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Apple is discontinuing the iPod

• cmckn 5y ago
  My first iPod was the 1st generation Nano. I still think it's one of the most beautiful products ever made. I'll miss the iPod era; they really were just magical products, and probably the reason I became interested in the Mac.
• 0000011111 5y ago
  Ya, I switched to VLC on Android years ago. And; yt-dlp --recode-video mp3 https://youtu.be/P5JplB64m5U https://youtu.be/P5JplB64m5U Most of my collection for research purposes of course.
• salmo 5y ago
  Funny how people complain about Apple dropping devices, but this has hung around so long. Thought it was dead years ago. Real use would have been a fake phone for kids. I see so many bemoaning streaming. Your iPhone can store far more music than an old HDD iPod. Don’t see the difference. I mostly stream with Spotify. It recommends good obscure music for me, and I can find most of the weird 70s/80s punk I love. I still have my old records and use them when I want that captive experience. I kept my CDs of super obscure local bands. For me it’s not an xor, but an and. I like both the new and old experiences. And I still listen to albums more than songs. The streaming sound quality isn’t nearly as cringe inducing as old MP3s. I’m no audiophile, but hated MP3 less than barely compressed. That crunch on the high end was brutal. I don’t miss maintaining ripped CDs: fixing metadata, keeping FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, and MP3 for different devices, etc. Never bothered recording my records. I’ll never understand anyone longing for cassette tapes beyond personal mix tapes. I do still pay for records when I love an album just to kick them more $. But they mostly just go on the wall or collect dust in a bin. I usually only listen to my old LPs.
  • opan 5y ago
    I store FLAC and just copy it to my phone as-is. I don't have my whole library, of course, but I can cycle stuff as needed and I don't need to convert anything or store two versions of the same albums.
    • salmo 5y ago
      That’s a good point. These days you likely don’t have to worry about device codec support and space limitations like I used to. I used to have a whole workflow of rip to FLAC, import metadata then fix it, then a script to convert. I overengineered as usual, I’m sure.
• sizzle 5y ago
  I miss my Zune
• etoulas 5y ago
  We use iPods in a B2B wholesale context. The biggest advantages for us: - Apple ecosystem - long lifecycle of the devices - standardised form factor for laser barcode scanner sleeves - controlled environment in terms of OS versions and screen size variaty - low price / costs for the users What will Apple offer for B2B niche use cases in the future? Edit: formatting
• hlesesne 5y ago
  I work for a company who has purchased iPods for years to deploy a LOB application that uses a specific sled for the iPod with a barcode reader. We buy 100s per year once the batteries expand. Gonna take a lot of developer effort to rewrite.
• FunnyBadger 5y ago
  I feel prescient. I bought a fully loaded iPod last summer to use in my car. Streaming is NOT an option where I live and I didn't want to pollute my phone with my enormous music collection.
• ricardobeat 5y ago
  Sad news. I've been waiting for a chin-less upgrade for a while, it made for an amazing gaming/music device, and also a cheap high-quality touch screen remote for random hacks.
• mwint 5y ago
  The iPod touch was so great for me as a kid, it provided an accessible (read - cheap) platform I could plug into a Mac and deploy iOS apps to at a young age. Now there's really no reason to keep it around, as you can get an off-contract used iPhone that is better in every dimension for less money. Still feel a bit sad to see it leave.
  • stnmtn 5y ago
    I fell in love with computers through jailbreaking iPod touches. Back then, for me a jailbroken ipod felt like there was a whole world waiting for me; and you could tweak anything at all. I eventually started running a mini business at my school, offering to jailbreak anyones ipod/iphone (for a small fee, of course). I would even put a custom boot logo advertising my enterprise on all my customers device. Looking back now, that feels a bit scummy, but at the time I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
    • doublepg23 5y ago
      Jailbreaking for school friends definitely reminds me of good times.
  • Snowworm 5y ago
    It never left. The iPhone is the new iPod, it just has more features that make it more than just a music player and more importantly has the option for a SIM (although it isn't necessary). I get what you mean though. I think the iPhone SE has taken its place in terms of affordability.
• ______-_-______ 5y ago
  A very carefully worded press release. They didn't want to come out and say it, but the iPod product line has been discontinued.
  • mgarciaisaia 5y ago
    I understand it's really carefully worded, but I tend to feel insulted by a press release that says everything _except_ the message, to make it less harsh. Be honest.
  • tiahura 5y ago
    The subheading is “iPod touch will be available while supplies last” Seemed straight forward to me.
    • theandrewbailey 5y ago
      No, it doesn't. It sounds like they're having a buy one get one free sale, not a discontinuation.
  • dang 5y ago
    Yes. We've changed the title above. More at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31331736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31331736.
• dangoor 5y ago
  This seems like the most indirect way possible to say "we're discontinuing the last iPod". _Most_ of the content of this press release is fine, in my opinion, but saying "iPod Touch is available while supplies last" just doesn't seem like a great way to phrase it. Am I wrong about that?
  • stuart78 5y ago
    I read it like three times to see if I'd missed it. Very strange approach to this. There is no shame in celebrating its impact and saying the brand/category is being retired.
    • tobr 5y ago
      And the weird thing is when you try to say something without saying it, it makes it look like you’re ashamed of it. There’s nothing here to be ashamed of, so why not just say it clearly and succinctly?
  • pjmlp 5y ago
    It is in the same vein as when a company uses "process optimization" to mean a firing round. I guess Apple marketing team didn't want to put it clearly what they are doing.
  • starik36 5y ago
    One would think people write these missives, but on further thought, it might be OpenAI trained on 1000s of previously similarly obfuscated press releases.
  • croddin 5y ago
    It's like a TikTok video plot: Tell me you are discontinuing a product line without telling me you are discontinuing a product line.
  • CharlesW 5y ago
    > This seems like the most indirect way possible to say "we're discontinuing the last iPod". To me, the subhead "iPod touch will be available while supplies last" succinctly performs double-duty: (1) We discontinued iPod touch, and (2) if you want (another) one, this is your last chance.
• tfitz237 5y ago
  The Music Lives On [... while supplies last]
• reaperducer 5y ago
  Sad to see the iPod go. I have an iPhone, but it's not the same. There's a lot of value in unitaskers. I have a long train trip coming up. I'll have my iPhone with me, but I'll also bring my iPod shuffles. They're simply better suited to the task than to have to deal with all the compromises of a device that tries to be everything to everyone all the time. - Vastly superior battery time. In part, because it's not trying to do a million things other than play music. - Better ergonomically. I can lay in my berth at night with my wired earbuds and listen with a tiny, durable device instead of a large, fragile device. It's not tragic if I roll over on a Shuffle, or drop it out the side of the bed. - A shuffle on a small train table takes up much less space than an iPhone. Or no space at all, since I can clip it to my clothing. - To me, the Shuffles just sound better than the phone. I'm sure there are a million blogs that dispute this with all kinds of mathematical blather. But I use the same earbuds with my Shuffles and my iPhone, and the Shuffles just sound better to my ears.
  • oneeyedpigeon 5y ago
    For me, the feature that beats all of those combined is simply being able to carry all my music around for free. Now I have to either constantly swap it around and filter it, or pay through the nose to stream it.
• smm11 5y ago
  I had an iPod something-or-other, and I think it gave Spotify the idea of shuffling maybe 45 songs of thousands over-and-over, and completely ignoring 93 percent of the music. I might pick one of these up so I can do that now in color.
  • GekkePrutser 5y ago
    This is a problem with Spotify's shuffling algorithm. It's really stupid, it ignores some songs completely. They used to have a good algorithm, but because it was truly random, some users complained about hearing the same artist quickly in sequence. Instead of implementing a list of recently played songs they changed the algorithm to be 'smart' but it's actually quite dumb because it really never plays some songs. Especially when you have only a few artists in the playlist, and some with less songs than others. As I tend to do. They say it's "more appealing to the human brain" but I think it stinks. I wish they had an option to switch back a truly random one. If I don't like a song I'll skip it anyway. But never presenting some is worse. https://medium.com/immensity/how-spotifys-shuffle-algorithm-works-19e963e75171 https://medium.com/immensity/how-spotifys-shuffle-algorithm-...
• DizzyDoo 5y ago
  I imagine that Apple would never bring back an iPod in the future with the clicky wheel because it could be perceived as 'backwards looking' and cuts against their desired image as 'innovators' who bring out the 'next thing'. Bit sad, because my memory of the later generations of the Nano is that it was an excellent device. It's probably true that most people just get their music and podcasts through streaming services on their phones though, so perhaps they don't care to keep a niche product around.
  • darknavi 5y ago
    Give it another decade and maybe something like the Analogue Pocket will come out. AnaloguePod?
