another steep learning curve to learn and endure. Yes, it plays music and it has the Loop and Shuffle options, but it does so with such an array of options that can scare the not so experienced user.

It's not that complicated to learn, mind you, but it gets confusing to navigate sometimes, especially in the Mini.

Customization its where Rockbox leaves its mark. On the iPod subreddit, you can find a lot of pictures of iPods outfitted with attractive themes. You can see a lot of effort has gone through each custom theme only available for Rockbox.

But there is a catch. If you expected the same treatment for the Mini, you will be disappointed to learn it has only fifteen (unique) themes available on the Rockbox website.

As with the Classic, you can search themes elsewhere outside the official website (like on Github repositories, official blogs, Reddit posts, etc). But for the Mini the total selection still barely reaches twenty themes in total. Most of the energy poured into Rockbox's personalization is focused on the iPod Classic, the one you don't have. The Mini, as Olsro puts it, did not received the same love by themes developers.

It would be easy to say we should put effort where our mouth is and tell grumbling people like me to write a theme from scratch. But that was never my point. I'm not here to complain about the lack of Mini themes people already created for free, nor to argue that we should expect more.

My point is to warn people not to expect the same attention or affection that surrounds the iPod Classic to extend to the Mini, whether in themes or in other advancements. The iPod Classic will always draw the greater share of effort and attention, while the Mini lingers in irrelevance, as the device you bought before upgrading to a Classic.

Building database

Each time you add a new song, album or artist, the database must be updated. There is an option called "Auto Update", but it only matters if you have already have a playlist or queue running to keep you occupied. Otherwise, if you try to browse the database too soon, you will be met with a Building Database message as the system once again, analyzes every song on the device just to index the single song or album you added. The speed does not differ much when using the "Initialize Now" or "Update Now" options.

Recalling the previous issues with slow CompactFlash cards, this is where the weakness becomes even more insufferable. A cheap card can kick the waiting time to forty seconds.

Rockbox does index songs faster if they were previously transferred through iTunes rather than by simply drag and drop (possibly because they're hashed and renamed into four letters and stored into twenty folders). If your storage card has slow speeds, the database build will inevitably take longer, especially if your filenames have a lengthy name (Artist/Arist - Album - TrackNumber - Song).

My 128GB off-brand CompactFlash card, the one I paid a high price for, manages to hit speeds of only 4~9MB, so updating a library of 1,400 songs takes nearly one minute. With a larger library, the waiting times only gets worse which I assume will be the majority reading.

I've tried Olsro's GitHub guides on optimizing Rockbox settings before, both with the off-brand CompactFlash card and the red adapter, but the tweaks only helped marginally. You cannot improve that much on trash cards.

You might have better luck, if your card offers more than 4 MB of speed, but considering that most uninformed buyers bought the cheapest options from Aliexpress, they will probably get similar speeds and will think this is the default experience. Only a high performance card, neither old nor defective, will avoid these long times, but that of course, comes at a much higher cost as explained earlier.

Please note that my timing observations were made in limited conditions (the limited conditions being my patience). Unsurprisingly, the build times were worse as expected on the dud CompactFlash card with files only transferred by drag and drop, I didn't timed files transferred through iTunes specifically. However, with the red adapter, which I loaded with songs both through iTunes and with custom folders, the process was slightly faster.

Update: Transferring 1,400 songs to the iPod Mini with the red adapter takes one and a half hours to complete. Initializing the database took forty seconds, still faster than the CompactFlash card. With a slow performance card, the shuffle playback also drags, leaving up to a three second gap before the next song plays.

Clearly, a dud CompactFlash card just sucks at everything.

I assume that with an iFlash card and a high performance SD card, running Rockbox would be like a walk in the park, but as I mentioned earlier that would be accepting a reduced battery life.

What you gain in what you sacrifice doesn't even feel beneficial.

Just buy the iFlash card, really.

Other iPod Alternatives

After realizing what you've gotten yourself into, you might start re-examining your options and think about buying another iPod that isn't the Mini. Totally reasonable. I thought the same for a while, and I take pride in calling the iPod Mini a bad investment. But if you believe another iPod model will save you from this can of inconveniences, you will quickly find the only viable choices are the later Classics, the 5th, 6th, 7th, or, ironically, another Mini.

Trying to revive a Nano, a Shuffle, or any of the first three Classic generations can quickly drift into the niche, or the difficult to repair because as you've probably guessed, most of the replacement and upgrade market is geared towards the latter Classics and Minis.

The first two Classic generations are impossible to flash-mod thanks to their FireWire dependency. You can change the battery sure, but nothing more than that.

With the Nanos, the only one with an easily swappable battery is the first revision. No Flashmods, becase in true Apple fashion, the storage is soldered to the board, this is the same with the Shuffle.

And then, there's the time bomb problem with the latter Nanos. Their ultra thin form factor has become problematic over the years resulting in batteries swelling inside the chassis, pressing the display against the glass and leaving behind the infamous "black spot".

People argue it's just cosmetic, nothing close to a fire hazard as some others suggest, and for the most part, they might be right, but if you're someone who cares about having a pristine Nano, once the black spot shows up, the repair is inevitable.

Some people swear you can drain the battery and slowly recharge it to somehow undo the swelling, but that's mostly unreliable and hard to get right. Sooner or later, you'll have to fix it whether you like it or not. Many units on eBay already have the black spot while those that do not have it will develop it in time.

It's just a matter of patience, really.

