Death of the iPod: Bidding goodbye to the classic

It is time for the iPod Classic to go and become part of a collector’s prized item.

Last September, Apple finally laid to rest their iconic iPod Classic. The music player had been a very popular product of Apple for over a decade and revolutionized the way we consume music. In fact, we could go as far as claiming it has revolutionized the music industry, along with the iTunes Store with over 15 billion songs downloaded since it was introduced.

Apple first introduced the iPod Classic in October of 2001. Steve Jobs was so proud of the product and marketed it as a music player with “a thousand songs in your pocket.”

The first generation iPod had 5GB of storage and could last up to 10 hours of music playback. They eventually increased the capacity to 10GB and 20GB, then introduced an iPod Photo with an LCD display could can be used to view photos.

The succeeding generations saw bigger storage up to 40GB and 60GB with the 5th iteration being able to play videos in MP4 format.

The 6th generation of the iPod Classic had up to 160GB of storage and could play songs continuously for 36 hours and six hours of video. That was September of 2009.

Since then, Apple has not re-introduced the iPod Classic. Its other siblings, the iPod Nano, Shuffle and Touch, all got a few revisions from time to time but the Classic remained untouched for years.

Last  Sept. 9, Apple officially discontinued production of the iPod Classic. That’s exatly five years to the day they last updated the model in 2009.

I remember my very first iPod back in 2004. It was gifted to me by a friend and it was my first digital music player. It was still using Firewire, before USB support, so I had to get a Firewire card for my PC just to be able to transfer music and charge the device.

It has a touch-sensitive scroll wheel which was a brilliant new idea for easily navigating through hundreds and thousands of songs in the device. It was perhaps one of the biggest reasons why people loved the iPod. Well, aside from the fact that it was Apple.

And these music players don’t come in cheap. I eventually replaced that old iPod with a 3rd generation model with 20GB of storage for about P26,000 and then upgraded to the 30GB iPod Photo a year later for a little more than P30,000. Their retail prices were ridiculously expensive but they were rare to come by and folks who own them have that sense of exclusivity.

Then other models were introduced – the iPod Mini, iPod Shuffle, iPod Nano and the iPod Touch. I probably bought every new model that came out since 2006, except for the latest 160GB iPod Classic.

The iPod was at its peak in 2008 when Apple sold over 50 million units, thanks mostly to the introduction of the iPod Touch. Since then, sales slowly declined due to cannibalization of other iPod models like the Nano, Shuffle but mostly the iPod Touch.

By 2014, a total of about 375 million iPods were sold since it was first introduced in 2001. Impressive numbers, indeed. No other music player can claim that much in sales figures.

But the iPod Classic had to go. Not because a newer competitor had defeated it. It just had to go. Use of the Classic has been overshadowed by its siblings like the Touch or the Nano. Even the popularity of the iPhone has something to do with it as well.

Apple CEO Tim Cook reveals they no longer have the parts to manufacture newer models of the iPod Classic but we know that’s not really the reason. 

It’s just time for the iPod Classic to go and become part of a collector’s prized item.