    • DizzyDoo 5y ago
      I think we'd all probably welcome that... except Apple, because I just did a quick Google and it does look like Apple have successfully patented (Patent 7,932,897) the clicky wheel input. So I don't think a US based company like Analogue could get away with that!
      • nicolas_t 5y ago
        They're HK based, but I doubt that that would help all that much.
  • alx__ 5y ago
    They brought back MagSafe! So if they find a good use for it, who knows :)
• wollsmoth 5y ago
  RIP. I still have a classic in a box somewhere.
• Apocryphon 5y ago
  The iPod touch has got to be the last PDA. Smartphones are the realization of the '90s vision of PDAs, with cellular capability and additional features included, but it's interesting how standalone PDAs no longer exist.
  • Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
    Nobody would buy a standalone PDA these days, mainly because they'd need one core feature: Access to e-mail. At that point, you need, at the very least, a WiFi connection, but customers would likely expect a cellular connection. And at that point, bam, you have a phone. You could try to make it "not a phone" by removing the speaker and microphone, but people will occasionally want to play a game, so you'll need the speaker, and someone might want to record speech for note-taking, so you'll need the microphone. TBH, I'm not sure how you could possibly make a "not a phone" PDA. Nobody would buy an offline PDA. At least, not enough people to pay for the development of it.
    • Apocryphon 5y ago
      Even back in PalmPilot days, internet connectivity was definitely desirable. I suppose Planet Computers' devices are trying to capture some of the PDA spirit by emphasizing the computing, productivity aspects of smartphones with good keyboards. https://www.www3.planetcom.co.uk https://www.www3.planetcom.co.uk
• black_puppydog 5y ago
  Great, then they surely won't hesitate now to release any and all documentation for their old hardware, to prevent millions of devices from becoming useless junk even though they're perfectly fine, hardware wise. I've got a nice iPod touch 6th gen here that will be perfect as an mp3 player on linux or rockbox. Gonna hold my breath now, okay? :) /s
  • windowsrookie 5y ago
    What exactly do you want them to release? You can still use an original iPod from 2001 if you want.
    • mmebane 5y ago
      Driver source code/detailed hardware documentation for all the components. Signing keys to enable proper persistent installation of custom firmware. In a perfect world, source to whatever the final version of iOS to run on it is. Basically, everything required for third parties to support the devices to the same level that Apple did before discontinuing them. --- (Getting downvoted for a strong right to repair stance? I wasn't really expecting that here, but OK.)
      • smoldesu 5y ago
        Right. It's totally feasible for a community-maintained firmware to keep these devices alive if there was no barrier to installing custom firmware, Apple ought to have a customary "EOL" update for these devices that allows them to be unlocked if the owner chooses.
  • oneeyedpigeon 5y ago
    I'd pay to be in your situation - at least you have the hardware and it's still perfectly usable.
    • ddoolin 5y ago
      I mean, you can pay to be in their situation. Just buy one.
• kawsper 5y ago
  I guess that was destined to happen. I still use my 6th generation iPod Nano, mostly for radio, but the usefulness of it is dwindling as more and more stations move away from the FM-band and go digital, it's still a cool device and it also still works with Music/iTunes.
  • oneeyedpigeon 5y ago
    I started using my 6th gen nano again just a couple of weeks ago, after my last-gen iPod classic finally gave up the ghost. I don't know what I'm going to do long-term - the capacity of the nano just isn't enough. It's heartbreaking watching functionality regress like this :(
• paxys 5y ago
  End of an era. This was the last iPod still being sold right? Definitely one of the most impactful consumer products/brands ever.
  • oneeyedpigeon 5y ago
    The iPod introduced me to Apple's entire ecosystem. Without that early-2000's experience of design, build-quality, and usability, I would probably never have taken the plunge on Mac mini, iPads, and a MacBook.
• technotarek 5y ago
  I’ve always imagined that an iPod-something would be my child’s first camera/media device. We’re not ready for that leap yet (at only 3 1/2 yo), but I’m curious — what are others opting for in this use case?
  • _fzslm 5y ago
    how about an iPad? mini if the size is a concern for you guys, but the camera is pretty solid, performance means it’ll last your kid years, and there are so many edu-tainment titles on the App Store. i think especially the Pencil (or the child-oriented Logitech alternative) would be great to encourage a growing child’s creativity, as well as apps like iMovie, GarageBand…
  • windowsrookie 5y ago
    I'm assuming just a smartphone without a SIM. That's essentially what the iPod touch was.
    • asciimov 5y ago
      Sure, but then you have that background concern about them accidentally dialing 911.
      • paxys 5y ago
        Having the ability to dial 911 if needed is probably a good thing.
        • dymk 5y ago
          Ehhhh I distinctly remember being around 10 years old, getting a miniature landline phone [1], and dialing 911. Then my parents had to explain to the operator that there was no emergency and how sorry they were. Kids do dumb things. [1] this kind of thing - https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1891964717.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1891964717.html
      • boomboomsubban 5y ago
• Ninjinka 5y ago
  When I was a kid, I was looking to buy my first gaming device. I was debating between getting a Nintendo DS and the 4th gen iPod, ultimately deciding on the iPod. This ended up being a great choice as I was able to get more games than I would have been able to on the DS and it opened up a world of being able to text my friends (primarily through Words with Friends at the time). It's a shame it's being discontinued, it was the perfect first device for children.
  • kin 5y ago
    As someone who used both devices for gaming, I would say that while the iPod may have had quantity, the DS without a doubt had the quality of games. Amazing library.
• asciimov 5y ago
  That's a damned shame, the iPod Touch was a great way to give kids a "phone" without giving them a real phone.
  • foogazi 5y ago
    What about an iPhone without a sim card ? camera will be way better anyway
    • izzydata 5y ago
      That seems far more expensive than an iPod.
      • mrpippy 5y ago
        An older (or new with discounts) iPhone SE isn't much more
      • skinnymuch 5y ago
        iPhone SE 2nd generation (from early 2020) will be pretty cheap nowadays with the 3rd gen out. Probably still a bit pricier than an iPod Touch, but Apple went long periods of time without updating the Touch. While not reducing the price. Though it won’t be possible to get new iPhone SE 2nd gen for long. At that point, a refurbished or used 11 or XR or SE 2nd gen will not be too much. The latter two should be cheaper than a new iPod Touch.
      • Gigachad 5y ago
        These days parents hand down their phone to their kids so its basically free from that perspective. The height of the iPod Touch was the time when parents were only just getting their first smartphone.
  • windowsrookie 5y ago
    It's essentially an iPhone 7 without a SIM. Just buy one of those. I'm assuming it would cost less than a new iPod touch and it prevents old iPhones from becoming e-waste.
• tomjen3 5y ago
  I mean if Steve was around he would remind you all that as far as Apple is concerned the iPhone is the best iPod they ever made.
  • oneeyedpigeon 5y ago
    Was that his genuine opinion? It sounds like a thing to say to sell iPhones to me.
    • SllX 5y ago
      I won’t try to convince you, but go watch the Motorola ROKR introduction from Steve Jobs on YouTube, then watch his introduction of the iPhone at MacWorld 2007. You can tell when he’s not just selling something, but believes that what he says he is selling is what he is selling.
      • rchaud 5y ago
        This is the same Steve Jobs that said on stage Samsung's original Galaxy Tab 7" defeated the purpose of a tablet because he needed to file his fingers down to use it. He knew full well an iPad Mini was coming the year after. He just had to sell what was on the shelves now.
        • SllX 5y ago
          Ha! I remember that. But if you recall, the first iPad mini was 7.9” and subsequent iPads mini stayed close to the 8” watermark. A decade later my iPhone is a lot closer to 7” at 6.7”.
    • replygirl 5y ago
      it's hard to undersell how big a deal the ipod was 15 years ago. the iphone was introduced as an ipod first, a phone second, and an internet communicator third. until the app store launched, most of the ads were "it's an ipod that makes phone calls". and people expected the touch to be good because the click wheel was good
• closedloop129 5y ago
  Too soon. The iPod would be the perfect companion for an Apple Watch once there is a bit more energy available in the battery of the watch. Instead of selling the watch as an add-on to the phone, the watch could be the central device and the screen of the iPod could be brought out when the voice assistants come to their rare limits. There is no need for a phone when better screens are available most of the times (e.g. at the desk, the car or the tv).
  • microtherion 5y ago
    That would make the iPod more of an "iPad micro".
• booboofixer 5y ago
  This is great news. I have an old iPod touch that i kept because it had no trade-in value. Can't wait for it to be worth something in about a decade or however long it takes for these electronics to become 'vintage'. Also, if anyone wants to pay $$$ for a 2012 Macbook Air..
