Apple said on Tuesday that it will stop making the last iPod model it still sells, ultimately ending the famous product line that helped usher in a new era for the music industry and the tech giant.
Customers may still buy an iPod Touch “while supplies last,” according to Apple. Customers may now listen to their favorite tunes on a variety of Apple devices, including the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, according to the firm.
“Music has always been part of our core at Apple, and bringing it to hundreds of millions of users in the way iPod did impacted more than just the music industry — it also redefined how music is discovered, listened to, and shared,” Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, said in a statement.
“Today, the spirit of iPod lives on,” Joswiak added, touting how the music experience ushered in by the iPod has been integrated across “all of our products.”
The iPod, which was first presented in 2001 by Apple cofounder and then-CEO Steve Jobs, helped kick off Apple’s extraordinary success with portable devices. The iPod’s characteristic scroll wheel and the initial promise of “up to 1,000 CD-quality tunes” on a gadget that fits in your pocket lured people in. More than 100 million iPods had been sold by mid-2007.
The iPhone, which was in many respects the spiritual heir of the iPod Touch, was released the same year. Long before it was formally retired, the smartphone and other Apple gadgets had made the iPod feel like a relic of the past.