Featured Image Credit: Apple
Topics: World News
Apple has announced that it's discontinuing the iPod, more than 20 years after the brand completely changed how we listen to music.
It's perhaps not a huge surprise to see the iPod line killed off after all this time: When the first iPod launched back 2001, we were in awe of its ability to store over 1,000 tracks. Today, there are over 90 million songs on the Apple Music streaming service, which can be instantly accessed on any mobile device.
The iPod Touch was the latest model in the range and first released in 2007, but hasn't been updated since 2019. Apple said it will continue to sell the Touch, the only version of the iPod still on sale, “while supplies last”. After that, expect it to become a niche collector's item for only the most hardcore music aficionados.
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Apart from the Touch, Apple also released the iPod mini, iPod Nano, and iPod Shuffle back in the day. I remember from bitter experience that the Nano was all too easy to leave in your jeans and put through the wash. I think I also sat on my iPod Shuffle at one point and broke it. I was truly cursed.
By 2011, Apple absolutely dominated the MP3 player scene with a 70% global market share. To date, more than 400 million iPods have been sold around the world.
The Nano and Shuffle were discontinued back in 2017, and industry experts predicted that the Touch wouldn't last much longer thanks to the rise of streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music. To be fair, I think we all saw this one coming.