• playpause 5y ago
  For the last 2 years I’ve been using an iPod touch as my “downtime” device. I usually put my iPhone away in a drawer from early evening until I’m ready to start work the next day. I found this impossible to stick to until I got an iPod touch, because in the evenings and mornings I often need to manage things like HomeKit devices or other Apple ecosystem things like Reminders. I don’t have any distracting or time-sucking apps on the iPod touch, and the screen is small and fiddly, so I barely use it except for a few seconds here and there for something practical. The difference in stress levels and mindset has been huge. I can’t recommend highly enough separating your phone usage into ‘social/work/news/comms’ and ‘practical/home/calm’ categories, on different physical devices. I have tried using the new iOS Focus and Downtime features to make my iPhone work a similar way (hide all the time-sucking apps at certain times of day etc), but having a dedicated device for the purpose is much simpler and much more effective.
  • darknavi 5y ago
    You can still do this buy just purchasing an older iPhone and never putting it on a cell plan right?
  • brundolf 5y ago
    I do something similar but not quite the same with my iPad: it has most of the same (non-work) apps that my phone does, but I've disabled all notifications for all apps so it never yells at me; it's an entirely chill-out/self-directed device where nothing ever grabs at my attention
    • dwighttk 5y ago
      I do something similar but with my main iPhone. There’s like 3 apps that have notifications and none of them make sound.
      • brundolf 5y ago
        I treat my main phone as a notification entrypoint; trash-notifications are turned off, of course, but every messaging, calling, email, etc app has them turned on. If I want to know if anything relevant to me has happened, I look there or keep it nearby. If I don't have a notification there, I know nothing has happened On my iPad, even messages with friends, emails, etc are all blocked. Not even red badges on the app icons. Nothing that can possibly prompt or notify me in any way. I don't think I could get away with that on my main phone
• izzydata 5y ago
  Sony is still making modern variants of the Walkman. I'm not a big fan of their Android powered versions, but I like the slightly earlier versions that can only play music.
  • nomel 5y ago
    I ask this question in good faith, coming from a long line of dedicated music devices, including the Diamond Rio PMP300, and a huge, file based, music collection. Why not use a smartphone?
    • izzydata 5y ago
      The amp in them is slightly better than a smartphones assuming you are using wired headphones. Other than that I like having dedicated devices that do a thing as good as the thing can be done. It feels like it will never become outdated so I only ever need to continue my library of music in that one place. It's also nice not draining my phones battery by listening to music. Knowing that the device is incapable of tracking you or giving you ads in any way is good too. I also prefer single purpose devices for retro gaming and taking photos.
    • 0des 5y ago
      Some of us don't want that level of functionality or capability. I prefer a dumb device that lacks the capability to obsolete itself at the behest of the mother ship, or analyze and interpret my behavior for ad revenue
    • dekoruotas 5y ago
      It is nice to have a dedicated device that sits next to the amp and know that it can provide a Hi-Res audio signal that is as good as it gets. I have a Sony NW-A45, but there's a few models in the NW-A line-up that are attention worthy.
• karmakaze 5y ago
  I've owned so many iPods from the very first and loved each one. Now I don't care for ~iTunes~/Apple Music and the dumbed-down walled garden that it lives it. It's not even because I carry a smartphone. Just the other day I was researching non-Apple music players. To me the iPod died with the introduction of the Touch which was a cheap iPhone, that had lower quality standards even in the area of sound quality. iPhones have no headphone jack so they're not suitable listening devices if you care about audio quality (or are willing to carry an external DAC). Apple Music makes nothing about managing music on any Apple device great. M1 Macs are doing well, and still waiting to see what happens with iPadOS and if it can live up the the 'OS' name in terms of creation not consumption apps.
  • astrange 5y ago
    > iPhones have no headphone jack so they're not suitable listening devices if you care about audio quality (or are willing to carry an external DAC). The $9 official headphone dongle is a superior DAC to most audiophile products and has a bigger R&D budget than that entire industry. Same goes for Google’s USBC dongle. https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/review-apple-vs-google-usb-c-headphone-adapters.5541/ https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/r... You can still carry around an amp if you have very power hungry headphones though. Personally, I don’t think I could ABX lossy audio while outside dodging cars in the crosswalk.
    • 0des 5y ago
      The concept of using dongles while walking around seems like it wouldn't be without inconvenience. What is your setup like and does it disconnect sometimes while walking?
      • craigc 5y ago
        Agreed. Using a dongle is a terrible experience. I had to buy a few cause they kept breaking for me. The primary way I listen to music on my phone is while walking around with my phone in my pocket. In addition, the lightning port can get dust in it so sometimes it is difficult to maintain a good connection. The connection kept coming loose and causing the music to stop for me. I even had my phone’s lightning port cleaned at an Apple authorized repair center, but the problem came back after around a month. Never had that problem with a 3.5mm audio jack in my life. I ended up having to buy Bluetooth headphones just to listen to music on my iPhone which has its own problems because they have to be charged all the time.
• Maursault 5y ago
  I don't get it. Though iPod Touch is a lotta bit of feature creep, surely the portable media player market is still profitable. I just want it to play music and fit all my music in my change pocket. Bring back the iPod Shuffle!
  • frickinLasers 5y ago
    Yeah, I still run with a 20-ish year old Shuffle, waiting for the day it falls apart.
    • Teknoman117 5y ago
      Hey, the iPod Shuffle is 17 years old. Don't take those 3 years from me lol. I'm still smarting from the loss of the two pandemic years. :)
  • DocTomoe 5y ago
    Isn't that what the Apple Watch is supposed to do? I agree that a relatively simple, relatively low-priced media player with great build quality would have a market - but Apple would be cannibalising it's 'fitness-oriented' market if they allowed both the Shuffle and the Watch to exist.
    • bsimpson 5y ago
      iPod Wear
    • lostgame 5y ago
      Yeah, but you can't use the Watch as a standalone device (something that, as a WatchOS developer, I have always found stupid beyond reason...it should just have limited functionality on its own, including media playback) - if you could, not only would they sell millions upon millions more of them, but it could be a reasonable replacement for an iPod. Until then, if you want to use it as an 'iPod', it's just another expense on top of the iPhone you already have that's your 'iPod'. Apple cancelling the iPod line completely is frankly dumb. I know at least a dozen parents who use these for their kids. Also, what's with all the people suggesting parents just buy an iPhone with no sim? Y'all realize that the cheapest iPhone is twice as much as the $199 iPod Touch? :/
• mjr00 5y ago
  I had a 6th gen iPod Classic that I used for almost 15 years before it finally died on me a few months back. Dedicated music players nowadays are a niche market, so it was really hard to find a replacement. I ended up getting a FiiO M5, and while it's definitely got some pros -- much better sound quality, can pop in a 512GB/1TB SD card for effectively infinite space for compressed songs, can play FLAC/WAV/OGG -- the ergonomics of the iPod were just so much better. It's funny how seemingly little things can be so frustrating: there's only enough space on the screen for 4 names at a time, the scrolling isn't adaptive so it takes forever to get to the bottom, the play order isn't consistent with the song display order within a folder... I used to love just browsing my music collection on my iPod on the train to work, but with the M5 I'll just pick an album or playlist and press play. It's just not as fun to flip through music. I don't consider myself an Apple fanboy, but the iPod was a rock solid product that got all of the little things right. Given that the market for standalone DAPs is tiny because most people today just use their phones and music streaming apps, it's unlikely that we'll ever see a music player that compares to it.
  • brundolf 5y ago
    You might consider: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30345399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30345399
  • cush 5y ago
    It's a shame that personal music players are still so niche. The hardware coming out of China right now blows any phone out of the water in terms of usability, performance, and battery life, all at a fraction of the cost. We're in a Renaissance age of mobile listening thanks to ChiFi. I love carrying around a second device that has no persistent connection to the internet, no notifications, and can drive any headphones I throw at it... With sideloaded Audible and Tidal to boot. Media used to be this easy and pleasurable to consume before phones got it the way.
    • cush 5y ago
      People replying here have already forgotten about the headphone jack...
• oh_hello 5y ago
  This does jump out to me is a surprisingly profound. I was a freshman in college when the iPod first came out. I was a huge Apple fan, but didn't get their move into consumer electronics. It was so expensive. Why weren't they building more cool Macs instead? 10 years later I was putting serious time toward learning how to develop for the App Store. Another 10 years later and that path has had a profound effect on my career and life. Thinking back to the moment my friend Peter showed me the gen 1 iPod he bought on launch day, the vision, progression, and brilliance you can tie back to that product is astounding.
