If you miss the days of listening to music on Spotify or Apple Music to listen to their library. It may not put an iPod Classic back in your hand, but it's the next best thing.
The first iPod was released by Apple in 2001, well before the advent of streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music. Although other MP3 players existed, the iPod lives on in the form of the iPod touch and it's thought the figure Apple has sold now stands at somewhere north of 400 million.
Of course, while the iPod touch is far more powerful and feature-rich than the early iPods, many are nostalgic about the early models. That's why colleagues Tanner Villarete and Mayank Bansal created iPod.js. Built using the React JavaScript library, it allows s to browse and play music through an interface that perhaps most closely resembles the iPod Classic 5th Generation, when the device graduated from a monochromatic, list-based menu to one with a color display and graphical elements.
How To Use iPod.js
While iPod.js is more of a novelty than anything else, it functions perfectly well as a music player and gives s a different way to browse their music than by trawling through their Spotify or Apple Music apps. Having navigated to Spotify or Apple Music by scrolling down with the arrow keys on their keyboard or by clicking and dragging around the jog wheel. The website arguably works better on a smartphone, though, with s able to run their finger around the jog wheel on a touchscreen to navigate around, similar to how they would have originally.
Once logged in, s can browse their music library using the Cover Flow feature or by playlist, artist, or album. One particularly cool feature is the recreation of the games section that iPod Classics featured. In this instance, s can play the retro classic Brick, with the jog wheel used to control a paddle along the bottom of the screen.
Sources: iPod.js, Tanner Villarete, Mayank Bansal