How Apple Music and not iPhone killed the last of the classic iPods
It's sad, sad day indeed!
July 28, 2017 will forever be remembered as the day Cupertino-based tech giant, Apple, pulled the plug on the last of the iPods. After killing off the original iPod in 2014, Apple has now discontinued the Nano and Shuffle.
These no-frills MP3 players stayed nearly 16 years in the market, selling a combined 400 million units. But what is of significance, is not the impact that these three models from the iPod lineup had on the fortunes of the company, but how they revolutionised the way we listened to music.
With the iPod Classic in 2001, Apple put in a crazy amount of storage space in your pocket, wrapped in a body that looked cooler than anything available at that time. In the age of Sony's Walkman, the original iPod with its innovative disc wheel was magic in your hands. A great utility device, which not only served your needs with ease but looked great doing it.
These traits were passed on to the Shuffle and Nano in their iPod DNA. With the iPod Touch in 2006, Apple tried to outdo the classics, but as it turns out, the device was eventually reduced to the tag of being an "iPhone without the phone". Marred by its short battery life, more complicated interface, and beefier price, the iPod Touch failed to recreate the magic of the classic iPods.
These devices also represented a link to the simpler days of single purpose music players with great storage and battery. However, with today's announcement, Apple has broken that link to those simpler days.
The Shuffle and the Nano, which were announced after 2005, had long been ignored by the tech giant. The writing had been on the wall for all to see. Apple, which earned millions of fans because of these two products, had stopped updating them in 2010 and 2012 respectively.
Speaking to The Verge about the development, an Apple spokesperson said, "Today, we are simplifying our iPod lineup with two models of iPod Touch now with double the capacity starting at just $199 and we are discontinuing the iPod Shuffle and iPod Nano".
The company has also quietly refreshed the iPod Touch lineup, with the least expensive $199 (Rs 12,760) variant coming with 32GB storage while the more expensive $299 (Rs 19,173) variant now coming with 128GB storage. The other 16GB and 64GB storage variants have also been discontinued, hinting at the future discontinuation of the iPod lineup altogether, something that analysts, as well as Apple, has been hinting at for some time.
End of the line for the single-use device
No doubt the end of the classic iPods and single-use devices have been accelerated by the smartphone revolution, but they are in no way the main culprits. With the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, Apple introduced a device which could play music but also do so much more. Though such functionality is great to have, one cannot deny, the charm of a simple, single-use music player such as the iPod Nano or Shuffle.
Even in 2017, a full 16 years after first being introduced by Steve Jobs as the "music device which can hold a 1,000 songs in your pocket" the classic range of iPods still have more than a few loyal fans. But as it turns out, the squeeze no more remains worth the juice for Apple. In the age of cloud storage and ever interconnected devices, the two devices just don't fit in the plans of the larger Apple ecosystem the tech giant has very carefully crafted.
These devices with big storage devices, though great for utility, keep you away from the cloud and that in itself is its biggest flaw. Its real executioners are in fact industry cash cows such as Spotify and Apple Music.