Snippet: Apple Discontinues iPod touch, Ending iPod Line ☇

Apple:

Since its introduction over 20 years ago, iPod has captivated users all over the world who love the ability to take their music with them on the go. Today, the experience of taking one’s music library out into the world has been integrated across Apple’s product line — from iPhone and Apple Watch to iPad and Mac — along with access to more than 90 million songs and over 30,000 playlists available via Apple Music.

“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,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “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.”

Apple rarely issues a press release for a discontinuation of a product, but the iPod was so important to the company. It was released just after things started to turn around in the early 2000s and continued through the iPhone era—it helped put Apple where it is today. While the iPod hasn’t felt like a relevant product for the better part of a decade, I really like that they took the time to acknowledge its importance.

We all get to wax poetic about a device for most of its life did one thing and one thing well—music. Work didn’t follow you home on your iPod and the only doomscrolling that happened was when you were trying to find a specific song. I owned a couple of different iPods over the years, and an iPod touch was my first iOS device (long before iOS was called that). It’ll be sad to close this chapter, but I don’t think it’s a surprise.