I had considered this. I still may at some point. I wanted to play with the original interface and experience that. Plus my car connects well to iPods (it’s an older car) and that’s pretty handy. I’m pretty sure it’ll get the audio from rockbox but less confident playlists and such will work.
I’ve been using a gen 5.5 for about 10 months and am quite enjoying it. I bought a refurb with a fresh battery and SD card replacement. Sounds great, nostalgia moments on point, and can enjoy music without my phone.
On Linux it’s been a bit cumbersome to get content on, and the podcast experience is subpar by modern expectations, but I still appreciate the tactile interface. It’s nice to interact with things that aren’t all glass touch surfaces.
I remember this and thought I was crazy. There was an article linked somewhere on Lemmy last week that addressed this. It seemed like it was a Steve Jobs special - no one knew he was going to promise that. Subsequently, they got tangled up in a patent dispute with someone who owned a very vague communications protocol patent. That outcome has been appealed, from both sides, in courts basically since then.
I saw this two weeks ago. I had a few days where I thought I was going crazy because there was no “log in” link in the header, just a more obnoxious “open the app” button instead. After a few days I did see the log in button again, but I had already accepted the fact that I’d only be allowed to use their mobile app and convinced myself I’d close my account (which I subsequently did two weeks later)
I’m using a pi-hole on my network and I added reddit to the ‘blocked list’ to cut down on myself clicking the links. I should find a way to filter out the links from my search results easily, but this works for now.
For me it’s also about reducing my reliance on my mobile. Teaching my kids by example that life isn’t only on my phone is easier when I can more clearly demonstrate what I’m doing. To listen to music I get my music device. When I want to take pictures, I grab my camera.