The little iPod that could
As a child and teenager you’d never hear anyone call me “sporty”, “athletic”, or “David”. I always dreaded PE, doubly so when it was cross country running. My friends and I were always the ones walking for the whole session, we never made around the entire course.
A few years later, at the ripe old age of 27, I decided to try this “running” thing I’d heard so much about. I joined a local group, and quickly found I quite enjoyed it. I even started running on my own. For fun.
It was at this point I bought my first (and only) iPod to keep me company on those solo runs - a 4th gen iPod shuffle.
The iPod served me well while running, until I discovered the Nike+ run tracking app. If I was gonna have my phone on me for run tracking, I may as well use it for music too. This rendered my trusty iPod obsolete. It didn’t go to waste though, as my girlfriend started using it.
That was over a decade ago. That girlfriend is now my wife. And that wife found this old iPod in a drawer, complete with its weird USB to 3.5mm jack charging cable. I have no idea how long it’s been since the iPod was last used, many years for sure, so I had to see if it would even turn on.
I plugged the charger in, and there it was - blinkenlight!
Not only that, but it charged. The orange LED eventually turned green, indicating a full state of charge.
However, this be not my first rodeo, so I was fully expecting the it to die as soon as I unplugged it. I expected wrong. With the iPod unplugged I could push the controls and see the blinkenlight blinken.
I dug out some headphones, plugged them in, and gave it a listen. I was rewarded with the sweet sounds of Linkin Park.
I’m pretty sure I bought this in late 2012/early 2013. Conveniently I could confirm that, as its colour, “slate”, was only available from 12th September 2012 to 10th September 2013. So it was at least 13 years old.
This little guy had stuck around through four house moves, the births of two children, and its last owner being promoted from girlfriend to wife.
It was also a snapshot of a time long gone. All I knew so far was Linking Park’s excellent first album, Hybrid Theory was on there. I plugged it into my MacBook, and opened the Music app.
This revealed two interesting things: The first being the selection of music on it. The second being the “last played” dates, the most recent was May 2015. This little iPod hadn’t been used for over 11 years.
I had to know how long the old battery would last. The claimed battery life when new was “up to 15 hours”. My guess for this tired old example was less than 1 hour. But there’s only one way to find out. An experiment.
I gave it another full charge and paired it* with some era appropriate Apple headphones.
Then I took a deep breath, and started the iPod playing, while also starting a stopwatch on my phone.
Every so often I’d put an earphone to my ear and see if it was still playing. As the first hour drew near I started to feel the first sparks of optimism bubbling up. Could it last two hours? Three even?
I started to enjoy myself. Every time I checked it I’d be treated to a few seconds of a song that I may not have listened to in a decade. Even though it was my wife’s playlist, we have very similar music tastes, so I enjoyed everything I heard.
Two hours came, then three, four, five, and it was still going strong. I couldn’t believe it. I’m pretty sure my wife was getting sick of me telling her how long the iPod had been playing, but I was well and truly invested in this character arc.
Seven and a half hours. The halfway point. I lift a headphone to my ear, and hear Brendon Urie singing about the lack of raindrops on roses or girls in white dresses. The song is “Build God, Then We’ll Talk” from Panic! at the Disco’s “A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out”, a timeless classic of an album.
I decided at this point to make notes of what songs are playing at milestone moments.
At the 8 hour mark I hear a balding 29 year old man whine about his teenage angst. That’s right, it’s Aaron Lewis of Staind, and the song in question is “For You” from “Break the Cycle”. I mock it now, but when it came out I was that angsty teenager, and I loved it. In all honesty I still love that album now.
Some time between 8 and 9 hours in I hear something that isn’t a song at all:
“How many pushups can you do?”
“Cock pushups?”
“Well I guess you can only do one”
“One is all you need”
Yes ladies and gentlemen, Tenacious D have entered the chat, with “Cock Pushups”, one of the many still hilarious skits from their first album.
The little iPod shuffle seems to be on a bit of a Tenacious D binge, as before the 9th hours rolled around I heard “City Hall” and “They Fucked our Asses”.
Shortly after the aforementioned song of sodomy, the stopwatch ticks past nine hours, and I hear Paramore’s “Looking Up”. It’s one of the weaker songs on “Brand New Eyes”, an otherwise great album. I particularly love the closing tracks - “Misguided Ghosts” and “All I Wanted”. The latter of which gives me goosebumps every time Hayley Williams hits that high E in the chorus. Unfortunately the special edition of the album is ruined by tacking Decode from the Twilight soundtrack on to the end. Decode is a great song in its own right, but not an album closer, especially compared to “All I Wanted”.
At nine and a half hours I hear Amy Lee of Evanescence lamenting how I never call her when I’m sober. I want to fill a bath up with her voice and drown in it. The Open Door is still one of my all time favourite albums.
Over the next half an hour I hear “Points of Authority” by Linkin Park, and “Stupid World” from Apartment 26’s second album “Music for the Massive”. Apartment 26 are a lesser known British band who only released two albums. Both are good, but the second album is something special, mixing industrial, metal, jazz, and blues seamlessly. I really wish they’d done more.
And then I see it. Ten hours. This 14 year old nugget spent a decade abandoned in a drawer, and has now been playing music for 10 hours straight. The moment is marked with “These Stones Will Shout” from Consolers of the Lonely by The Raconteurs.
Not long later I catch “Drive Thru” by Tenacious D, which will never not be funny to me. That final punch line “We’re gonna have to cancel the last two things on the order” gets me every time. Beautiful.
