It’s official: Apple will no longer offer iPods. Twenty years after its launch, the firm at the apple abandons the manufacture of the legendary audio player which foreshadowed the success of the iPhone. The end of a glorious era.
Many remember it, of course. In October 2001, more than twenty years ago, Apple presented its first iPod, a portable music player capable of storing 1000 songs and which was going to change both the world of portable music and Apple as a whole. The company had already experienced a first renaissance when its founder Steve Jobs returned to the helm in 1997, with the release of the very first very colorful iMacs. But it’s the iPod and all its variations that have taken Apple out of its status as a computer company to bring it into the field of consumer electronics and online services. While of course preparing for the arrival of the iPhone. And on May 10, 2022, Apple announced in a press release that the latest iPod touch model, already dating from 2019, would remain on sale while supplies last.
During his launch conference in 2001, Steve Jobs was not mistaken. To announce the arrival of a new category of products bearing the Apple logo, here is how he explained his choice: “We decided that our next activity would be about music. Why music? Firstly because we love music. But also, and above all, because music is part of everyone’s daily life”. And on the presentation slide behind him we see in parentheses the mention “large market”. Today we can see much of theiPod announcement by Steve Jobs on YouTube.
At the time, the walkman market was in its infancy. We understand that, as is often the case, Apple is not the inventor of the concept – the Singaporean and the Taiwanese Creative Labs had released a large hard drive model inspired by CD players and the French Archos was already marketing an MP3 player – but it is the firm at the apple that has found the right recipe to popularize it beyond all estimates. It must be said that the iPod had more than one asset in its bag to replace the existing choices. In his presentation, Steve Jobs lists them: you could buy a portable CD player, an MP3 player based on Flash memory but without large capacity at the time and with an unfathomable interface, a CD player storing even MP3 files, or finally turn to an MP3 player equipped with a hard disk. Back in 2001, hard drives were pretty big, thick, and heavy. And this is the whole first revolution of the iPod, which was based on the first and only mechanical hard disk of 1.8 inches in diameter. It was when he learned of the existence of this hard drive produced by Toshiba that Apple’s hardware manager at the time, Jon Rubinstein, had the idea of making it a much more practical MP3 player than those that existed until now. so. For the record, even Toshiba, the manufacturer of the hard drive, had no idea what they could do with it.
We know the rest: the iPod replaced the word Walkman as a synonym for portable player. It quickly became the market leader, if not its only player, so strong was its grip. Domination so strong that the name of an entire industry bears witness to it: the word podcast is a contraction of iPod and broadcast.
Several models have succeeded or completed the first iPod. First there was the iPod mini, in 2004, which advantageously replaced the mechanical hard disk of the first iPod by Flash memory, faster and more resistant to shocks.
Then the iPod nano in 2006 which takes up the concept in a more compact format.
In September 2007, the first iPod touch replaced the control wheel for the first time with, as its name suggests, a touch screen. The photo is obviously very striking a posteriori so we recognize the look of the iPhone.
In September 2012, the 7th generation iPod nano claimed the title of thinnest iPod ever produced with a rather unconvincing design.
It was followed in 2015 by another even less convincing model, the iPod Shuffle, which offered no screen to be as small as possible. As a result, either we listened to his songs in order, or in a randomly chosen order (this is the meaning of the English word shuffle). You could also use a voice command, with results also rather tinged with chance.
The last model in the catalog was therefore an iPod touch with looks very close to the iPhone 6 and its rounded sides. Its last revision dated from 2019 and still it had only brought a change of chip mainly due to the fact that the chip which equipped the iPod touch until then was no longer produced.
The story of the iPod thus ends. This is quite normal since it has been advantageously replaced for several years by the smartphone, iPhone or Android, which almost all of us have in our pocket. If only thanks to their permanent connection to the Internet via 4G or 5G which also allows us to listen to or watch live streaming anywhere and anytime, what iPods limited to Wi- Fi couldn’t offer.
Despite everything, there is still a very limited market for portable music players for those who still prefer to use a device independent of their smartphone or who want to enjoy optimum quality sound, superior to that offered by our good old MP3s. That said, with the arrival of the so-called files losslessthat is to say without loss of quality, in the Apple Music catalog and soon others like Spotify, will probably have the effect of making them almost disappear, except for a few last irreducible ones.