Goodbye-Pod
End of An Era: The Apple iPod
It was announced in May 2022, 21 years after it was first introduced to the world, that the Apple iPod was being discontinued. After a career spanning five models and, cumulatively, 26 generations, Apple have made the decision to ‘sunset’ the product line - of which only the iPod Touch remained in production. Since the production of the original iPod in 2001, Apple’s manufacturing and introduction of new products to the market has increased formidably, with the consolidation of their notebook and laptop models into the MacBook, the iPhone, and the iPad, all three of which hold a significant market share as well as a notable cultural impact. To many the iPhone remains the primary choice of phone for consumers, to a group the MacBook provides a premium experience for computing, and for others the iPod was the epitome of the music on-the-go experience.
The decision to discontinue this line of music player appears to be linked to the obsolescence of their very design. As media players, whilst at their inception they provided a service and features which were done best by digital music players, the development of phones, computers, tablets, and smartwatches to include these features and even more, has led to a quaint needlessness of them. Simply put, all that they can provide has been entirely superseded by the majority of all digital devices owned by the majority of the population. A whole physical device dedicated to play music is completely unnecessary, and has been for many years by now. Yet, I certainly felt a pang of nostalgia and sadness about the conclusion of this technological chapter.
In the weekend before I saw this news, I had spent an afternoon with a friend booting up an old PlayStation 2 and playing some video games from our childhood. Whilst the graphics are certainly dated and the controls are clunky, there is a certain satisfaction and sentimentality that will forgive any of these sins. I was reflecting on this when I heard the news from Apple and I would suggest that a number of people, myself included, will feel the same way when they find their old iPods in the back of a desk drawer or in that dusty corner of the attic. The intersection of wistful memories and modern technological context here is a powerful thing.
Thinking back on my first Apple music player, a 2nd generation iPod Shuffle (imagine a silver hair clip with a play button on it), the limitations are clear: no screen to indicate which song is playing, relatively little storage space, and a baffling charging station which operated through the audio port.
However, the joy that could be found in these peculiarities made it stick out in my memory and gave me a fond piece of technology to look back on - my awareness of my own music collection became impeccable, because if I did not try to remember what was in my library then I would have no idea which song was going to come on next.
More than just personal nostalgia, the iPod provides a key artifact in our cultural history, defining a time where personal devices were in exponential development and, over their 21 year tenure, supplying a backdrop for the consolidation of media player functionality in most personal devices. Greg Joswiak, speaking for Apple, stated that “Music has always been part of our core at Apple, [...] the iPod redefined how music is discovered, listened to, and shared. Today, the spirit of iPod lives on.” It is important to note that the iPod has little use within the technological apparatus of current culture, since its exclusive features are entirely found within more diverse technology, and this obsolescence is not something that should be fought against. There comes a time when the continued production of an item causes more waste than discontinuing it, and this seems to be that time for the iPod. But the spirit of the iPod will in fact live on, and this is something worth appreciating, in my humble opinion.
So, for the sake of reminiscence, for a media player that had such an impact, and for the songs we heard along the way, we say goodbye to the device but not the job it did. If you have an old iPod somewhere, might I suggest digging it out this week and giving it a listen - appreciate the music you put on it all those years ago, the feeling of something old, and the life lived in that time. We hope you appreciate the iPod for 21 years of music, and perhaps think about what technology we will be looking back on 21 years from now, with that same warmth of fond nostalgia.
