Swan song of a game changer
TOBY SHAPSHAK: RIP, iPod
The defining device of the portable music era is now headed for history, as Apple stops iPod sales
Apple announced unexpectedly strong sales of its iPhone last week, but also said it would kill off the music device that made it all possible: the iPod. The renamed iPod Classic was discontinued in 2014, and last week it was the turn of the smaller iPod Nano and Shuffle to be dropped from Apple’s online store. They were the last of the music players that made Apple into the mobile titan it is today. When it was released in 2001, the iPod was a game changer. It transformed music consumption and started the process of combining our separate gadget needs into one device. Apple allowed us to rip our music to digital format (the good old MP3) and then transfer it to an iPod to transport around with us. Steve Jobs proclaimed that the iPod put "1,000 songs in your pocket". The language originally used sought to describe it as the size of a pack of cigarettes.Just 16 years ago cigarettes were still being mentioned in favourable terms and music was something that you copied onto a portable d...
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