One Thing I Miss About My Pre-Smartphone Days
It’s easy to forget that the event that got me to make an account here (NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: originally this post was on substack -8/25/25) back in November was newfound fear that Twitter would soon collapse. Twitter still works and most people I follow on there have continued to use it, but the experience has gotten worse and worse, largely due to the boosting of paid subscribers’ replies to the top—a change which destroys all the fun and usefulness that used to be found in reply sections.
Many have been looking for a Twitter alternative in the meantime. Bluesky has been a sort of frontrunner—but it’s still invite-only. And I don’t have an invite, so I really couldn’t tell you how good it is. Mastodon has been too confusing for most people. Hive, meanwhile, is simple, and a number of people did try it out for a bit—but then it shut down for a month, and people kind of forgot.
Apparently, Meta saw an opportunity in this situation. On July 5, they launched Threads—a Twitter-like app which requires users to have an Instagram account. Two million people joined within a few hours.
The biggest downside to the app? There’s no feed that has just posts from people you follow in chronological order. The only feed is the one full of posts the algorithm thinks you’ll like.
I do wonder if Meta decided to rush the app out the door a bit. It’s not like they saw Twitter’s rate-limit debacle and coded the whole Threads over the weekend, obviously, but is it possible they decided to move up the release, I dunno, a week? No idea. I don’t know how development at Meta goes. Regardless, the app has certainly launched lacking some pretty significant features.
But because so many people are on the app already, I definitely think it has potential to stick around. I doubt it’ll be exactly like Twitter—but do we actually want that? Something similar but a little bit different could be good. We just need to see improvements quickly, and I think this app could be “the one.”
But you know, the whole situation has reminded me of what I was thinking when I made this blog in the first place: I need to do less microblogging and get back to doing more normal-blogging!
But microblogging is fun….
Well, even so. Here I am.
Reminiscing on My iPod From 2012
For some reason, earlier today I was thinking about my sixth-gen iPod Nano. That’s this one, in case you’re not the type of nerd who remembers each generation of iPods:
This iPod Nano actually had fewer features than the previous generation: it couldn’t play video. Actually, the fifth-gen even had a video camera (guess they thought they needed an answer to Flip Video).
But man. This one is just adorable.
Unlike other recent iPods at the time, rotating the device didn’t change the orientation of the UI. You actually had to use a pinch gesture to rotate it.
This iPod had watch faces, too, though it wasn’t sold with a strap included or anything. But yeah, you could say it’s secretly the prototype Apple Watch in that sense.
The design is reminiscent of the iPhone 4 thanks to the physical buttons being the same (they look the same at least), and the OS having that same background with the water droplets. To me the funnest thing about the design was just that album art would take up the full screen.
Oh, also, this thing had a clip built-in! Yeah, you could clip it to the pocket of your jeans or whatever.
In 2014, I decided I needed more exercise, so I thought I’d pick up running. So I would take my iPod Nano to the track and clip it to my shorts. There was some sort of basic Nike app which I used to track my distance. Good times, good times.
These days, even though you can download music to an Apple Watch and leave your iPhone behind, it really doesn’t feel the same, you know?
There’s something very different about a device that can’t connect to the Internet at all. With the exception of iPod Touch, iPods could only be loaded with music via a computer. Everything on an iPod was something you chose (or at least had on your computer, for whatever reason). You were curating a personal music collection for all your on-the-go listening needs. And once you disconnected the iPod from the computer, that was it. It was impossible to get more without returning to the computer again.
There was no algorithm to offer you a never-ending string of songs you’re likely to enjoy. It was just you and your personal collection.
Was that better than what we have now? Well, honestly, these days, I sometimes find the wealth of options for music-listening that are available to me constantly to be a bit overwhelming.
I do love knowing that I can find pretty much any song I can think of and that I can try out new stuff whenever I want.
But the simplicity of having fewer choices, the joy of curating a collection, and the special connection I feel with the music I’ve put on my iPod—I kind of miss all that.
Does that mean I’m ready to ditch smartphones? Not at all.
Of course, if the overabundance of options is what’s bothering me, I suppose I could technically go back to just buying music. And then I could sync my iPhone with my Mac for non-iTunes stuff? But I would have to buy a ton of songs that I’ve just been streaming for a while, and that cost would add up! It could be fun to do someday, I guess, but not today. For now, I think I’m good to keep doing the streaming thing.
It’s not like my desire to keep a music collection has died though. The library feature, which on Apple Music is organized basically the same as it always has been (and I hope it stays that way—some other apps have messed with a perfectly functional system), kind of scratches that itch. It’s nice to see a digital library grow, even if I don’t actually have any kind of ownership over the songs at all and they can disappear suddenly at the artist’s or label’s discretion.
But aside from that, it probably won’t surprise you to know I also buy vinyls from time to time. I just think they’re neat.
Honestly, most of the reason this post exists is probably that I am simply nostalgic for the iPod days. I mean, I’m a 90s baby; what do you expect?
That aside, there are pros and cons to both the iPod days and the mobile music streaming present. I wouldn’t say either one is “perfect.” One thing I definitely do believe in, though, is giving music time and attention. I’d hate for music to be just endless background noise for passive consumption. I don’t really want to just let an algorithm cater to my tastes all the time, either. I want to be intentional about my listening, and I want my tastes to keep expanding.
I don’t want algorithms to ever completely replace the simple human interaction of a friend saying “Hey, check this thing out.”
And on that note, please Threads, hurry with the non-recommendation-algorithm-based home feed, because this could get ugly fast, alright? OK thanks