Age of Analog

I was listening to the radio the other day (I'm sure that by itself is going to bring shock to a lot of people) when I heard it mentioned that 2026 has been declared the year of analog. After listening to what this meant for those who were taking part in going back to analog, I started to reflect on what this meant to me.

For anyone who is not aware, I'm a self proclaimed technology addict. I have a hard time not going out to buy the latest and greatest. This has proven to be the most difficult with ~~smart~~ phones. To this day I'm in constant surprise that I have settled on an iPhone 15 when a decade ago, I would rotate phones every 6 months to a year.

Smart phones today do it all. Want to read a book? Open the Kindle app on your mobile device. Want to take some quick photos with your friends? Pop out your phone and open the camera app. Looking for some noise to focus your mind while working away at some task? put in your Bluetooth headphones and open Apple Music to start streaming. With all this convenience why would someone want to move back in time to how we did things decades ago?

What Are People Doing?

It seems people have decided that they don't want to be glued to their phones. Its a crazy idea seeing as how hard since the invention of the Blackberry that we've worked to shoehorn everything into one always connected to the internet device, but here we are. People are buying physical books - hard cover and paperback, vinyl records, cassettes, Compact Discs, actual 35 mm camera film and instant film.

I have a friend who owns a kindle with literally hundreds of books on it, but that doesnt stop her from going to a used book store to browse for new (to her) stained dead trees to add to her collection of sacred knowledge and stories. I asked her why when convenience was in a 7 inch screen that easily fit in the palm of her hand. The answer was simple - the senses. A tablet doesn't provide much to the senses while a book offers unique experiences in touch, smell, look, sound and I would venture even taste though I hope she's not out here licking books (100% not going to put that past her).

In this age of streaming, I know someone who has hundreds of DVDs. I remember once taking on the challenge of documenting what movies where where on the bookshelf they had them on. Early on I discovered that this seven foot tall bookshelf completely full of DVD cases was actually two cases deep on each shelf. Their reasoning for collecting all these movies - Harry Potter may leave Netflix, but it doesn't leave their house.

My wife has a small collection of CDs that she listens to. As the one who shelled out the money for them, I have an appreciation for this one. Part of the collection is Garth Brooks which when this all started didnt have a streaming option, and now is exclusive to Amazon Music Unlimited, which to me and my wife, might as well not exist. Not everyone is on Spotify or Apple Music so having an actual physical collection of music makes sense to me even though I dont fully participate.

Both of my girls own Fujimax Instafilm cameras. These are the small camera's that produce a photo instantly like the Polaroids of the 80's and 90's did. My kids like to take pictures with these not because of the quality of photo (we have come such a long way in photo quality) but because they get to hold a picture in their hand immediately after snapping the shot. They love taking these photos and pinning them to boards, putting them on the fridge and trading them like cards.

What About Me?

I'm a subscription junkie. I have all the big name TV streaming service (who needs a $70 cable bill when you can pay $100+ for streaming?) I have Apple Music (its burried in the huge bundle Apple offers to families) and I subscribe to Audible because the hand full of people I enjoy their writing are still producing audio books. I'm quick to toss in a pair of Air Pods with Active Noise Cancellation enabled and stream my radio station in Apple Music or catch up on the latest in the Alex Cross series.

Recently I was eating lunch with an audio book going and Siri interrupted the story to notify me that Gmail had a new notification that was long so it wasnt going to read it. Less than a minute later Siri paused my book to let me know that one of those 6 digit phone numbers had just texted me with some urgent information about a news story that I'm never going to read had been published. Next shortly after that was an announcement from Siri that a new notification had come from Teams. Siri wouldnt read the content of the message so it really felt like an interruption to my book for the sake of interrupting my book. I spent a lot of time thinking about this. Do I turn the Siri feature off? I decided that I didnt mind getting these notifications in general. When I just had my headphones in but not really listening to anything these were useful and I liked having the ability to not stop what I was doing to read a notification but when I was listening to a book this was a real issue. Since the issue was really around my books (and sometimes music) and Siri on its best day isnt smart enough to conditionally decide notifications, I decided I needed to seperate my books and music from my notification factory that is my cell phone.

