Apple’s iPod is no more. The company announced on Tuesday that it will be discontinuing the product, effective September 15th. The iPod was first released in 2001 and quickly became a popular choice for music lovers. It was able to hold up to 16GB of data, which made it easy to store and access your music. However, the iPod’s popularity may have been waning recently. Its price tag has been increasing as its features have decreased, and its design has become more outdated.
Apple revealed on Tuesday that it’s discontinuing the last remaining iPod product, the 7th-generation iPod Touch. The company didn’t give a specific reason for killing the iPod Touch, but it’s safe to say low demand is the main reason. The music player has become a niche product in recent years, as most people prefer to listen to music through general-purpose smartphones and tablets, and there are many full-featured smartphones around the same price as the $199 iPod Touch.
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The first advertisement for the original iPod Touch
Apple discontinued the iPod Shuffle and Nano in 2017, the company’s last remaining dedicated music players. The iPod Touch is more or less an iPhone without cellular connectivity, and in recent years, it fell behind the iPhone’s rapid hardware upgrades. The current 7th-generation iPod Touch has the same Apple A10 Fusion chip found in the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus (which were both released in 2016).
Even though the iPod Touch has been on a slow decline for several years, there are still a few reasons to use one. The current iPod Touch is much more compact than most iPhones, with a 4-inch display and a physical size smaller than the iPhone SE 2022. It also still has a headphone jack — an increasingly rare sight on smartphones.
Apple says the iPod Touch will remain available in stores “while supplies last.”
Source: Apple