  • donthellbanme 5y ago
• 1970-01-01 5y ago
  I want to think the iPod just became the iPhone without the LTE radio, and manufacturing more iPhones is simply cheaper for Apple. Is there any difference between the iPod touch and the iPhone for media consumption?
  • devindotcom 5y ago
    Try turning that thought around and you may see why it makes more sense to discontinue. If Apple can get someone to spend an extra $100 on a base-level iPhone instead of an iPod Touch, the margins aren't as good but the product pipeline is simpler and suddenly they're a convert to the iOS ecosystem and all the revenue that brings. It just doesn't make sense to offer a disconnected iPhone type device any more.
    • paulmd 5y ago
      Don't ipods run ios as well? If you can buy apps and stuff, that's the same thing from Apple's perspective. As a variation of the iPhone 7, maybe they just want to finally be done with that era of hardware and having to manufacture chips for it (although they've been great about support), and the volume definitely isn't there to justify an update to a more modern chip.
• GeekyBear 5y ago
  Looking online, a used 256 Gig iPhone 8 from Gazelle is about $150 cheaper than a new 256 Gig iPod Touch despite having a newer SOC. https://buy.gazelle.com/collections/iphones/products/iphone-8-256gb-unlocked https://buy.gazelle.com/collections/iphones/products/iphone-...
  • amelius 5y ago
    You see the same difference between a SmartTV and a DumbTV. The iPhone is cheaper because it really is a vending machine in disguise.
    • MBCook 5y ago
      How so? An iPod Touch and an iPhone run the exact same apps.
    • GeekyBear 5y ago
      Before depreciation, the iPhone was the more expensive device. "Smart" TVs are cheaper because the manufacturer is selling your data.
      • astrange 5y ago
        That’s mainly Vizio. There just isn’t much point in making a dumb TV when the smarts are free. Saves having a Netflix dongle too. Do wonder why LG OLEDs fall so hard in price after a year but there’s probably an innocent explanation.
• ErneX 5y ago
  “No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame” 20 years, huge run.
  • bombcar 5y ago
    Some form of Slashdot finally outlives the iPod. https://apple.slashdot.org/story/22/05/10/1650258/the-ipod-is-dead https://apple.slashdot.org/story/22/05/10/1650258/the-ipod-i...
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• at_a_remove 5y ago
  I have been considering getting some kind of dedicated music-playing device. I have a very cheap plan and am not interested in streaming. So I guess this gets ruled out, although the Itunes reputation itself was already something of a negative.
  • CharlesW 5y ago
    The current iPod touch runs iOS 15 and will be just as good 5 years from now. The only downside of buying a discontinued Apple product is knowing that you'll have to switch devices if/when it dies, but even that's mitigated by the fact that you'll likely be able to buy used ones for many years.
• newsclues 5y ago
  Bring back the iPod Classic with a click wheel, modern connectivity for BL and WiFi to get podcasts and solid state storage please. I don't want a phone (all the time) anymore.
  • Zhenya 5y ago
    I just wish there was a good way to sync Spotify/YTM playlists to these offline devices. What I have seen is using the 5th gen iPods with new firmware is great.
  • JKCalhoun 5y ago
    The day before the first iPod was to launch a co-worker (in marketing, at Apple) loaned me an iPod to take home over night. To this day I am blown away as to how that happened. No way that could have happened with the first iPhone. (In case he was not supposed to do so I'll withhold his name.) We (the family) were at a car dealership that evening and to entertain my 3 year old I put the ear buds in her ears and gave her the iPod to rock out to. Perhaps unsurprisingly, no one batted and eye or seemed to take notice of a little girl sporting the white earbuds that would become so iconic later. Related memory after the iPhone had come out: I remember being on a train in Tokyo where, counting the two other Apple employees with me, we all three had our iPhones out. Looking around the train though at all the Tokyo-ites with their flip phones and lanyards I began to doubt whether the iPhone was ever going to be able to conquer Japan. If for no other reason, where do you attach a lanyard? (Or maybe there's a better term for that bit of "personalization" that dangled like a tassel from all the cool, urban Japanese flip-phones.)
    • paulmd 5y ago
      it's continually bizarre to me that Japan exists as a tiny insular market that gets all kinds of products and devices that never make it anywhere else, not even china or the rest of SEA. The rest of the world we never stop hearing about 'there isn't a market for X' but Japan is this tiny market that gets their own things all the time.
    • flyingfences 5y ago
• nileshtrivedi 5y ago
  Since smartphoners have taken over, we are seeing most businesses insisting on users' owning and sharing their phone numbers. WiFi-only devices like iPod Touch could have played an important role in resisting this trend - especially with kids. Too bad there never were any popular WiFi-only models in the Android world.
  • cheschire 5y ago
    Just don't put a sim card in it?
    • m463 5y ago
      I think apps that could run on an ipod within its restrictions, might require that kind of stuff
  • Headwig 5y ago
    There is the WiFi-Only Ipads,so not all hope is lost! This had led to the new "Ipad Kid" trend though which is loathsome at best.
• perardi 5y ago
  Looks like I finally moved my dad from an iPod touch to an iPhone SE at the right time. (He was convinced, for whatever reason, he couldn’t figure out how to use an iPhone…despite he uses an iPod touch, and an iPad, and quite fluently. And within 1 day he was delighted, because he finally had something approximating a useful camera in his pocket.)
  • m463 5y ago
    I liked that ipods were "safe". I think a lot of non tech people would REALLY benefit from a setting to "confirm before dialing" in ios. For example, touching ANYTHING in the phone app will immediately dial that number. That leads to real problems with inexperienced users, who then get the mindset that they're not good with tech. To be clear - the blame here is 100% on apple. Most people I know have butt dialed. I consider myself highly aware of my phone, yet have accidentally called back spam callers. yikes!
    • tehnub 5y ago
      Yes, yes. I also would consider myself highly aware of my phone, and I have called back spam callers I don't know how many times from both the "Recents" tab and the notification screen. I'm generally impressed with the usability of Apple's default apps, so this one stands out. You'd really think the "Phone" app on the "iPhone" would be a bit better thought out.
      • perardi 5y ago
        And the thing is: this is better than it used to be. At least every single phone call doesn’t interrupt at the absolute highest level of priority and take over your screen entirely. Up until…iOS 14?…you didn’t really have a choice to not deal with an incoming call while using the phone: a call immediately took over.
        • Headwig 5y ago
          Made it really hard to ignore my friends and family
• duxup 5y ago
  I think the iPod was somewhere in the area where I discovered all the nice to have features and polish of Apple products that made me admire Apple. (I was into PCs long before that but my exposure to Apple was limited and I wasn't all that impressed) By no means was the iPod perfect, and it was effectively the same product as many other media players that came before and after, other products even had more features sometimes ... and yet the friction of using the iPod was just lower to the point that I enjoyed using it more than other media players at the time. It's a mysterious process to me finding those places to make use of a thing easier, more intuitive and etc. When something is bad it is easy to see, but there's a step beyond "take away the bad friction" that I'm always wondering about when I'm building things. I never quite reach that Apple-ish feel.
  • meibo 5y ago
    This might be true, but only if you stay on the "beaten path". If you do anything they don't intend you to do with these devices it ends up being a massive pain and you often just end up getting hit with the ol' "you're holding it wrong".
    • duxup 5y ago
      I feel like product defects are .. a thing everywhere. Holding it wrong was just bad choices related to it, but it's not like that's unique to products tailored to specific use patterns either.
  • pessimizer 5y ago
    > it was effectively the same product as many other media players that came before and after, other products even had more features sometimes For me, at the time, the iPod (Classic) was a worst-in-class product (required iTunes, pretended it didn't know what a file was, annoying to navigate, etc.) The iPod Touch was that but also not attractive.
    • duxup 5y ago
      I think one of the things was the iPod wasn't "for" most of us who were face down in our piles of MP3s and managing them and etc.... at least not at first. One of those cases where the first in the market consumers / enthusiasts weren't the best folks to take your hints from as far as the future of that tech. Arguably they've long been left behind by streaming services and etc. My piles of files are certainly just ... sitting there now.
• richardjdare 5y ago
  The end of an era. I used the iPod Touch to develop and use iOs apps without spending money on an iPhone. It was a relatively reasonably priced gateway into the Apple app ecosystem.
• gjulianm 5y ago
  I still have a 4th gen iPod Nano, that despite some heavy use in the past still works and plays music perfectly well. I remember it fondly, it was a very well designed piece of hardware. Light, easy controls that could be used without looking, durable, small...
• greenie_beans 5y ago
  but does it have a headphone jack tho
  • CharlesW 5y ago
    It does.
• WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
  So I just spat Apple in the eye and bought an old iPod classic with iFlash + 1TB SSD retrofitted in it (I do have another one, but I have no sufficient opening-fu to pry it open without damaging).
  • RajT88 5y ago
    If you wanted to really spit in Apple's eye, you'd buy a Zune.
• deanCommie 5y ago
  All the comments lamenting the "end of the iPod" are premature IMO. Give it a maximum of 5 years, and there'll be some social trend to offer an "minimally online" device to help you disconnect better from your overwhelming digital firehose in the interest of "wellbeing", and some new iPod device will come back. The 2020's equivalent of the iPod shuffle - deliberately feature limited for a very specific market.
• nfriedly 5y ago
  Shucks. I was hoping they'd finally release a new one. I have an old 6th gen iPod touch that I recently replaced the battery in, and my son uses it a lot. I had thought about getting another one for my daughter, but I was waiting in hopes that apple would release an 8th gen sometime soon.
• m3kw9 5y ago
  A10 Fusion chip from 5 years back, must be discontinuing the line
  • mdasen 5y ago
    Possibly. Apple had used the A10 in the 7th generation iPad released in September 2019 so it's not quite as old in terms of prime usage as the iPhone would suggest. iPhones have often been a few generations ahead of other Apple devices. The Apple A10 first released 5.5 years ago in the iPhone 7 Geekbenches at 555 single-core in the iPod (1.6GHz) and 722-750 in the iPhone 7/iPad (2.3GHz). Multicore is 1069 for the iPod and 1280-1398 for iPhone/iPad. That single-core speed matches up nicely against processors used in current Android phones like the Snapdragon 690 (571-590), Snapdragon 778G (714-777), Snapdragon 750 (582-643), or Snapdragon 765G (570-593). It's kinda amazing how Apple's A10 from 2016 matches up against the best non-flagship (non-8-series) Qualcomm processors for single-core performance. I'd guess it might be more around how long Apple wants to support iOS on the hardware. The iPhone 6s (A9) has access to the latest iOS (7 major versions), but I think there's a decent chance that it won't get iOS 16. That would mean Apple would support the iPhone 6s for 6 years post-introduction and 4 years post-discontinuation. If Apple wants to support the iPod touch for a couple years post-discontinuation, they'd probably want to discontinue it now so that they can stop iOS updates in 2-3 years. If they stopped iOS upgrades in 2-3 years, that would mean supporting the iPhone 7 for 7-8 years. That's quite the lifespan for that hardware.
• no-dr-onboard 5y ago
  "the music _lives_ on" as a title to describe the death of the iPod is such an intolerable attempt at paltering. As my XO used to say, "Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining."
  • j16sdiz 5y ago
    (Non-English native speaker here) What is a "XO"?
    • bitwize 5y ago
      GP programmed an AI that could run on a green OLPC computer.
    • austinsharp 5y ago
      "Executive officer" - used in the military, from what I am aware. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_officer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_officer
      • adolph 5y ago
        the language is more 1SG, an XO communicates via ppt Slide 1: Leg: Anatomy and Function of Bones and Muscles, Plus Diagram Slide 2: Establishment of ownership of leg to a soldier, attached and special conditions of detachment Slide n: ... blasé blasé blasé
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • prionassembly 5y ago
      He's a Cylon, but he's on your side.
  • MisterSandman 5y ago
    Is XO a typo of SO or a very interesting acronym
• willswire 5y ago
  Honestly I'm surprised that it took Apple this long to take this product behind the barn and shoot it. My first device was an iPod touch - but the iPhone is better (clearly). A consolidated line-of-effort for one less platform will be helpful, I think, in allocating talent behind the other products that matter.
  • Kwpolska 5y ago
    Apple hasn’t put any effort into the iPod touch for the past few years. The last refresh was in May 2019, the previous one was in July 2015. The only effort there might have been is for someone to test the latest iOS on an iPod touch, which is a neglible amount of effort, especially for Apple.
  • digisign 5y ago
    > the iPhone is better (clearly) They were as they designed them. Not everyone wants/needs a phone. No reason they couldn't put a top-end camera in the iPod.
• robotnikman 5y ago
  I remember having one in highschool, good times, back when all the games on the app store were maybe a few $ at most and in app purchases were mostly unheard of. iShoot was one of my favorite games to play on it, I miss it.
• ilamont 5y ago
  Used the iOS models as a poor man's iPhone (with Skype) and my first connected digital camera to share on Instagram and elsewhere.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• DerekBickerton 5y ago
  Damn I love these devices. For me they were a sort of very mini iPad in an iPhone form factor and I loved how they didn't have a baseband processor. Always laughed when trying to download Whatsapp onto them and got an 'Incompatible' message in the app store. Apple never released new versions frequently though, meaning certain apps became incompatible over time, since iPods couldn't be updated to the latest iOS. My fifth gen device was stuck on iOS 9 for a number of years now and it basically became unusable (and very insecure since apps couldn't be updated along with the OS). I will be snapping up as many devices as I can from AliExpress & eBay though. Still worth having a few to toy around & tinker with.
• DerekBickerton 5y ago
  Damn I love these devices. For me they were a sort of very mini iPad in an iPhone form factor and I loved how they didn't have a baseband processor. Always laughed when trying to download Whatsapp onto them and got an 'Incompatible' message in the app store. Apple never released new versions frequently though, meaning certain apps became incompatible over time, since iPods couldn't be updated to the latest iOS. My fifth gen device was stuck on iOS 9 for a number of years now and it basically became unusable (and very insecure since apps couldn't be updated along with the OS). I will be snapping up as many devices as I can from AliExpress & eBay though. Still worth having a few to toy around & tinker with.
• deergomoo 5y ago
  There is a part of me that wants to abandon streaming services and just buy a couple of albums per month based on what I think might be cool. I find myself enjoying music significantly less now I have unlimited access to everything I could ever want. It’s become disposable; just background noise rather than something I’m actively experiencing. There is also a part of me that wants to take those albums and keep them on an old click-wheel iPod. I always thought the early iPod nanos were among the best consumer hardware devices ever made. Just the right mix of boxy and round; small enough to be novel (at least at the time), but large enough to still be perfectly usable. Unfortunately, finding one that both holds a charge and isn’t battered to all hell is quite difficult these days, and even so, it’s much harder to justify a single use device for music when I literally always have my phone with me. As someone who was a teen when the iPod really started taking off, it was a constant presence during the time music was starting to become an important part of my life. Sad to see it go, even though really it’s been gone since the iPhone launched.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
    > Sad to see it go, even though really it’s been gone since the iPhone launched. I've seen it being carried as a daily driver instead of a phone by few privacy and security conscious folks. Considering that use case, iPod Touch was a great value for money. Guess they'll carry iPad mini now i.e. if they really want to stick with Apple (app) ecosystem.
  • cutler 5y ago
    I'm dumbfounded by this move by Apple as the iPod was one of the innovations which kicked Apple into the big league. There is also a large population of users who, for over a decade, have been using an iPod without a Mac or an iPhone and who rely on iTunes for Windows to manage their music. Not everyone can afford nearly £1000 for an iPhone, especially if the main reason is to provide continuity for their now deceased iPod experience. Then again Apple never gave a damn about obsolescence. When Big Sur was released I learned that my early 2013 MacBook Pro wasn't compatible yet only this week I was able to download a simple fix from OpenCore which enabled to me load Monterey and have it working perfectly. If one guy could pull this off why couldn't Apple with their resources? Truth is they wanted to make my MacBook Pro incompatible - by mere designation - just like they resisted the right to repair until forced to play ball. If Apple respected their loyal base of iPod users they could at least continue to produce replacement iPod batteries. That would be a minimal good-will gesture.
• sleepybrett 5y ago
  unfortunate, the ipod touch was a super handy device for all kinds of applications. Great for giving to kids so they could have an 'iphone'. Bought a ton of these back in the day and paired them to bluetooth pairable RFID reader/writer guns for an RFID retail POC. Nice to be able to write software for a platform you know, or can easily hire for, and deploy it to this kind of device. They often have either weird built in SOCs with proprietary apis for UIs.. though sometimes you are now seeing built in android devices so shrug. End of an era I guess. Couldn't just rebrand it the 'iPad Micro' and keep selling it :)
  • skinnymuch 5y ago
    The retail price is probably the issue. Apple isn’t really in the business [yet] of selling $200 hardware. The iPad Mini is $130 more than the cheapest iPad. Vs having a model cheaper than the cheapest iPad. It would be funny and maybe even possible! To have a comeback as an iPad Micro and be the size of the normal iPhones or the current 13 Mini. Though I heard because of its unique size for apple hardware, some apps don’t look correct on it. Edit: I flubbed. Apple TV has to be under $200. Maybe their Alexa competitor too.