I've been streaming music since Rhapsody first offered the service, so having to stop and think about to make a technology I though I left behind in the early 2000's work in late 2025 was drawn out much longer than I thought it would be. I had four requirements for this device

+ No internet/apps - my phone already does this. I've proven time and again that if something is capable of doing something, I'm going to have it do something

+ Plays Lossless music - If I'm going to re-engage in collected music, its got to be quality (This ideology didnt last long. More on this later)

+ Plays M4B audio books - This is the format that has chapters and allows for remembering where you left off. Audible's sync feature is really good so I didnt want to give up more than I had do.

+ Plays FM radio - Cell phones got away from this and aside from IR blasters, its my most missed feature. I wanted it back

This list of demands made for some interesting discoveries. the First being the discovery if the r/DAP subreddit. There's a strong demand for media players ranging from simple audio playback devices to essentially cell phones without the modems with amazing playback controls. Finally I landed on an iPod.

As it turns out, a lot of different iPods have been released since 2001 and essentially all of them are still viable to this day. Being that I had no interest in having an iPhone that cant make phone calls (accidently did that with Android. No need to go back), I was able to at lease take the iPod touch off the table. This left the Classic, Nano and Shuffle. Neither the Classic nor the Shuffle supported FM radio so I was able to write them off as well. Awesome - we're getting an iPod Nano. Oh! wait.... there's 7 different types (generations) of iPod Nano? After much debate on price, size (physical and storage) connectors, I finally landed on the 7th generation iPod Nano. It is a touch screen device (which initially I thought I wasnt interested in) that has a lightening connector which I had plenty of cables for already.

At the time of writing, I've had this iPod in my possession for an entire weekend and just like a kid with a new favorite toy, I havnt put it down since I got it. I go back and forth between a MacBook Pro and a Linux Laptop (Fedora 43 for everyone who is curious) so iTunes isnt an option which is what these devices were designed for. After a lot of trial and error, I found there are multiple ways to get your iPod synced in Linux and none of them like when your iPod already has a configured database from another device. I discovered that Apple hasnt abandoned the idea that people own iPods even though they discontinued the non-Touch models in 2017 and the Touch models in 2022. I was able to get my audio books and a small collection of music transferred over using Finder and the Apple Music app.

An unexpected side-effect from this is experiencing the return of the album. In the age of streaming I typically put on "Shane Hudson's Radio Station" and listen to different hits throughout my lifetime. With putting Albums on my iPod, I find myself picking one and then starting at the beginning and just letting them play through. This has made me realize that I like some bands more than I thought I did because I was only listening to their hits on streaming when some of there deeper cuts were real bangers too.

This dedicated audio device made me realize that just because we can, doesnt mean we should. I've had a kindle for years but I also own an iPad. It does ebooks and much more. Why even bother? Focus. I only use my Kindle for reading and nothing about it distracts me from doing just that and its been nice to just sit down and dedicate time to exclusively doing a single task (this by leaps and bounds is not my strong suit). In a similar vein, I've picked up my DSLR camera to take photos where I might have just used my iPhone previously. I've drawn the line here at picking up a point and shoot camera. Since I have the DSLR and iPhone it did not feel like there was room in-between them for another device.

But None of This is Analog

Yes! I am completely aware, and this is where I really start to feel my age when I say I think this return to analog is mostly a dumb thing. I'm old enough to have carried the Walkman (both in its cassette and CD models) and if your device in 2026 requires you to decide between cargo pants and JNCOs, you probably shouldnt be using it.

As for people taking pictures on film - are you enjoying shipping off your film to get it developed just to find out EVERYTHING was out of focus? We're at a point in technology that someone can take a photo with a DSLR camera, quickly transfer the image over to an iPad and touch up the color and lighting then share it with the group in the time its going to take some kids to figure out how to move to the next photo in the 35 mm camera.

Now that I've finished my old man yells at clouds moment, I will say its not all bad. I completely get the sensation of a book even though the weight alone is enough to convince me to keep the digital version in my bag. Also, there's something about the imperfections that accompany vinyl that keeps it hanging around for me and their are different cuts of movies, so it makes sense to have unchanged copies (I'm looking at you constantly changing Star Wars movies). OK so maybe its not all dumb, but we left a lot of analog things behind for a reason. Before you try to bring something back (iPods are coming back now that people are reading this article. Bookmark this!), be sure it has a place. Film shacks went out of business for a reason.