From dancing silhouettes wearing Apple’s iconic white headphones to new releases dripping in rainbow-colored paint, memories of the iPod have been cemented into our collective consciousness over the past two decades.
But after a 20-year reign, Apple is finally stopping production on the device that changed consumer electronics and the music industry forever.
The Apple music device was first launched on Oct. 23, 2001, with the slogan “1,000 songs in your pocket.” When introducing the device, which at the time could hold one’s entire music library on a 5GB Toshiba hard drive, Steve Jobs called the device “a quantum leap in listening to music.”
“With iPod, listening to music will never be the same again,” Jobs said at the product launch.
But now the iPod Touch—the last iteration of the iPod—is being discontinued, with sales only lasting until stock runs out.
“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,” Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, said in a statement.
People have gone online to pay their respects to the “end of an era.”
Mourning the loss
The iPod is dead (2001-2022) https://t.co/lSwSt9ZiHg pic.twitter.com/vBicN7JoIF
— Basic Apple Guy (@BasicAppleGuy) May 10, 2022
The iPod is dead (2001-2022) https://t.co/lSwSt9ZiHg pic.twitter.com/vBicN7JoIF
People have been posting pictures of old advertisements and different versions of the iPod throughout the years
Say goodbye to iPod. pic.twitter.com/0WXYeOwiPJ
— Joe Rossignol (@rsgnl) May 10, 2022
Say goodbye to iPod. pic.twitter.com/0WXYeOwiPJ
Rest in peace to the iPod :( pic.twitter.com/hm9AJ4psEB
— Eternity :: Archive (@PureLifeEternal) May 10, 2022
Rest in peace to the iPod :( pic.twitter.com/hm9AJ4psEB
rip to the ipod pic.twitter.com/xfOKYJEFR0
— c (@cveerro) May 10, 2022
rip to the ipod pic.twitter.com/xfOKYJEFR0
iPod history continued… (2/2) pic.twitter.com/FZopEcPHi0
— Apple Hub (@theapplehub) May 11, 2022
iPod history continued… (2/2) pic.twitter.com/FZopEcPHi0
Musicians holding an iPod cemented its number one status as the MP3 device of the 2000s
Apple officially discontinued the iPod 😢 pic.twitter.com/4fzqO6JsVK
— Complex Music (@ComplexMusic) May 10, 2022
Apple officially discontinued the iPod 😢 pic.twitter.com/4fzqO6JsVK
END OF AN ERA 😩 Apple have officially discontinued the iPod 💔 pic.twitter.com/IGHxFc6erd
— boohoo (@boohoo) May 10, 2022
END OF AN ERA 😩 Apple have officially discontinued the iPod 💔 pic.twitter.com/IGHxFc6erd
And others celebrated the product for the changes it made to our society.
To me, the IPOD is the most innovative product of our lifetimes. It led to the changes in the way we communicate, function, and collaborate. It was not 1st in class but it was the most efficient.
— Bhrett McCabe, PhD (@DrBhrettMcCabe) May 10, 2022
Heck of a run IPOD! @Apple
To me, the IPOD is the most innovative product of our lifetimes. It led to the changes in the way we communicate, function, and collaborate. It was not 1st in class but it was the most efficient.
Heck of a run IPOD! @Apple
A brief history
When presenting the iPod in 2001, Steve Jobs said Apple chose to make an MP3 device because music was a part of everyone’s life, yet there was no market leader in the space. The product also provided an ongoing revenue stream for Apple through iTunes, which it had launched several months earlier as a platform where people could legally purchase digital music.
The name iPod came from a quote in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the main character David Bowman says “Open the pod bay doors, Hal.” In an analogy between the relationship between the spaceship and the smaller independent pods in the relationship between the personal computer and the music player, the name iPod was born.
After its launch, the iPod became the face of portable music and saw its popularity grow massively. By 2005, about 11% of the U.S. population owned an iPod or another MP3 device, a study by the nonprofit Pew Internet & American Life Project found.
Then came the click wheel design. After releasing several other versions of the iPod Classic, Apple redesigned the iPod user face with the iPod Mini by adding a click wheel, the touch-sensitive scrolling hardware with no buttons.
When Jobs presented the iPhone’s new user interface technology, he stated, “We have been very lucky to have brought a few revolutionary user interfaces to the market in our time. First was the mouse. The second was the click wheel.”
RIP IPOD: Apple is discontinuing its last iPod model, more than 20 years after the original iPod was released in October 2001. What were YOU doing in 2001? #IAMUP pic.twitter.com/zzUv1ZqxJg
— WFAA Daybreak (@WFAADaybreak) May 11, 2022
RIP IPOD: Apple is discontinuing its last iPod model, more than 20 years after the original iPod was released in October 2001. What were YOU doing in 2001? #IAMUP pic.twitter.com/zzUv1ZqxJg
Smaller versions of the iPod—the Nano and the Shuffle—were then released until 2007, when Apple launched the iPhone. When announcing the iPhone, Jobs said the new device would be an “iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator.”
At the time of the iPhone’s invention, Steve Jobs initially wanted an “iPod plus phone” device with the click wheel technology integrated into the iPhone, according to ex-Apple developer Tony Fadell. But after the same developers who designed the iPod couldn’t integrate click wheel technology into a phone, they switched to an entirely multitouch glass screen—creating a product that would eventually cannibalize the iPod itself.
The announcement of the iPhone came with the last generation of the iPod, which is being discontinued today—the iPod Touch. Apple said it will remain available while stocks last.