On the subject of consuming media, and notably music, the largest driver of change is usually storage know-how.
With the ability to retailer bigger, larger high quality information; retailer extra of them; retailer them in any order you select; and devour them utterly privately, adjustments every little thing about how we work together with media. Don’t underestimate the facility of a giant laborious drive.
We consider the iPod as one of many shapers of our fashionable cell world, but it surely’s actually simply traditional Apple: a late-stage perfection of a kind that had been in improvement a few years prior. The primary really transportable music participant was Sony’s Walkman, later to be adopted by the Discman for enjoying CDs, and after the arrival of the MP3 file, an entire host of competing firms’ flash memory-based music gamers just like the Inventive Labs Nomad and the SanDisk Sansa. The iPod was designed to outperform all of them by utilizing a tough drive to keep away from the storage compromises of early flash reminiscence — and a few of Apple’s notorious design sensibility.
Apple’s first iPod got here out in 2001 with two main differentiators:
- A novel interface with a click on wheel enter methodology
- iTunes, an all-in-one app for managing music and porting it to the card-sized participant.
From there, Apple quickly iterated on its early success with the iPod mini, iPod nano, iPod shuffle, the iPhone, and iPod contact. Every supplied totally different storage sizes (first in tremendous tiny sluggish RPM laborious drives after which later in speedier flash storage), designs, colours, and costs. The iPhone was many individuals’s first Apple product.
The iPod grew to become as a lot a standing image because it did a continuing companion. The advertisements, just like the traditional collection of dancing silhouettes with white earbuds of their ears, have been as well-known because the system they have been promoting. The iPod successfully laid the groundwork for Apple’s cultural dominance and the world-altering success of the iPhone.
Apple discontinued the final surviving member of the iPod line, the Seventh-generation iPod contact, on Could 10, 2022, over 20 years after it launched the primary. You’ll be able to credit score the tip of the iPod to many issues, however regardless that the music participant is formally “classic,” its cultural impression was so important that intrepid modders are retaining the shape issue alive even after Apple has given it up.
What ended the iPod
The iPod contact was Apple’s final remaining iPod, and now it’s gone.
Apple
The only clarification for why the iPod went out of favor is that Apple supplied a greater different. When it launched in 2007, the iPhone was pitched as an iPod, cellphone, and “web communicator” multi functional. The iPhone’s multitouch-based, extremely visible interface was a serious step up from the clicking wheel the iPod was well-known for, or the bodily keyboard and trackball that made everybody desire a BlackBerry.
“I fell out of the iPod scene actually with the iPhone or different modern-type smartphones,” Colin Wirth, retro tech knowledgeable and the creator of This Does Not Compute, tells Inverse. “I used to be a BlackBerry person for a very long time and a few days I nonetheless miss it, however I lastly purchased an iPhone and it labored simply in addition to a music participant because it did all these different issues.”
Wirth’s expertise isn’t unusual, particularly for the technology who listened to music earlier than the arrival of the iPod. The laborious drive, music administration, and battery lifetime of Apple’s MP3 participant at launch was a “extra elegant answer,” in line with Wirth. In 2007, iPods made up 48 % of simply one-quarter of the corporate’s income. However that didn’t imply it couldn’t get replaced.
The iPhone’s skill to straddle a number of product classes is likely one of the issues that made it most compelling.
MediaNews Group/Bay Space Information through Getty Photographs/MediaNews Group/Getty Photographs
Apple continued to promote iPods alongside the iPhone for a number of years, iterating on fashionable fashions just like the nano, making the shuffle even smaller, and finally launching the iPod contact as a cellular-free iPhone in-between system that related the previous line and the brand new one.
“Lots of people considered [the iPod touch] in that sort of similar stepping-stone approach, however not essentially only for youngsters, for adults too, the place it might be a fantastic choice when you wished to get into the app ecosystem and see what a smartphone was like,” Wirth says.
The iPod contact allow you to straddle two worlds — or at the very least get onboarded to Apple’s — however even it will definitely succumbed to the all-consuming logic of the smartphone and apps. The iPod’s share of Apple’s quarterly income dropped from 48 % to 14.21 % solely a 12 months later in 2008.
A extra highly effective, do-it-all system is simply as a lot guilty for the sluggish decline of the iPod as it’s for adjustments to the music enterprise. The idea of the streaming service dramatically shifted our relationship with music from “proudly owning” a library of digital information (although whether or not or not you really personal one thing bought from a digital store is extra of a matter of perspective) to paying hire for a service that offers you entry to an almost limitless library of tracks.
