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Comment by random5634 | Hacker News Reader

I actually used whatever was pre iPod - I think it was a phone I loaded your favorite 20 songs on? Either way, for all the talking down of the iPod when it came out - for folks who wanted to listen to music it was total magic. I bought the first iPhone too, and didn’t have a clue that it wasn’t a good email device. I still use only windows / Linux server side - but this new “gimmick” of the M1 does have me interested

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There were more than a couple MP3 players before the iPod. I had a cool little device from Sandisk with, I think, a 512MB solid state drive? I bet it's still kicking. That thing was way cooler than an iPod, it ran off a AA battery (I think) and it seemed pretty tough. I dropped it in a slushy road puddle and it just kept trucking. The iPod had good capacity but the spinning drive in there was a huge failure point.

I remember (at about the same time CDMA cell phones began getting popular) a standalone device with 32MB of storage, enough for like 20 songs or so. I think this was the one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_PMP300

Yes, rock solid, but it didn't hold a candle to the ipod, with its clicky scroll wheel that eased browsing, and its much larger HDD-based capacity.

I loved my Sony Ericsson phones. With a decent memory stick and headphones it felt like the future. In a way it was, but there were many limitations and I jumped to the iPhone one year after it became available without regrets.

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