After 20 years, Apple is discontinuing the iPod: “Available while supplies last”

More than 20 years ago, Apple introduced a rectangular device called the iPod that could store up to 1,000 songs and fit in your pocket. The gadget, considered the “most fantastic MP3 player in the world” by PCMag in its debut, soon became a status symbol that changed the way people listened to music.

Now the music has stopped for the iPod, and Apple said on Tuesday that it will stop making the iPod Touch. People can still get their hands on the product, but only as long as supplies last, the company said.

The reason, Apple said in a statement, is that its other devices have combined music with its functionality. The iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad and HomePod mini double the iPod’s music playback capabilities, the company said.

“The spirit of the iPod is alive today,” Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of global marketing, said in a statement.

On social media, iPod fans mourned the interruption of the device as they remembered the purchase of their first music player.

“RIP to my first tech purchase, a second-generation iPod touch,” one Twitter user wrote.

Introduced by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in 2001, the device also helped reshape Apple by expanding the company’s product line beyond computers. Six years later, Jobs introduced the iPhone, which he described like “how to have life in your pocket”.

Apple had previously discontinued previous versions of the iPod, such as the iPod Shuffle and iPod Nano, leaving the 2019 iPod touch as the only device in its line of dedicated music players. But iPod sales peaked in 2008 as consumers switched to music on smartphones and other devices, according to Insider.

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