Replacing the battery it's already difficult enough because of the Nano's thin form, it's infuriatingly long, tedious and it's full of steps where you can easily break or snap a component. If the black spot is already there, the repair becomes even harder as you will probably have to sacrifice a component of the iPod in order to take out the swollen battery.

Despite knowing this, you also have to keep in mind that you're stuck with whatever storage capacity the device came with. Across all generations of the Nano and Shuffle, the maximum capacity topped out at 16 GB. And to add to that, Rockbox can only be installed on the first two revisions of the Nano...

And if you were still thinking about that possibility for the first three generations of the Classic... no, there's no USB to Firewire dongle alternative you can buy off of Aliexpress, they do not exist so far and yes, original Firewire cables are also rare to find, let alone expensive to buy, there are knock-offs Firewire cables but speed might be limited. There are still people who daily drive them but my poit here is that they're not recommended for new collectors.

And if you were thinking in getting a Shuffle, sure it's still an option.

After all of the criticisms and de-influence attempts I've written about the iPod Mini, the obvious conclusion would be to buy an iPod Classic. To spend once again in a device I should had chosen in the first place.

But I will not.

Not for reasons of cost, or the CompactFlash market, or Rockbox or the Stock OS. The reason is something else, something I realized long time ago. A truth less convenient to accept than any hardware or shipping cost.

Retrospective

When I move from one device to another, adopt a different piece of software, or shift from one workflow to the next, the thought always lingers, it must be inferior if it lacks a feature I've grown accustomed to. One missing tool, and the experience feels inferior.

With time, I've realized it isn't about inferiority, it's about mindset. Each piece of software, each workflow or new lifestyle carries its own logic. To adopt it, I have to abandon familiar habits and reach a task or idea from a different angle.

Sometimes the convenience I relied on simply doesn't exist. Photoshop has this one tool, but GIMP does not. The void is frustrating, but it also forces a steadier adaptation.

The same convenience you find in one program can become or is an inconvenience in another. The missing tool in one workflow can reappear in a different form. It is always the same argument, Vim vs. Emacs.

I have daily driven Linux, Windows, and macOS. I am used to shifting between them, discard one set of habits and learning another. You may be surprised to realize how often people mistake familiarity for intuitiveness.

But the iPod Mini is nothing like that. Any mindset waiting to be learned through persistence it's heavily constrained by its aged nature. It is a relic from 2004, of course it was going to be a restricted experience.

Minimalism, smartphone de-centralization, the fulfillment in owning our music or resisting Spotify. All those lessons don't matter even if people try to bandage the Mini with upgrades. The device remains the same as it was when bought.

Other aged devices still have lessons to offer. A film camera can teach patience. A record player can teach ritual. Even a mechanical watch teaches discipline through maintenance. Using the iPod Mini, however, teaches nothing of the sort. It lingers awkwardly between eras, not dated enough to feel vintage, and not modern enough to be comfortably used. It's all compromise.

An iPod Classic however, might soften the difficulties I have spent this entire article dissecting. With Rockbox, it could also make it more bearable to use, even then the Stock OS experience might not be as horrible as the Mini.

I own an iPod Classic already. I even bought a new battery for it not that long ago. The only piece missing is the iFlash Solo adapter, something I could order at any moment...

And yet I don't.

Because upgrading would mean pretending the real issue isn't there, the one I've avoided naming until now.

The issue is not Rockbox, not CompactFlash, not adapters or batteries. The issue is me, my indulgence in thinking that one more device, one more "de-centralized" gadget, could solve my smartphone usage and addiction when I already had the perfect tool in front of me: a local music player app.

This idea made me realize once again that people don't always need another gadget to de-centralize their smartphone or reduce their screen time. They don't need to plunge themselves into rabbit holes of single purposed devices like iPods, analog cameras or flip phones to escape an engineered addiction. Smartphones already have features that are great and more than convenient. It is everything surrounding them that is corrosive.

Many of the ideas in Cal Newport's Digital Minimalism remain evergreen, especially when applied to this trend of buying separate devices:

By cultivating hobbies and activities outside of alluring technology, we create distance from the smartphone itself. The attention it demands is replaced by what we gain without it. And if you allow me to extend Newport's argument, this is far more effective than buying a separate gadget for every feature your phone already has. Because that line of thinking still obeys the same illusion that stripping power from the smartphone requires splitting it into fragments.

In truth, the opposite is more powerful, make the phone less attractive, less necessary, by giving your time something it cannot compete with.

I am not saying, one should quit all of their gadget devices, on the contrary, one should be mindful and thoughtful on what they buy, what they currently have and what they can de-centralize.

Do I recommend buying an iPod Mini? No.

Do I recommend buying an iPod Classic? Perhaps (specifically those who have in-line control support), but please think twice before convincing yourself that it will serve you better than the local music player app, the one you already have in your pocket.

I once admired my minimal approach to most digital things, the constant search to abandon my smartphone entirely. But over time, I saw it for what it was, a misguided minimalism mindset disguised as consumerism. I wasn't escaping the phone, I was replacing it with another object to buy, another upgrade to chase and another rabbit hole to occupy my mind.

Maybe that's harder to accept than a few missing features.

Other Links

Wolfgang's critique on Dumbphones

Michiko's iPod Guide

Addendum 1:

The issue of battery drain on the iPod Mini when running Rockbox has reportedly been fixed, or at least alleviated, in version 4.0. In my experience, the battery life has remained just as bad as when I first tried Rockbox, though I haven't been on par with the daily builds. I will update it, and I might try to daily drive the Mini with whats left of my patience, but I won't make promises.

References