I had a 6th gen iPod Classic that I used for almost 15 years before it finally died on me a few months back. Dedicated music players nowadays are a niche market, so it was really hard to find a replacement. I ended up getting a FiiO M5, and while it's definitely got some pros -- much better sound quality, can pop in a 512GB/1TB SD card for effectively infinite space for compressed songs, can play FLAC/WAV/OGG -- the ergonomics of the iPod were just so much better. It's funny how seemingly little things can be so frustrating: there's only enough space on the screen for 4 names at a time, the scrolling isn't adaptive so it takes forever to get to the bottom, the play order isn't consistent with the song display order within a folder... I used to love just browsing my music collection on my iPod on the train to work, but with the M5 I'll just pick an album or playlist and press play. It's just not as fun to flip through music.
I don't consider myself an Apple fanboy, but the iPod was a rock solid product that got all of the little things right. Given that the market for standalone DAPs is tiny because most people today just use their phones and music streaming apps, it's unlikely that we'll ever see a music player that compares to it.
I don't consider myself an Apple fanboy, but the iPod was a rock solid product that got all of the little things right. Given that the market for standalone DAPs is tiny because most people today just use their phones and music streaming apps, it's unlikely that we'll ever see a music player that compares to it.