At 11 hours it’s still alive, and has come back to The Raconteurs, bringing big band jazz vibes with “Many Shades of Black”.
We’re heading towards the unthinkable. 12 hours of non-stop music. This is amazing. When the moment comes I hear Tenacious D again, this time telling me how “The Government Totally Sucks”. No arguments from me.
I have made a mistake.
I started this experiment too late in the day. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine it would last this long. It’s now nearly midnight and the stopwatch is approaching 13 hours. I’m tired, I’m in bed, my wife is asleep, I’ve got work tomorrow, and a cold. I want to go to sleep.
I’m gonna be honest, by the 13th hour I was willing the damn thing to just die. I put the headphone to my ear, praying for silence, instead I hear Tenacious D again. This time it’s “Beelzeboss (The Final Showdown)”, an epic tale of how Jables and Kage bested the devil in a rock off challenge.
That’s it, I’m done. I turn the iPod off and pause the stopwatch. As I slide the switch from shuffle to off, I hear a synthetic voice saying “battery low”. Hopefully leaving it off overnight won’t affect the battery life too much. I’ll pick this up again in the morning.
The morning comes with a renewed optimism. Now I want this iPod to live. More than that, I want it to thrive. I want to see 15 hours of playtime, maybe more. I’m both projecting and anthropomorphising here - as a 41 year old trying to stay fit, I know the struggle. If this old iPod can keep up with its younger self, maybe I can too?
I turn the iPod on, and resume the stopwatch. I forgot to note what song came next, I think I was just so excited to see it was still playing at all.
At 14 hours I hear “Epiphany” by Staind. A beautiful song about Aaron Lewis’s struggles with ADD, which always spoke to me. It’s recently been brought to my attention that I may have ADD myself, so that makes sense.
A few minutes later I hear “Bliss” by Muse. This is notable, as it was the first time I heard a song twice in this experiment.
And then it happens. Silence. At 14 hours and 12 minutes, the little iPod shu- oh wait, never mind, “Friendship Test” by Tenacious D just started. I forgot Bliss has a long, quiet outro.
A minute later I put a headphone in my ear, and again I hear silence and think it’s all over. Turns out it’s just the awkward silence after Jack Black tells Kyle Gass that he loves him. Nothing to see here.
The next song I hear is “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails. I’m pretty confident this is the only Nine Inch Nails song on here - my wife is not a big NIN fan, but this song is on a mix CD I made for her many years ago. I however am a huge NIN fan, so I’m glad I got to hear it.
14 and a half hours. This is getting scarily close to the original 15 hours battery life. And once again Tenacious D are celebrating with me, singing about a town called “Kickapoo”.
At 14 hours and 50 minutes I hear Evanscence’s “Your Star”, and I feel a calm wash over me. This would be a perfect song to go out on - “Though I patiently waited, bedside, for the death of today”. 14 hours and 50 minutes would be a stellar effort for the little shuffle. The song finishes, the iPod keeps going.
Next up I hear “Open Your Eyes” by Staind, and not long into that track it happens.
Two beeps, and then nothing.
The vacuous silence fills my head, the whole world seems quiet.
14 hours, 52 minutes, and 28 seconds. My flab is aghast.
While “Open your Eyes” is another solid song from that Staind album, it’s not what I would have chosen as the last hurrah. At least “Your Star” was the last full song it played.
After a few seconds my brain catches up and I realise I’ve just fully drained the battery on this aged device.
I scrabble to get it plugged back in, cursing the 5 dimensional design of USB A connectors - why does it always take three attempts to get it in the right way? I manage to get the charging cable plugged into a USB C adapter, and plug that into my laptop, but no blinkenlight. This is bad.
Time to cut out the middle-man, I plug the charging cable directly into a USB A charger, and still nothing.
I feel a genuine sadness. I’ve grown attached to this little guy over the last 15 hours. I’ve relished having non-stop music to dip in and out of as I please. Everyone loves an underdog, and this dog was subterranean.
Is it weird to hold a funeral for an iPod? We’ll never know, as the little orange light begins to glow. It’s charging!
I avert my gaze, I don’t want to spook it. I’ll leave it there until it’s fully charged.
Much to my relief the green light returned, my boy survived. Next I plugged it back in to my laptop and saw that all but four songs were played during those near 15 hours. This implies the iPod shuffle’s shuffle is truly random. Ie: a song’s chance of being played doesn’t increase with the time since its last play. This would also mean it’s possible to hear the same song twice in a row.
14 hours, 52 minutes, and 28 seconds. Only 7 minutes and 36 seconds shy of the quoted battery life when new. So much for my “less than one hour” prediction. That’s over 99% of its original battery life. I can’t help but wonder how it would have done if I hadn’t had to pause the experiment overnight?
So what now? I can’t just shut it away in a drawer again, that’s for sure.
I’m tempted to send it back to Apple so they can study this miracle of science, but I actually have a use in mind, one that comes full circle. I want to take it running with me.
I don’t use my phone to track runs anymore, I have a Garmin watch instead. And while that can play music, it uses bluetooth headphones, which are always a pain, and rapidly drain the watch’s battery. It’s also a bit of a pain to get music on and off it. So I’m gonna use the iPod for music and podcasts when I run.
I’m also tempted to try the experiment again, this time starting much earlier in the morning and see if we can break the 15 hour mark.
— Matt
* by paired I mean in the way fancy people pair food with wine, not the frustrating bluetooth way.