iPod Classic End Of Life Comes To Pass
Almost 13 years after its original debut in October 2001, the iPod Classic’s end of life has come to pass. As our own Kevin Bostic reported on the arrival of the Apple Watch, the device that changed how people consume music was silently removed without fanfare or mention when the Apple Store site was relaunched after the Apple presentation was over earlier in the week.
As Wired’s Mat Honan so eloquently put in his touching requiem for the iPod Classic, it was the device that helped define our digital musical identities. The time in which people would save up for full albums, LPs, and cassette tapes had come to an end when Steve Jobs proclaimed at the first Apple “music” event in October 2001.
“[Y]ou can fit your whole music library in your pocket. Never before possible.”
The 5GB model introduced by Steve Jobs that day (pictured left) allowed owners to create the playlist we wanted. Playlists that reminded us of the teenage love from a summer camp long gone, the music that reminds us of a long gone relative, reflections of our personalities, and the guilty pleasures were musical portraits of our lives. It was the new age of the single and the playlist.
Horan said the following in his write-up.
“Music changed. There was a very real sense that Apple was abetting music piracy, which only made it cooler. Who could possibly be buying 10,000 songs? And so Apple made its own store, and slowly we started buying music again. Our music. Our songs. We entered the era of the single and the playlist. The track mattered and the album did not. Whole genres just vanished into the maw of the playlist.”
Today, music is distributed by streaming more that downloading. Spotify, Sony’s Music Unlimited, Amazon Prime Music, and other subscription services have brought the immediate gratification of music to our phones and tablets. They have replaced the practice of plugging in our iPods to our computers for syncing and cursing ourselves half way to work for not adding the latest album by Five Iron Frenzy.
The iPod Classic was released on October 23, 2001, and the latest incarnation was released on September 5, 2007 sporting 80, 120 and 160GB editions. The line also expanded to included the iPod Mini, iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle, and the iPod Touch lovingly referred to as an iPhone without the phone.
In the chance that you have one of these iPod’s cherish the time you have with the device while it still lasts (and is still supported by Apple) as it is a piece of tech that helped define a generation’s first serious foray from the physical to the digital.
[Image Source | Jonathan R. Clauson]
