You don’t need iTunes to manage an iPod. There are tons of alternative apps, as well as plugins for music players like foobar2000 and Winamp.
iPods are still great. You can even replace their hard drives with modern flash storage and they work. It’s actually really impressive, i built a 256GB iPod Mini and iTunes has no problem with it.
averyminya@beehaw.org 6 months ago
There are a lot of non-Apple options for a very similar experience. I have a Fiio X1 Gen 2 that I like. They’re not widely available new anymore but they are still about the same price as when I got it.