Today, the iPod Nano and iPod Shuffle have been scrapped, leaving only the iPod Touch to carry on the legacy of audio players that aren’t just, you know, your mobile phone.
Aside from the sheer nostalgia of seeing a picture of these two ancient iPods, though, we doubt anyone will be feeling much about the axing of the final old-school iPods, some of the oldest products remaining in the Apple hardware lineup.
“Today, we are simplifying our iPod lineup with two models of iPod touch, now with double the capacity starting at just $199, and we are discontinuing the iPod shuffle and iPod nano,” an Apple spokesperson told Business Insider.
The Shuffle has existed since way back in 2005, when it stunned people with how incredibly basic it was – after all, it only allowed you to play, pause and skip back and forth, rather than select what you wanted to listen to. Its tiny size made it perfect for loading a workout playlist onto though, and it foreshadowed the sort of personalised but passive listening we now get from Spotify playlists.
The Nano, meanwhile, was a good middle ground in terms of size, and proved to be a very popular device, receiving seven facelifts since its introduction the same year. It received its last revision two years ago, whereas the Shuffle has been identical since way back in 2010.
iPod sales have dropped well off from their peak in 2008, where Apple sold 54 million of the things, and are now just bumdled into their ‘other products’ category in sales reports, completely negligible compared to its iPhone sales.
Nevertheless, the iPod was the device that kickstarted Apple’s ascent to the top of the world of fashionable computing, and it’s with a twinge of sadness that we see the line reduced to nothing more than an iPhone that can’t make calls.