  • kalleboo 5y ago
    Yeah I still see these used as terminals for waitstaff in restaurants, I wonder what they will move to next, iPhones? iPads are kinda huge, iPad mini is kinda expensive...
• lostgame 5y ago
  Lots of frankly silly comments here suggesting parents buy an iPhone without a SIM instead of an iPod Touch? Assuming you buy them new, the cheapest iPhone is $399 vs. the $199 iPod Touch. Buying used is often a mixed bag. An iPad Mini is $499! This is basically just a kick in the pants to parents who bought these for their kids. Guess those parents are going to go off and buy another brand and type of product now, since Apple refuses to offer a price-equivalent product for kids like this. I don't think it would've hurt Apple to keep producing this product...
• compiler-guy 5y ago
  "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." Twenty years is a long time.
  • kilbuz 5y ago
    haha, classic.
  • Nition 5y ago
    I noticed that the NOMAD lives on in Apple having to be extra specific in today's announcement: > The original iPod, introduced on October 23, 2001, was the first MP3 player to pack a mind-blowing 1,000 songs and a 10-hour battery into a stunning 6.5-ounce package. The NOMAD had more storage than the first iPod (6GB vs. 5GB), but weighed 14oz and had a four hour battery life.[0] [0] https://archive.org/details/manualzilla-id-7341241/page/37/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/manualzilla-id-7341241/page/37/m...
• jfultz 5y ago
  Looks like Apple's dumping their final handheld* device with a 3.5mm headphone jack. Let's once more admire their courage. * There's still one iPad model with a headphone jack, but that's not quite in my definition of "handheld".
  • nicolas_t 5y ago
    I just wished that all other vendors didn't follow in that stupidity.
    • Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
      100% Other vendors fail to understand that sometimes the reason people use their product is because it's not Apple. Most of the regressions I've seen in the Windows 11 UI/UX are from them trying to imitate Apple.
• musesum 5y ago
  Live music provided a sense of belonging. Radio provided shared stories and feelings. The Walkman provided a soundtrack for my life. The iPod provided a full solo theater of emotions. Smart playlists now provide a feeling of serendipity. But, that personalized experience feels selfish and hollow. Maybe I should get out more.
• mdoms 5y ago
  Ipod was dead to me when they killed the Shuffle, the only Apple product I genuinely liked.
• tempnow987 5y ago
  My standard view is, you should be able to read just the headlines and have some clue about what is happening. Modern marketing means headlines have gone to absolute trash. You can't tell product updates from just stupid SEO spam articles (tips to do x with y). You can't tell product intros from outros. I do like AWS style announcements. Their headlines are a bit long, but skimming them it's the what, and then the tag https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/ For week in review I wish they did parens for services - ie, Week in review (RDS, IAM, ECS). Some services are basically dead from an updates perspective, others like RDS seem to have pretty solid budgets.
  • leokennis 5y ago
    Those AWS headlines are perfect! I try to aim for the same in my e-mail subjects: <this happened>: <this is what it means> - <this is what you need to do> Example: “Database X ran out of space: all orders since 20-04 14:30 are stuck - request to increase space”
    • tempnow987 5y ago
      Awesome, I like it. I've been putting more in my subjects recently to good effect. No one wants to read a long email from what I see. "hey john... " just isn't great.
  • tmountain 5y ago
    My morbid hot take on the headline was that they'd be allowing you to will your digital music collection to a family member as some kind of covid related estate planning marketing. Turns out it was something much more benign, but I agree that headlines have gone straight to hell these days.
• LeoPanthera 5y ago
  I haven't tried this in a long time, but is it now possible to set up an iPhone without a SIM card in it? The last time I tried this (years ago, admittedly) the iPhone would not "activate" without a working SIM card.
• alexott 5y ago
  I’m using 13 old iPod for one simple reason - its very handy for music and podcasts. Just set the play list “didn’t listen for N weeks” and music is automatically synced, listened podcasts are removed and new are uploaded, etc.
• jrochkind1 5y ago
  I'm still using an IPod Nano 5th generation (2009). I bought it off ebay as a replacement for my iPod Nano 4th generation (2008) that was stolen in a home break-in! I love it. I dread the day the battery stops working, which it will eventually, and which is probably the only thing that would ever lead the thing not working anymore. I still put podcasts and mp3's on it. I listen to it in my car (which is also old enough to work with it via a hardwire USB hookup, I also dread the day I replace my car with one that own't), or with headphones when walking. I've become one of those middle-aged people who doesn't want to change. But the iPod nano still seems like amazing futuristic science fiction technology to me. it's tiny. It Just Works. (although MacOS has started having trouble sync'ing files to it without going crazy with duplicate files, I'm afraid).
• gnat 5y ago
  Shame! A bunch of our retail clients use them as in-store devices for staff who walk the retail floor -- they don't need to make calls or take gigapixel photos so the iPhone is overkill (and thus expensive) for them. I expect they'll move to Android and mourn the loss of cachet ...
  • IshKebab 5y ago
    Or iPads.
• dry_soup 5y ago
  The article notes that the first iPod touch came out in 2007. That was just six years after the first inch-thick iPod with a monochrome screen and magnetic storage. The pace of technology really does seem to have slowed down.
• javier_e06 5y ago
  I have the ipod nano 7th gen with a radio tuner! I also have the 1st gen apple shuffle, that one that looks like a usb stick. I hate all things apple (The Disney of Story Telling) but those 2 gadgets I keep in the kitchen crap drawer.
• amelius 5y ago
  The end of the podcast?
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• postit 5y ago
  Just bought one for each of my kids with their names engraved, I’ll load with my favorite albums and leave in storage, in 15 years there will be a revival of ipods and they’ll have a choice to play the hipster card.
  • asddubs 5y ago
    That's a bold move for a glued shut device with a built-in battery
    • alphabettsy 5y ago
      My iPod Classic is glued shut. It’s still serviceable, but hasn’t needed any service yet.
      • wfhordie 5y ago
        Your iPod Classic not glued shut. It has clips. Very easy to open with a guitar pick.
        • Gigachad 5y ago
          In some ways glue is easier than plastic clips. Plastic clips would always snap on me while glue melts under a hair dryer and comes off cleanly.
• hancholo 5y ago
  I went down a rabbit hole a few months ago and bought an ipod classic 5.5 with the wolfson dac for ~$40, I plan to modify it a bit storage and battery wise, and possibly some cosmetic mods. I also researched IEM's and paired it with some 'Chi-Fi' IEM's like the moondrop Aria and then got some aftermarket spinfit tips and changed the headphone cable to something of better quality. I plan on upgrading the IEM's to something more expensive but right now these are a good first pair for $70. The real reason I did all this was because I got nostalgia and could not afford an iPod back in the day but now I see myself buying more exclusive harder to find music because nothing is more annoying that having playlists on Spotify where songs are no longer available/blacked out or deleted rare music from youtube due to copyrights. I would like to have some kind of ownership over my music independent from an internet connection or a streaming service (nice to discover new music) dacs of course are not as good as modern phones of today but goddamit-NOSTALGIA!
• SamBam 5y ago
  Perhaps a silly question: is there any way to get music (saved mp3 files) onto an old 5th-gen nano from a Chromebook? Thinking of getting one for my daughter, who has a Chromebook from school. Of course I could manage it from my Mac, but it would be nice to give her the power.
• Gaussian 5y ago
  I always thought of the iPod as THE inflection point for Apple. Not the 1998 iMac, not the iPhone, even though it was the latter that made Apple the company it is today. But I think the iPod put Apple on a track to get to the iPhone-it's why Apple/Jobs were even thinking about it. The pod and the phone shared form factors and have always been intertwined in my mind. For that reason, when the iPhone came out, I automatically assumed that Apple had just killed its iPod business. I was wrong, but I suppose that it did eventually come to pass... 15 years later.
  • Hamuko 5y ago
    >I was wrong, but I suppose that it did eventually come to pass... 15 years later. It happened way earlier than 2022. iPod has been in life support for the longest time now and arguably the last true iPod was the last iPod Nano in 2012.
