Tech giant Apple is shutting down the production of the music broadcasting device of our childhood, the iPod, after 21 years.
It was the device that many of us millennials formed an instant connection with. The original iPod, which was released in 2001, brought Apple to the forefront of both the music and the tech industry, with the company revolutionising the way we interact with our devices.
The popularity of the iPod gave Apple the incentive to release a number of updated versions of the device during the years, including the iPod Nano, the iPod mini and the iPod Shuffle.
Apple has officially discontinued the iPod after 20 years
What a time 🎧 pic.twitter.com/w55X2rP7Qc
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) May 10, 2022
How it all started. 🎶 #iPod https://t.co/UmWfAInzAs
— Tom Sykes (@TomSykes) May 10, 2022
The company stated that it will continue to sell the iPod’s latest iteration, the Touch, until supplies last.
The iPod Nano and the iPod Shuffle had been taken down from store shelves back in 2017, while recent editions of the iPod Touch have had close similarities to Apple’s way more popular iPhone devices, which also come with their own Music application and a number of other music streaming options for their users.
With all this in mind, it didn’t make sense for the company to continue selling a product that only catered to a small and unique audience, which is how the decision to pull the plug on the charismatic iPod was made.
Apple’s senior vice-president of worldwide marketing, Greg Joswiak, pointed out that “the spirit of the iPod lives on,” in a statement released by the company.
“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,” he said.
A number of people who were apparently around during the device’s golden era shared their emotions on social media, paying homage to its simplistic yet elegant design that seemed far ahead of its age.
Bye, iPod. I loved every one of you. I listened to the audiobook version on Infinite Jest on that shuffle, clicking between files to get the footnotes. https://t.co/kcmdQ44mHC pic.twitter.com/uZDrTbyqsD
— John Schwartz (@jswatz) May 10, 2022
Long live the wheel…
