The iPod was a device crucial in developing Apple as leading handheld device brand and establishing their tight-knit eco-system. Now, after an over 20-year lifespan, Apple are discontinuing the iPod.
While over the years, the iPod has come in many forms including the Nano, Mini, Classic and more, the last remaining iPod available for purchase was the iPod Touch, the device that held the DNA for modern smartphones.
The death of the iPod is the end of an era for both Apple and music, as the practice of playing downloaded tracks via iTunes becomes less and less popular. Despite this, the Cupertino based tech giant say that “the spirit of iPod lives on” in the rest of its devices.

Credit: JIM MERITHEW/WIRED
The final generation of iPod, seventh gen iPod Touch of 2019, was designed for streaming music and running apps, with the A10 processor of the iPhone 7. Slowly but surely, as Apple was using older hardware and expanding time between releases, their love for the iPod was dwindling.
The iPod is just not something most people need anymore. Why carry around an iPod and a smartphone, when your smartphone is perfectly capable of what your iPod can do?
One of the original iPod developers, Tony Fadell, said that the iPhone was always destined to overtake the iPod.
“It became very clear to us that there was a real threat from mobile phones, feature phones. They were starting to add music, MP3 playing, to the cell phones that they were shipping at the time,” he said in an interview with The Verge.
The iPod Touch will remain on sale ‘while stocks last’.