Managing an iPod with an iPad

[ChinaIzzie]

I have an ancient 80GB iPod Classic that is almost full and contains my entire music library. Now that the iPad Pro has been introduced and it has a larger screen and storage capacity, I am curious whether I could somehow manage my iPod via iTunes on an iPad and dispense with my laptop altogether (I really only use it as a glorified tablet aside from my iPod management). I know there are USB to lightning adapters out there, but all the forum advice I've found re managing an iPod with iTunes on an iPad is circa 2013 or older, and at that point it was impossible to do. Does anyone know whether that has changed?

 

[twerppoet]

Sorry. This won't be possible. At least not with iOS 9, which is what the iPad Pro will be running. To manage an iPod you'll still need iTunes on a computer. iTunes on an iPad is going to remain much as it is, with a few new services added. Actually, I don't think it's going to change significantly from what we got with iOS 8.4.1 and the introduction of Apple Music. At least not the services and features. I'm hoping they will continue to refine the user interface.

I'm guessing iPod management on an iPad will never happen in the way you are describing. More and more, music and other services are moving to the cloud, and with cloud connected devices each device manages itself and/or syncs the same content/settings between devices. The iPod classic and it's need for a computer is a rapidly dying use model; one that Apple is unlikely to keep supporting beyond the computing environment that it was designed to work in.

I suspect one of the reasons Apple hasn't completely re-written iTunes on the computer is that they expect most of what it does to become irrelevant in the next few years. At that point they will probably replace it with a collection of apps that work more like the ones that exist on the iPad and iPhone.