Before Apple became the technology giant that it is today, it was in deep trouble back in the late 90s. Steve Jobs had been fired, all the new products were disastrous failures and there was no particular direction in which the company was headed.
It was then that they finally decided to bring Steve Jobs back. Jobs envisioned a portable music player with a tine hard disk drive and a click wheel for scrolling, which could be easily synced with your computer’s music via iTunes. When they finally made it, they called it the iPod. It went to become the staggering hit that Apple desperately needed, selling millions of units in the coming years. More iPods like the iPod Mini, Shuffle and Touch were added to the lineup later.
And then came the smartphone era. Today, all phones are able to play music quite well and the iPod doesn’t perform any standout function that the smartphone can’t. As expected, the sales dropped significantly and what was once the product that saved Apple in crisis became a product that no one really cared about.
All this has led to Apple finally discontinuing the iPod Shuffle and the iPod Nano. They hadn’t been refreshed in years and their death was imminent. I haven’t touched my iPods in years and as much as I love them for what they are, it’s just highly impractical to use them. The iPod Touch still lives, that too with a price cut, but in countries like India where the iPhone SE and the iPod Touch are priced similarly, I don’t think it’d be long before this one bites the dust. In the era of Spotify and Apple Music, music players that aren’t internet enabled are bound to die. And that’s exactly what happened. So long, my friends. It was really good till it lasted.
