After 20 years, the iPod no longer exists

The moment that all Millennials hoped would never come has arrived. The iPod, the mp3 player publicly introduced by Steve Jobs on 23 October eleven years ago and which helped build Apple's worldwide commercial success a full six years before the first iPhone, is officially out of production. For those hoping to grab a piece of history (or their teenage years), the last iPod Touch will be sold in online and physical shops "while stocks last".

The first iPod model from 2001 had an ultra-thin 5 gigabyte hard drive, weighed 186 grams with a battery that lasted about ten hours, was compatible exclusively with Apple computers and cost $399. A modern device that could hold almost '1,000 CD-quality songs' for just 99 cents a pop, it paved the way for the iPod Touch in 2007, perhaps the first touch-screen music device ever produced.

News that we should have expected, however, given that Apple had already stopped production of the iPod Schuffle and Nano in 2017 - the model that Cristiano Ronaldo continues to use undaunted as if it were 2010 and that Gen Z TikTokers use as hair clips, perhaps too young to understand its proper use. It was only a matter of time before the iPod bid farewell to the world forever, a sad day in the history of music technology accompanied by the words of Grey Joswiak, Apple's Senior VP of Worldwide Marketing: "the spirit of the iPod will live on" in all its music-playing devices, starting with iPhones.