    • Gaussian 5y ago
      So you're saying I was less wrong! I knew it. ;)
• omar_alt 5y ago
  It would be interesting to show the market capitalisation of all major record labels vs Apple over the last 25 years. File sharing was given a massive leg up at the expense of recorded music and looking back it was really the underground and independent labels that have perished. When it comes to competing for attention music has a lot more to compete with now than it did then. If I had to predict I can't see a significant cultural change happening like in the 20th century unless new musical instruments are invented
• jimt1234 5y ago
  Sorta-related topic: I like to listen to music while I run. I currently use a 7th Gen iPod Nano. It works because it's small and it has Bluetooth; I just put it in my pocket and go. However, I would rather have this same functionality (play music, Bluetooth) on a wristwatch device, as the iPod bouncing around in my pocket can be kinda annoying. All the popular "smart watch" devices are packed with functionality I just don't want - not interested in having my fitness tracked or reading text messages while I run. I just want music and Bluetooth, and I guess a stopwatch/timer, too. That's it. I've looked around and the best I could find was a wristwatch device straight outta Shenzhen. I bought it, and unsurprisingly, it was junk. Does anyone know of a quality wristwatch device that only plays music and has Bluetooth (and stopwatch/timer)? Does a product like this exist? Or, is it "smart watch" or nothing (or junk)?
  • astrange 5y ago
    It’s easier to just get a smartwatch and turn the stuff you don’t care about off. It’s not like the watch’s feelings will be hurt if you don’t use it.
    • Wojakmeme 5y ago
      How do you know that exactly?
  • softfalcon 5y ago
    Yeah, my Apple Watch does this. You can also uninstall all the apps and disable all the notifications to make it dumb so it only plays music. I know a few folks who bought the older models or the new Apple Watch SE solely for this purpose. Is it more expensive than an iPod? Yup. Does it work amazing when running? Also, yup.
  • mikestew 5y ago
    Take a look at Garmin's products. Does what you want, and if there is no model that doesn't do what you don't want, just don't turn those features on. For example, I already have an Apple Watch, I don't care about "smart watch" stuff on my Garmin. But their top-of-the-line 945LTE that I bought for running also has "smart watch". I just want running stuff, so I simply did not pair the watch with my phone. There, no smart stuff. (Granted, I guess I'm paying for features I don't use...)
• jsiaajdsdaa 5y ago
  I kind of liked having a phone without phone service. Good use for kids.
• aj7 5y ago
  Original iPod 1st generations are going for $180-$500 on ebay.
• GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Crap :( I always loved the iPod Touch as a secure but tiny device. I use it like a "Secure Element" with my most trusted stuff on it. I hope the current generation goes on offer before they sell out. Here in Europe there's never been a significant sale on them. I got my current previous-gen for 139 euro but the current model has never been below 200 here. An iPhone is way too expensive (even the SE is ridiculously expensive in Europe) and I don't want second-hand / "refurbished" crap that third party sellers will have put questionable batteries in. And I don't need a SIM. But I guess what I want is a really small niche.
  • peterburkimsher 5y ago
    You speak on behalf of a huge untapped market. The cheapest iPods were second-hand, from drug dealers in high school. Broken. For as cheap as 40 CHF. Never underestimate the power of a child with a screwdriver. If you really don't want to use iFixit to learn, I'd be happy to buy you the best iPod in the world.
• can16358p 5y ago
  To be honest I was surprised that it lived on this long, and couldn't even understand why Apple released the 7th generation. It doesn't have a non-niche use, at least not in any profitable form worth supporting a device category. It was great for its time and I've owned and loved my iPod touches, but we can't expect a for-profit company to keep selling a device with no future and only a niche market, eventhough the device was iconic at some point in the past. Good move, and a big cherish to the iPod for changing the way we listen to music back then.
• standardUser 5y ago
  I only ever owned one MP3 player and it was a cheap little thing that ran on a single AAA battery. Plug it into my computer, drag and drop a few dozen albums worth of music, grab some extra batteries and I could listen to music indefinitely when I travelled. Never saw any need for something more than this, and I still don't!
• sydthrowaway 5y ago
  Remember what.cd?
• pachico 5y ago
  At the time I compared different models and none looked good to me as the Archos gmini 220. iPod users were in awe when saw what this little machine could achieve.
• flint 5y ago
  Vinyl, and a burbon manhattan. No screens in the room.
• KingMachiavelli 5y ago
  Not surprising but it's fun to reminisce about the iPod Touch. While not technically my first iPod/tech device, it was certainly the first computer that was actually my own which was pretty cool in 2008. I certainly attribute my current tech career to Jailbreaking, it was a great way to learn about Unix style systems.
• gtvwill 5y ago
  Eh another lump in apples pile of "it still works but now it e-waste" design strat. Just like the early gen still working but discontinued and no longer supported iPads on my cupboard next to me.
• bigdict 5y ago
  > Apple is discontinuing the iPod They never actually say so in the press release.
• Wump 5y ago
  Maybe they'll finally remove "iPod Touch (7th generation)" as the default selected simulator in XCode :)
  • willswire 5y ago
    I’m here for this comment haha
• drawkbox 5y ago
  I actually think this is a mistake. Lots of kids use it as a handheld gaming device. It is perfect for that. iPad Mini is also great for that but iPod is cheaper and can be replaced more regularly. When Apple came out with the iPod Touch it made a huge impact in the handheld gaming world. It even caused some gaming companies to focus on handheld more. Now with the Nintendo Switch (even 3DS), SteamDeck and even prior with the PSP there is more competition there. However, it still allows kids to have a device that has their Apple games and not have to use parents phones or having to get them a phone to play. iPod Touch was one thing Apple had over competitors before the iPad and iPad mini, there wasn't a comparable Android handheld that wasn't a phone. We make handheld/mobile games and our iPod Touches are nice to have to test smaller screens over using iPhones and optimizing for the smaller devices makes the iPad devices perform better. Lots of gaming companies buy touches up. I think this is a mistake that will impact them on some of the handheld gaming side. It will also mean more parents phones being used over getting them a more expensive iPad or iPad Touch. It may end up with less devices sold and less games played on Apple devices.
• arriu 5y ago
  It’ll be back, just give it 10 years.
• stereoradonc 5y ago
  An iPhone is an iPod with calling facility.
• BeFlatXIII 5y ago
  My big surprise was that they were still selling iPods. I thought there was a hullabaloo about them being discontinued a few years ago. Is my memory just failing?
  • approxim8ion 5y ago
    They discontinued the iPods (Shuffle, Classic, Nano etc) quite a while back. What remained was the iPod Touch, which is basically an old iPhone that has been gutted to remove the cellular portions.
• needle0 5y ago
  What a press release: the actual main message -- iPod touch is being discontinued -- has been weasel-worded out of the entire text, to the point that a non-native reader of English wouldn't even be able to decipher what it's trying to say. I get that it's second nature for corporate marketing to try to dampen the message when they're taking something away, but this is on a whole new level.
  • deaddodo 5y ago
    In what way? Both the headline and footer are very clear that iPod Touches are only available while supplies last: > Customers can purchase iPod touch through apple.com, Apple Store locations, and Apple Authorized Resellers while supplies last. That's pretty clear that more won't be made.
    • ascar 5y ago
      Their language says "will be available" and "can purchase", which actively promotes iPods for sale. Saying "while supplies last" is more of a hint than a direct and clear statement that production has stopped.
    • mcbutterbunz 5y ago
      Every product is available while supplies last. The question is, will more supplies be manufactured after that? This article doesn’t say either way. The amount of corporate Apple speak here, where everything is positive dnd amazing, is really annoying to me.
    • danmur 5y ago
      Most of the time when advertising says "while stocks last" it's not an indication that something has been discontinued, it's just a prompt to make you want to buy one.
    • Andaith 5y ago
      Not really. Pretty clear is: "We are no longer manufacturing iPod touch. Customers can purchase ... while supplies last". This is: "You can buy our product while we sell it" "Music is super great isn't it" "We have lots of ways to let you listen to music" "We love that our customers like listening to music" "So yeah, as we clearly said, you can buy our product while we sell it" I'd argue that the primary message they were trying to convey was something that had to be inferred from their text, as opposed to being something clearly stated in their text, and therefore that it is NOT clear.
• LAC-Tech 5y ago
  I still use an mp3 player (sony walkman). A smart phone is a poor substitute. The walkmans battery lasts much longer, it's simpler to transfer music too (it's just a USB drive), I can alter the volume change/track just by feel without having to pull it out of my pocket, I can just plug it into my cars USB port, I can drop it, I don't have to use a touch screen or update an OS.., EDIT: just looked it up, mine is the B series, basically a thumb drive with a little display and some touch controls. https://store.sony.co.nz/walkman/NWZB183FL.html https://store.sony.co.nz/walkman/NWZB183FL.html I haven't used the much more expensive ZX series which seems... well a bit pointless to me. Like I said, big advantage of my B series as I can do it all by tactile feel without looking at a screen.
  • amatecha 5y ago
    Do you not have to convert the music to Sony's format using their software? I had one of the early Sony mp3 walkman models (the circular "network walkman" I guess it was called)... you couldn't actually transfer mp3s to it, you had to use their software to transcode it (probably decreasing quality). It was still awesome, though!
