Believe me, I'm VERY upset that the iPod Classic is discontinued.
- I love music. LOVE music. I NEED 160gb for my music collection -- especially because there are some things I want lossless, and the MP3s I do have on my Classic are compressed with a very high kbps rate -- over 200kbps. I need my sound. What other player will give me that capacity? (Or at least allow me to stick in whatever size memory card I want? Yeah, there's the 128gb iPod Touch, but how much of that 128 is actually taken up by existing apps, including that stupid stock app that you can't get rid of? (I do keep some MP3s on my iPhone in case of emergency, but I really, REALLY hate the music player interface.) And how much does the 128gb iPod Touch cost versus the list price of the 160gb iPod Classic? Plus, read on...
- The click wheel is important. Let's say I'm in shuffle mode, and I'm walking down the street or driving and want to move to the next song. I can push a button without even looking down and get the next track. Can you do that with any other iPod?
- I need something to listen to during my commutes to and from work via mass transit. I don't want to have to keep swapping out music because a 16GB iPhone isn't enough to hold what I'd want to listen to at any given time. Depending on how my mood changes over the day, I might want to listen to a podcast one minute, but then switch over to, say, Pet Sounds the next minute.
- Sometimes if I discover that I have a file I need to transfer, I can use my iPod Classic in a pinch as if it were a thumb drive.
- My wife's 160gb iPod Classic started going bad recently, but she replaced it with an iPod Nano, because she doesn't need nearly 160gb. Overall, she doesn't really like it, again for the touch screen...and she says "shake to shuffle does NOT cut it!" She was actually thinking of switching back to the Classic. She actually suggested after this announcement that we just go out and buy replacement iPod Classics NOW for when ours eventually do bite the dust...only to find that it's nearly impossible.