A tattered vintage iPod Classic rests on a workshop, its aluminum exterior bent like an overinflated balloon. Scratches mar the surface, and the screen has battle scars from being pushed into a too tight pocket. This little relic from 2007 was purchased on eBay for peanuts, held 80 gigabytes of songs on a spinning hard drive that weighed it down like a boat anchor, and was once an important part of a music lover’s everyday life. It’s now in the capable hands of YouTuber The Retro Future, who is resurrecting yesterday’s technology to become tomorrow’s best companion.

The iPod Classic made its debut in 2001 as a sleek rectangle capable of holding a thousand songs in your pocket. Its click wheel and design were legendary, but Apple discontinued it in 2014, and we’ve been waiting for a product that revolutionized portable music. Fast forward to 2025, and a little firm called Boxy Pixel has developed a mod kit to enhance the iPod Classic for today.

Photo credit: 2001amour via YankoDesign
From afar, this just looks like a 5th-generation iPod Touch, albeit a bulky version, but upon closer inspection, you’ll realize that it is actually made of two devices and functions as a wallet of sorts.

Building a modern Apple iPod with USB-C may sound simple enough, but there are a few things that make the project more technical than you think. Zachary Matchett-Smith of Zac Builds managed to get his hands on a fifth-generation iPod and decided to modernize it to show just what goes into such a project.