When the music stops: Apple pulls plug on iPod after two decades
Apple announced that it would be pulling the plug on the iPod after more than 20 years.
The tech giant revealed yesterday that while you can still pick up its most recent iPod Touch, it will be discontinued once supplies run out.
The iPod started as a portable music player, with the original device holding 1,000 songs back in 2001, later evolving into the iPod mini, Nano, Shuffle and Touch.
Today, Apple’s streaming service Apple Music offers more than 90 million songs and over 30,000 playlists to users, and doubled down on its iPhone offering.
Indeed, iPhone sales has already surpassed the iPod in 2010 and the firm stopped reporting sales of the latter as a standalone product in 2015, as the focus of the company pivoted
“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.”