Apple Ends Production Of The Iconic iPod

The iPod era has now come to an end. On Tuesday (May 10), Apple announced that it would stop producing the latest version of the iconic portable music player, the iPod Touch, which was launched in 2019.

Apple said that the iPod Touch would be available for sale while supplies last.

Apple revolutionized portable music when it launched the iPod in 2001. At the time, it boasted it could hold "1,000 CD-quality songs." The portable music player helped turn Apple from a struggling computer company into one of the most popular tech companies in the world. Over the next 20 years, Apple would refine the iPod, making it smaller and selling it in a variety of colors.

While the iPod was one of Apple's most popular products, it was eventually overshadowed by other products like iPhone, which was first launched in 2007. As Apple began making some of the most popular smartphones on the market, consumers didn't see the need to have two devices capable of playing music, so sales of the iPod began to plummet.

Apple tried to keep the portable music player alive by releasing the iPod Classic, the iPod Shuffle, and iPod Nano, but those were all scrapped by 2017. In 2019, Apple released the iPod Touch, which boasted a faster processor but not much else to differentiate it from previous versions of the iPod.

"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."