    • LAC-Tech 5y ago
      I can't speak for the new ones - my model is about 10 years old. But I literally just plug it in like any other usb drive. It can only play mp3s, but that's fine for me. https://www.sony.co.nz/electronics/walkman/nwz-b180-series/specifications https://www.sony.co.nz/electronics/walkman/nwz-b180-series/s... Looks like the modern version of what I have can play mp3s still, unless I'm missing some fine print.
      • amatecha 5y ago
        Nice, yeah mine was a very early one, maybe ~2003-ish. You can see the manual here[0] where they describe "Transferring audio files from the computer to your Network Walkman" on page 12. It's not said explicitly in the manual but the device wouldn't actually play mp3s, only ATRAC format which the SoundStage software would convert to automatically when you transfer the music to the device. Maybe user backlash resulted in them directly supporting mp3s in later models, as I know I was super ticked about it and didn't buy another Sony music player (eventually bought a 30gb iPod with Video). [0] https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/res/manuals/W000/W0007574M.pdf https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/res/manuals/W000/W0...
• vinceguidry 5y ago
  Some people wanted to believe that Apple's removal of the headphone jack was 'brave' instead of a complete crock of profit-seeking shit, to them I would say that you could buy an iDevice that makes calls and texts, or one with a headphone jack, but not one that could do both. There were two iDevices with headphone jacks left, iPod Touch and the iPad. (iPad Air and iPod Pro don't have them) Now there's just one left, and none that fit in a pocket. Once they discontinue the iPad, your only options will be flaky or nonworking dongles, special-buying wired devices with USB or lightning ports with predictably mediocre sound quality, or eye-wateringly expensive and delicate, and often unreliable, wireless devices. My last Apple hardware purchase was over five years ago.
• slotrans 5y ago
  I still use my 2006 iPod. It's a 5.5th generation model that came with an 80GB HDD and IIRC I paid $400 for it. The battery eventually died. Replacements are about $8 and the surgery is easy. What makes a huge difference though is replacing the HDD with a board that holds an SD card. The board plus a 256GB card cost me around $75 total. The physical swap is relatively simple, and migrating your data is as simple as making a backup through iTunes and restoring it. I mostly leave it plugged into my car, which has native support for controlling it. Unlike anything Bluetooth, it actually works! Oh, and I buy music on Bandcamp. Fuck streaming.
  • 0des 5y ago
    > buy music on Bandcamp. Fuck streaming. Based
  • manomanowicz 5y ago
    The car integration is an underrated aspect in my opinion. I used to travel for work and would rent cars. I would spend 3+ mins after picking up each car trying to get my bluetooth to work with my phone until I realised I could just plug in an iPod (from 2005!!) into the USB port of a MY2018+ vehicle and have my entire music library accessible through the car's interface with artwork. Just plug it in, and it would just pick up where I left off, on the podcast/album I was listening to on the plane. I now use a 16GB 6th gen Nano set to shuffle for all my music needs in my car. I got it cheap since the battery doesn't last that long but it's fine when plugged in all the time.
• killjoywashere 5y ago
  Reading the comments of the young'uns here, yes, you should buy an iPod and keep music on it. As a child of the 80s and 90s, I re-found mechanical pencils and it changed my 40s. I kid you not. I'm so happy to pick up a mechanical pencil, it's ridiculous. Why? I don't know. Who cares? Happy. Be happy, humans. Be happy.
  • peterburkimsher 5y ago
    Mechanical scrollwheels are revolutionary!
• DLA 5y ago
  I’m so miss the ipod nano. Just bought a new ipod last week because sometimes I just want music and books. Audible book sync with iWatch is total shit and rarely works. When I run i don’t want to carry a phone. I feel this is a bad move by Apple but I (somewhat) get it.
• drusepth 5y ago
  Can you imagine the ridicule Apple would face if they released an iPod without a headphone jack? This seems like a heavy-handed but natural progression of a certain unfortunate series of recent hardware decisions. :(
• at_a_remove 5y ago
  So, and this is probably a doomed question, where are the people who are into MP3 players hang out and discuss minutae? Because it seems like they would be the ones to ask about finding something to fit each person's specific requirements (headphone jacks? Battery life? UX? Avoidance of Android under the hood? Decent DACs? File formats? Playlist types supported? Gapless playback?) amidst the absolute sea of jankety choices out there. My prediction is that -- if there isn't such a forum, one will start soon. It's too big of a niche and I'm told that Apple filled it reasonably well.
• termios 5y ago
• neilobremski 5y ago
  I'm not sure I ever considered the iPod Touch a music player; Apple hasn't made a decent MUSIC PLAYER in years. They've made a lot of very capable portable computers that sit on your wrist or rest in your pocket but there's a lot more noise than signal coming from them ...
• peterburkimsher 5y ago
  Dear Apple, The iPod changed my life when I was 12 years old. I gave you 6 months of my savings to pay half the price of an iPod (the other half was a Christmas present). Your sticker said "Don't steal music." So I stole music. I repaired friends' iPods. Now I work in Embedded Systems. Now I can't fix my original iPod 1st Generation (P68 Prod) because I don't have the parts. I tried to buy your 5GB hard drive but that didn't work. I asked Tony Fadell and he put a <3 on the tweet. https://twitter.com/tfadell/status/1520470531123945474 https://twitter.com/tfadell/status/1520470531123945474 What is your intellectual property team protecting now? Please can you share the schematic and boardview for the old iPod? It's my "right to repair" or something like that. And the wonderful company that I work for here in New Zealand has an amazing lab with all the tools for fixing everything. God bless you! Peter
• shp0ngle 5y ago
  Well... in 2022, if you want the "iPod Touch experience", just with better chip - just buy iPhone SE 3 and don't put SIM in. It's basically the same form factor, can do the same things, just with better chip by 5 generations. It costs 2 times more; but it's also leagues faster. Or you can buy SE 2, which is still faster than iPod Touch, and goes for about the same price.
• y0d4 5y ago
  I only have owned one Apple product ever and that's an early gen iPod that I bought used ~10 years ago. It still holds great charge (around twelve hours) with the optimal screen dimming settings, even despite year-long periods of inactivity. Every part of it still works. I am a Linux fanboy so take it from me that this was actually a great product.
• anupamchugh 5y ago
  So we can now replicate the iPod-wheel UI design in iOS apps. Right? I remember Apple's App Store review team would reject those apps earlier
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• DeathArrow 5y ago
  iPod was the first product that made Apple a large amount of money after a long time of trouble.
• sandreas 5y ago
  I still use my iPods because love to keep my music and audiobooks at home (not in the cloud). After a lot of research I'm currently testing self hosted solutions: - Navidrome [1] + Substreamer [4] - Audiobookshelf[2] + Audiobookshelf-App [5] - Nokia 1.3 phone [3] without sim (<100$, small, headphone jack, Changeable battery, microSD slot) Just in case someone finds this interesting: It looks promising to me, but I've not tested the audio quality in detail, which might be a huge difference to the high quality output of iPods. [1] https://www.navidrome.org/ https://www.navidrome.org/ [2] https://github.com/advplyr/audiobookshelf https://github.com/advplyr/audiobookshelf [3] https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_int/nokia-1-3 https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_int/nokia-1-3 [4] https://substreamerapp.com/ https://substreamerapp.com/ [5] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.audiobookshelf.app&hl=gsw&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.audiobooks...
• musicale 5y ago
  Bummer, I wish they'd bring back the iPod touch.
• Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  I miss my old ipods. I got an ipod mini as a gift from my parents at a graduation age... 19 I think. I traveled to the US for reasons and got a nylon cover for it, making it massively overbuilt but it was a very personal thing for me. It got stolen from my coat pocket at the canteen area at my weekend job; the lockers were always occupied. Probably by this weasely looking kid who got a new scooter not much later. The company gave me a gift certificate to get a new one out of graciousness I guess, they weren't obligated, and I used that to get an ipod nano. I mean it was good, but not the same. Anyway, I too loved that one. I contemplated getting an iphone (3G at the time), but eventually decided against it because I'd be locked into a phone contract, without actually using a phone that much, so instead I got an ipod touch. It was neat for having a screen and apps and no contract, but not the same. I ended up using it alongside a regular flip phone for years, and later I got an Android phone (a cheap Samsung) but it languished in my bag because I much preferred the Apple interface and syncing. Eventually I got an iphone through work and got rid of the flip phone. My ipod touch is in a drawer somewhere, I sometimes charge it up but don't really use it, it's too slow. Anyway TL;DR I want an ipod mini / nano again, just for music and maybe podcasts, but there's not been any decent competitors filling the gap. I don't really understand why Apple doesn't have more competition for high-end portable devices.