Alas, poor iPod. We knew it well. A device of infinite jest.
Nearly 21 years since the world-changing Apple device debuted, Apple has finally killed the iPod.
Yep, the music player that was one of the most important devices of the century thus far has finally been discontinued.
Yesterday. Apple finally announced that the Touch, the last remaining device in the line, will no longer be manufactured. This comes 8 years after the Classic, with its iconic clickwheel, was sent off to pasture in 2014, with the Shuffle and Nano being discontinued back in 2017.
The game-changing music player debuted all the way back on October 23, 2001, with then-CEO of Apple Steve Jobs, in his trademark turtleneck and New Balances, announced what came to be true.
“With iPod, Apple has invented a whole new category of digital music player that lets you put your entire music collection in your pocket and listen to it wherever you go,” said Jobs.
“With iPod, listening to music will never be the same again.”
The player does live on though, just as the dinosaurs purportedly live on through birds, as it directly evolved into the iPhone so many of us have in our pockets today. So long, ol’ buddy. You still are with us, somehow.
How the iPod became the iPhone
Recently, the iPhone’s co-creator spoke to TechCrunch about that development.
“We did iPod Plus Phone,” Fadell told TechCrunch.
“You took the headset, which had a microphone on it and the one ear thing. You could use the Click Wheel to select numbers and names, or you could dial with it, like a rotary phone, which was the ultimate death of it. You couldn’t enter anything, because there’s no textual input. But it was an iPod Classic with a phone in it. Walk it back from the third-party prototype, and we were there, too.”
Steve Jobs wasn’t the inventor per se, but he was an integral part of that development.
“[Steve Jobs] had very clear views on things — until they weren’t clear,” Wadell continued. “Or it became very clear that they wouldn’t work. He pushed us very hard on making the iPod Plus Phone work. We worked weeks and weeks to figure out how to do input with the click wheel. We couldn’t get it, and after the whole team was convinced we couldn’t do it, he was like, ‘keep trying!’ At some point we all said, ‘no, it isn’t going to work.’”
Apple, however, has made it clear that the DNA of what made the product great lives on through its other products.
“Music has always been part of our core at Apple, and bringing it to hundreds of millions of users in the way iPod did impacted more than just the music industry — it also redefined how music is discovered, listened to, and shared,” Greg Joswiak said in a release. “Today, the spirit of iPod lives on. We’ve integrated an incredible music experience across all of our products, from the iPhone to the Apple Watch to HomePod mini, and across Mac, iPad, and Apple TV. And Apple Music delivers industry-leading sound quality with support for spatial audio — there’s no better way to enjoy, discover, and experience music.”
Old devices, of course, will continue to work. Who else has an iPod Classic in a drawer somewhere?