Spotify popularized the idea when it got here to the U.S. in 2011, however the first service to supply a streaming music library for a flat month-to-month charge was truly Rhapsody. Others would launch earlier than Spotify (Rdio and Deezer followers, you’re not forgotten), however few might seize the curiosity of regular folks with suggestions, curation, and algorithmic ideas like Spotify. As quickly as these subscription companies grew to become accessible in a easy app on your cellphone, the thought of a devoted MP3 participant was over for most individuals.
“I simply devour [music] a lot that the impression of streaming was so nice on my life.”
Man Dupont, software program developer and creator of the “Spotify iPod,” was certainly one of them.
“As a lot as I really like devoted {hardware} and I’m excited to speak about devoted {hardware}… I simply devour [music] a lot that the impression of streaming was so nice on my life, that it did not make sense to maintain carrying an iPod,” Dupont tells Inverse.
Spotify and streaming companies prefer it usually supply a worse deal for artists. Nonetheless, the comfort of music streaming was too nice, and the personalization, nonetheless invasive, too viral. Spotify Wrapped is the clearest instance, repackaging info we pay to provide to Spotify that solely serves to spice up the service’s profile.
“You’ll be able to inform Spotify is aware of, now they’re beginning to construct as much as it,” Dupont says. “It is somewhat totally different as a result of that is stuff you have got already found. However there’s nonetheless one thing about it that feels prefer it’s coming from an exterior supply, regardless that [Wrapped] is actually your knowledge.”
In that gentle, Dupont’s iPod mission is an attention-grabbing fusion of the previous and the brand new, retaining the surface-level aesthetic selections of the iPod however connecting to a service that’s rather more alive than something just like the previous model of the iTunes Retailer. It’s additionally completely depending on the goodwill of Spotify to proceed present. Dupont says the loophole the Spotify iPod makes use of might be shut down at any time, very like how music can disappear from Spotify with out a second’s discover. Utilizing a streaming service comes with compromises that make every little thing extra ephemeral.
How the iPod lives eternally
Making modifications to your iPod is less complicated than it appears.
iFixit
Apple nonetheless helps the iPod within the newest macOS Ventura, however the {hardware} is one other story. For an iPod to work “like new” in 2022, it’s possible both been refurbished or modded. That is the primary approach generations of individuals born after the iPhone and music streaming are discovering the system for the primary time.
The iPod, particularly older iPods earlier than the iPod contact, is simple to crack open and alter.
“The laborious drive undoubtedly takes up essentially the most area, most likely adopted by the battery, “ Dupont says. “Then there’s the sort of major board, which is simply the entire electronics apart from the clicking wheel is its personal piece of circuitry that connects to the primary board, with the little connector.”
Altering any of these elements, together with the precise show, principally entails swapping them out, unplugging and plugging again in new cables (with some soldering in some circumstances), and snapping every little thing again collectively.
“An important factor is it has been finished and documented 1,000,000 instances. And other people have manufactured components to make it straightforward.” Dupont says.
Customized working methods can fill in when Apple’s iPod software program doesn’t play good with new components. Rockbox is a well-liked choice, maintained by a neighborhood of builders, with dozens of various theme choices and plugins that may add further performance — like new video games (Doom included) or entire iOS-esque apps.
The good irony of the iPod line’s great success is that regardless that Apple deserted the product class fully, these items have been round so lengthy that there’ll at all times be extra different components or software program options to fill within the gaps. iPods are “sort of future-proof,” Wirth believes. “From now till eternity, you’ll at all times be capable to put music on an iPod a method or one other.”
Extra concerned tasks like Dupont’s require new software program or {hardware}, however the fundamentals are accessible for anybody to do on their very own. And that’s not even counting the number of third-party modders on platforms like Etsy that may add new performance for an inexpensive value. You may get an iPod in any shade of the rainbow that fees over USB-C with little effort.
“From now till eternity, you’ll at all times be capable to put music on an iPod a method or one other.”
These distributors are assembly a requirement that’s arguably attributable to a few of the adjustments that spelled the tip for the iPod within the first place. Streaming companies, regardless of guarantees of upper high quality audio tiers like Spotify Hello-Fi, don’t do a lot for the audiophiles amongst us. Wirth notes there’s a sure “ceremony” to listening to vinyl information that neither iPods nor streaming companies seize, however at the very least the iPod makes listening deliberate (and may sound higher over wired headphones). Equally, smartphones introduce distractions to the listening expertise that have been by no means a problem on a devoted listening system.
Comfort, discoverability, and personalization in the end received out. Individuals want listening to a streaming service on a versatile system like a smartphone to the constraints of an iPod. However that hasn’t stopped folks from utilizing them. Whether or not nostalgia or the craving for a unique relationship to music, iPods dwell on via new screens, batteries, ports, and working methods. Little Ships of Theseus carrying flash reminiscence filled with audio, simply ready for the subsequent individual to get uninterested in Apple Music or Spotify.
