I never lost my love of my jPod as I am extremely anal when it comes to "my" music. Streaming has its place I suppose, but there is something to be said for having YOUR music collection in your pocket sans internet and algorithms. For years I have told myself I would one day update my iPod with an iFlash drive, and this past Christmas seemed like the perfect time to treat myself.

I debated installing 1TB but that seemed excessive as the entire jTunes collection on my jMac is around 500gb.  On top of that, I did some reading and turns out the 7th generation classic only has the ability to shuffle 50000 songs based on its internal ram, so unless I had nothing but flac files, there is no reason to have 1TB.  I do have three spare SD slots should I want to do such things though. 

The main issue I had was buying the wrong SD cards.  Turns out the two SanDisc cards I got worked, but many songs would skip, and eventually the iPod would stall. I did some more digging and found a list of tried and tested cards which can be found on the iFlash website. I purchased a 512gb Samsung card from Amazon, and since then there has been zero issues! Knock on wood.

I bought a new battery from an eBay seller and it was a piece of junk. The charge didn't even last a couple of hours. I reinstalled my OG battery until my new big capacity battery arrives in the mail. From the testings I have seen, that battery should last a month of regular use before needing a charge.

I have so many issues with Apple products, with every passing year.  Here are just a few that get a bug up my ass:

Video Conversion - As a Motion Graphics Designer, this literally just added an extra 10 minutes or so to my work flow.  Before I would open up a video in Quicktime, no problem, and convert to H264 for the client.  Now that Apple no longer wants us to open AVI, Divx, or even an uncompressed MOV file (?!?!), we now have to sit through a pre conversion, just so I can convert it to the file that I need.  Thank God I still have Quicktime 7.  A program with a million more features and codecs that the new Quicktime does not.

Updates - Because they graced us with their wonderful Cloud (ask a couple of celebs if they love the Cloud), there is now no longer a reason for Apple to roll out a brand new fully formed product.  They put out a half assed product, let their users become the product testers, watch for the anger on social media, then send out an "update" a week later.  Don't believe me?   The Apple Watch already has an update to fix problems with their operating system.   Bottom line is, if you look closely enough, every Update is like a magic trick where every flashy new update, is met with 5 things the removed from your device/computer.

Spacebar - The spacebar used to be the ultimate in helping you work quicker.  I used to be able to quickly bring up a preview window of just about anything.  Any image, or audio file, or a video file.  After an "Update" in the OS a year back or so, we are no longer allowed to preview any files that do not have an Apple friendly file.  Can I preview that DIVX video now with the spacebar? Nope.  Can I spacebar preview that uncompressed video file on the server that I need to use for my latest project?  Nope.  I cant even quickly preview that file in Quicktime anymore!  I have to resort to VLC.

Apple TV - Very recently, Apple TV is no longer powerful enough to run the newly updated YouTube app.  An app that I used daily.  Sorry, I mean my Apple TV2 no longer has the right to run the YouTube app, but Apple TV3 does.  Interesting.

UPDATE:  Laura recieved a free Nintendo Wii from a co-worker.  Since we already had one, Laura had the bright idea of using the second one as our Netflix machine in our spare room upstairs.  Once I set it up I saw there was a YouTube app on there, and wouldnt you know, the YouTube app works perfectly fine on this old Wii.  I repeat.  I can now watch all the YouTubes I want, on my 480p Nintendo Wii, but my Apple TV is no longer powerful enough to run YouTube.  Let that one sink in.

DVD Rom Drives -  In their effort to streamline their designs, Apple started phasing out their DVD drives.  So that means no more DVD burning, no more mixed CDs, and no more watching my DVDs in my room when I go to bed.  I was upset at first thinking that every new device I might buy from Apple will no longer have a drive (you can buy an external drive like its 1995), but after I "updated" my OS a year or so back, I noticed the DVD drive in my iMac no longer worked.  Seems they wanted to give us a head start with the idea of no longer being able to use discs.  I bought my computer not too long ago, and now their new OS wont allow me to use something I paid money for.  After I searched the internet, and read through pages of furious message board posts, I found a tedious way to reset the drive.  Now it reads DVDs, but for some reason it wont read CDs.  This brings me to my next point, and my conspiracy theory.  I think they are eliminating these drives as a way to get people to go get their music through iTunes.  As a person that still loves buying their music physically, I would often then digitize it for my iTunes and my iPod.  I truly think that Apple just wants to eliminate that factor and have people buy directly from them.  The opposite is true with this guy.  I used to purchase the odd song from iTunes, but I now go out of my way to find other sources to download from, for free.

iTunes -  Whenever I try to upload music to my iPhone or iPad I get this.  Greyed out songs.  I move over hundreds of songs, and yet only 5% of them actually load up onto my device.  Nice Apple.