Unsplash
This week Apple announced that the iPod has been discontinued. Many have seen this move coming for a long time however as the music and technology world started to outgrow the capabilities of the once-beloved MP3 player.
When the iPod was first launched in 2001, it was a revolutionary handheld device, as was the Walkman, that would let us carry our favourite tunes wherever we went. The iPod let you carry up to a whopping 1,000 songs on it and if you could get your hands on a certain generation of iPod, you could also have a touch screen. Touch screens were a huge step in the development of the iPod as the first generation, the Shuffle, was a simple device with only a play, pause, forward, back, and volume button.
These things are all small little details but all add up to what made the iPod such a special device. Never before were you able to pick any song you wanted, control the order of the songs you listened to, or make playlists. All these were new and exciting developments in technology.
Unsplash
The iPod continued its progression through the years. Apple would go on to create different generations, there were colourful ones, small ones, big ones, and ones that had enough storage for not only 1,000 songs, but movies as well.
Now as time went on, Apple began to create the iPhone, making equivalent iPods until the 13th generation, but if iPods were solely made for music, why were they discontinued?
Music is an extremely popular thing now in the world and with the creation of streaming services such as Spotify, Tidal, and Apple Music, you were given access to over 80 million songs, something the iPod was not made to handle. I guess size does matter.
The iPod changed the world in so many ways and it is hard to imagine what the world would be like without that small rectangle of joy. You will forever be missed but never forgotten. Rest in Peace iPod, thank you for all the great times.
Apple is officially discontinuing the iPod Touch, the last remnant of the revolutionary product line that first went on sale in October 2001 https://t.co/9btkEUGHkT
— Bloomberg (@business) May 10, 2022