The iPod Capstone!

The Manifesto:

In the modern day it is a living hell to listen to a music streaming service. Compounded by apps like airbuds, it is nothing short of an actual nightmare. In addition, it is impossible to avoid advertising. It is impossible to avoid the clear misrepresentation of small up and coming artists as compared to big rich artists who can afford to boost how often their song plays when you shuffle a playlist. And you forget that you are paying upwards of 20 a month to be confronted by these atrocities... In addition, mp3s are more economical than ever with sites like Bandcamp providing entire albums for around $3. Solid state storage is cheaper per GB than it has been in all of history. We are in a golden age of DAPs (Digital Audio Players) yet we spend our money on a service that is still advertising to us after we pay. But the gold standard is getting old. The Apple iPod is getting to be 20 years old. In order to daily drive such a device it is necessary to do various mods such as a battery replacement and a Bluetooth mod at the minimum. They are driven by a deprecating software that is owned by a large corporation. Thus it is necessary to have a new generation of digital media players that still have an old school vibe. These are the reasons that I decided to make my own digital media player. My chief grievance with modern portable electronics is a lack of battery life optimization as a type of planned obsolescence. One of the main reasons that a person gets a new phone or computer is because the battery has depreciated, as Li-ion batteries usually do, to a point where said device is unusable. To circumvent this issue the obvious solution is to avoid being a selfish corporation, and to optimize the device for battery life. I plan on using a comparatively large rechargeable cell as well as an e-ink screen in order to significantly reduce the power requirements. E-ink screens draw no current when displaying a still image and therefore can effectively be used in a DAP-type device and have an “always on” functionality allowing the user to quickly reference what song they are listening to without any other actions.

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