Image: Apple
Apple announced today that it is discontinuing the iPod touch. With relatively little fanfare, it’s the closing chapter for the landmark product that reimagined personal music consumption as it shaped the transition of digital music streams into legitimate – and legal – business models.
Marking one of Apple’s first forays into an already crowded, non-Mac consumer electronics category in 2002, it quickly became the Walkman killer by redefining that category with a better user experience, slick packaging, smart branding – and most importantly – functionality in ways nobody had thought of or attempted. In this case, compressed MP3s on a portable hard disk that gave music lovers the ability to have their entire music collection in the palm of their hands.
Depending on your perspective, Jobs’ vision either broke the music business, or saved it by making digital streams available to sync on computers one 99-cent song at a time in 2003 with the introduction of iTunes. Inarguably, the iPod/iTunes combo made obsolete the music industry’s “album” model for marketing and distribution of content and redefined the future of how artists would be compensated for their work.
Through its many iterations including iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle, and iPod Mini, some design ideas were better thought out than others. Regardless, just continuing this long, after feature-rich smart phones made dedicated MP3 players irrelevant, is testament to the iPod’s iconic status. Upwards of 400 million units were sold worldwide over the years.
Apple says the last iteration of the device – the iPod touch – will still be available as long as its existing inventory lasts.
