I can't believe no one I've seen has called out the secret game! Go to Settings>About and then hold the center button for 5 seconds. I used to play so much of this bricks game in college when procrastinating from studying in the library.

Really is heartbreaking that the click wheel is such an incredible and satisfying user interface but technology has evolved such that we have no need for it anymore.

I chuckle knowing that somewhere in Apple there is an SRE or engineer who is getting paged for elevated 404 rates, and has to silence the pages hoping that no real missing page issue crops up while we all hit this page. :)

It's kind of nice seeing Apple get a tad whimsical with things like this. We don't really get that side of the company very often.

Playlist data below for anyone interested:

https://music.apple.com/includes/ipod/data/us/en-US.json

It's really cute. I wonder if we'll see a significant market for plain MP3 players with the whole digital detox fad lining up with the nostalgia. There's already a lot of people buying refurb and bluetooth-modded modded ipod classics.

Hilariously, I can't load this in Safari, because it auto-redirects to the Apple Music app for that link, with no way to prevent it.

Pretty cool in other browsers, though.

This is a direct homage to the click-wheel iPod — the same trick (Settings > About, hold the center button for ~5 seconds) launched a hidden Breakout game on iPods twenty years ago. Nice to see someone at Apple still hiding things for their own sake.

This is so good! It's even got duplicates of songs with slightly different caps!

I don't have a lot of love for megacorps but I gotta give it to Apple on this one, goddamn.

Many (youngsters!) may not know how to operate an iPod UI!

Press and hold anywhere on the donut-shaped area, then rotate clockwise or counter-clockwise to move down/up the items!

For us oldies, the nostalgia hits hard; I'm reminded of the tracks I listened to and even the roads I drove while listening.

If they had a better sense of humor, the only U2 songs on the device would be from Songs of Innocence [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_of_Innocence_(U2_album)#...

I never had an iPod and only borrowed it a few times from friends. It is quite amazing how they manage to nail down this interface which still feels good even in the day and age of touch screens.

My 2021 car has sort of similar scrolling wheel to control the infotainment (which has no touch) and it's nowhere near this level of polish.

Heavy dose of nostalgia. That clicking sound is so satisfying.

Nice to see they've replicated the slight lighting uneveness near the sides when you turn the backlight on!

Those are some big song previews. 1:30 is a lot more than the typical 30 seconds.

THIS IS AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No explicit filter either!

The hip-hop playlist is 1000%; instant throwback to my 2000s living in Greater NYC

How do you get to this URL without iOS wanting to open/download Apple Music? I don’t even have Apple Music installed…

If someone still has a third or fourth generation iPod, there is a crowdfunding for an rp2350 based mainboard

https://www.crowdsupply.com/certain-things/sprout-pi-mainboa...

Im not affiliated with this project

Damn that is a huge nostalgic trip

I wonder how they picked the setlist.

Feels retro, but still a ~decade newer than when this was state of the art. Some reasonably obscure artists. Thrice and Thursday released a split EP recorded in the Apple stores: I see Thursday but not Thrice here.

Thrice still makes music. Thursday has been quiet for more than a decade.

is this ... free music streaming ... unlimited? :)

next product idea for Rabbit r1 team - 3D print a case with a screen that shows this page cropped to show just the device.

Would be funny if this was an iPod OS emulator

This badly throws me back to the early aughts partying at Beauty Bar in austin during peak hipster era!!

The first time I tried my friend's iPod I couldn't figure out how to turn it off. Holding down the Play/Pause button is not discoverable at all but once you knew it was perfect. Your thumb never had to leave the wheel.

Im an Apple Music user on Android. It's sad to see that the 404 page works way better than the webview application.

Spotify just works on android but with apple everything feels intentionally slow.

No wireless. Less space than creative.com/nomad. Lame.

What surprises me the most is that they play the explicit versions of the songs.

No single thing made me feel older faster than the fact that, when I was tween, the iPod was invented, took the world by storm and was the coolest device on the planet; and, before I was 30, it was discontinued.

I didn't expect such an nostalgia hit. Amazing feeling to scroll through artist names without being distracted by visuals...

If you want to search through all of the songs without scrolling on the iPod, you can hit the API[0] directly for the JSON.

[0] https://music.apple.com/includes/ipod/data/us/en-US.json

There was a feature I loved that while playing in shuffle, you could highlight a song and it would play next. I couldn't do it in this version. They nailed the clicking sound.

Reading this as I sync music from iTunes/Apple Music to my iPod. Going on 20 years of service life (it's been rebuilt by a pro to have USB-C and Bluetooth, and a new battery) and still my library is intact and syncing works the same. Let's see how long it'll last :)

Make this the default Apple Music interface

Cute, but I wish they'd spend more effort fixing all the bugs in Apple Music on macOS, and improving their navigation and recommendation algorithms.

Clicking sound unlocked some memories.

>Has Propellerheads "Take California" clip >it doesn't have the line

Sad!

haha literally everyone had Ocean Avenue by Yellowcard on their ipod

On the hardware side... If I still have a 2nd gen iPod that hadn't been booted up in like 20 years. What are my chances of reviving it?

Roc the Mic. Beanie Sigel and Freeway. Haven't heard that song in a loooong time.

Ipod seems pretty cool. I never owned one, kind of want to get a modded one or a newer knock off

Happy 25-year, iPod https://www.macrumors.com/2026/10/23/ipod-25th-anniversary/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50210732)

Sad that the only song by Metallica that made it in is I disappear :/

Very disappointing that the Music app on iOS doesn’t render the page. Would have been super cool to scroll in the app with some haptic feedback along with the click sound. I can understand why it won’t be there as you can’t directly navigate to a pre-determined page, but instead they force you to portal through their search button.

Even still, I’m a little sad knowing what could have been! :(

the only iPod i owned was the touch. but for for an iPod that had a clickwheel that I had then was my gf's.

damn what a pleasurable experience of using a click wheel.

Ok, that's badass. =)

Oh man, nostalgia overload!

I love Easter eggs like those.

The ordering of the artists is interesting. Unlike most systems, 2Pac and 50 Cent are sorted right at the end. 50 Cent actually comes after 8Ball & MJG so it's a bit like `sort -n` but with numbers to the end. Is this an Apple thing?

Interesting that "Do You Realize??" by The Flaming Lips is listed twice under Songs, but its actually two sequential 90 second clips.

[dead]

Company made a thing. Remixed it a decade later. Fanfare.

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