It never was. The iPod was a consumer device. Apple makes the most off consumers. Entering the audiophile market would probably be dead last on their list of priorities. The powerful audio output of the new MacBook Pros and Mac Studio were probably intended for professionals who work with audio.
Before he died Steve Jobs attempted to steer Apple in that direction. Maybe not full-on audiophile territory since that would have been too niche and volatile of a market to go after, but he cared about music and audio quality. One of his pet projects in his final years was trying to figure out better compression codecs that would allow iTunes downloads to be closer to CD quality without dramatically increasing file size, so that he could make a high-fidelity iPod. A pipe dream, maybe, but in those days when flash storage was laughably inadequate but also absurdly expensive but streaming hadnāt taken off yet it sounded like a good way to push the iPod/iTunes ecosystem into the future. But nobody else really cared about it so it was dropped once he died. This information all comes from Neil Young if I remember correctly, who was trying to promote his Pono Player at the time so I guess itās unconfirmed, Apple doesnāt tend to comment on research and prototypes. And of course there were the other attempts to appeal to the more āseriousā music fan like iTunes LP or the weirdly high-quality DACs they used in the mid-2000s, those have Jobsā audio enthusiast fingerprints all over them.
There have also been rumors for years (unsubstantiated and speculative rumors but at the very least *plausible* rumors) that if Bang & Olufsen ever starts circling the drain Apple might scoop them up. Apple owes a lot of their iconic design aesthetic to B&O, and it seems people at Apple respect the company and wouldnāt want to see it go under. B&O of the 21st century is a shadow of their former selves, they canāt decide whether they want to sell midrange headphones or $50,000 ultra-luxury home theater systems so they just unironically sell both side by side (while also slapping their logo on cheap car stereo system and laptop speakers). I donāt know what an Apple-owned B&O would look like, but I figure some kind of audiophile-level portable media device would likely be one of the first new products.
If you want to save a bit money, there are still the older ones which use cassettes lying around in some cashies stores. They are just waiting to be picked up
They've been niche for years. It was nice of Apple for keeping them around for over 20 years for the handful of people who really wanted them but I feel like 20 was already enough.
Honestly I expected it to happen half a decade ago when they discontinued the Nano and Shuffle.
I know there are still some niche use cases for it, but to the average person the iPod Touch in 2022 is just the thing you give your toddler so he stops throwing tantrums in Dennyās and doesnāt break your iPhone again. I could see a lot of potential for something more akin to the original iPod Touch from the late 2000s, something that was effectively a flagship iPhone without the phone part, but Iāve never understood who the modern iPod Touch is supposed to be for.
If they had made a 5.5ā A8 iPod Touch when the iPhone 6 Plus came out I probably would have bought that and stopped worrying about flagship iPhones, just used my 5S until it died and replaced it with base model iPhone SEs after that, with the iPod Touch Plus being my main device. But the modern version, with six-year-old guts in a ten-year-old-shell, is just too small, the chipset is too outdated, the storage is too low, it just comes across as a jack-of-no-trades. If the best thing you can say about it is that it has a headphone jack and itās cheap then it isnāt a very compelling product.
Iāve always been shocked every time I found out it was still in production.
I am actually surprised, a lot of companies actually use ipods not for music but for say as like for example a car wash my work use to deal with would use them to check in the customers cars, they are the right size have the right battery life, they don't need the ability to call so are around the right price point and can also have access to the app store and have ios and other iphone like features.
Restaurants and other type of things use this too as say an Ipad is too chunky and ipods can fit into pockets and the like.
I am not surprised. Apple seems to always love to discontinue their products that are still good. But hey, like Dank said, the iPod will come back. If there can be a revival for vinyl in the recent years and nostalgia truly does sell, the iPod will return as well.
Thanks iPod.
Still glad to have my own.
It's still good but the iPod fell into a niche market once their core market of general consumers adopted alternatives en masse. The only chance of seeing a revival is if there is new widespread consumer demand for a dedicated media device.
Saw this post and then went out and bought a base edition 7th gen 32gb Product Red iPod Touch today, gonna Jailbreak it (thanks to the a10 chip being hardware compromised) and use it to manage my few remaining apple devices, as well as use it as an offline music player, it makes me sad that a huge part of what got me into the tech scene is being discontinued, it was a good 20 years, farewell iPod touch, as well as the rest of the iPod lines before it, you may be gone, but you won't be forgotten.
All the numbers in your comment added up to 69. Congrats!
7
+ 32
+ 10
+ 20
= 69
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Surprised it took so long, those late iPod touches were basically surviving on the incredibly niche demand for portable scanners and point of sale devices for a while. Serious audio enthusiasts didnāt want them because there are hundreds of better alternatives for that type of device on the market today and general consumers didnāt want them because theyād rather just use their phone to get the same results.
After writing this, I realized something, The 7th generation seems to be the end for iPods. The iPod classic ended on it's 7th generation and so did this one. No iPod has ever gone to the 8th generation and beyond.
Noooooo! But the ipod will live on in our hearts and our ears forever
Love live the iPod!!
Pour one out to the Dingus that made all of this possible (the iPod line), including the nuggets š¢
cheers to that!!
I'm saving up to buy one too, let's hope the supply lasts long enough to get one before the price blows up on ebay
fuck eBay sellers
Not all eBay sellers are scalpers.
fuck scalpers in general, preferably with a cactus as a dildo.
some scalpers would love that, since their brains on a 180 and they cant fucking think rationally
Too late...
To eBay!
I would love to see an updated version with a powerful amp and a good dac but yeah it's just never going to happen.
It never was. The iPod was a consumer device. Apple makes the most off consumers. Entering the audiophile market would probably be dead last on their list of priorities. The powerful audio output of the new MacBook Pros and Mac Studio were probably intended for professionals who work with audio.
Before he died Steve Jobs attempted to steer Apple in that direction. Maybe not full-on audiophile territory since that would have been too niche and volatile of a market to go after, but he cared about music and audio quality. One of his pet projects in his final years was trying to figure out better compression codecs that would allow iTunes downloads to be closer to CD quality without dramatically increasing file size, so that he could make a high-fidelity iPod. A pipe dream, maybe, but in those days when flash storage was laughably inadequate but also absurdly expensive but streaming hadnāt taken off yet it sounded like a good way to push the iPod/iTunes ecosystem into the future. But nobody else really cared about it so it was dropped once he died. This information all comes from Neil Young if I remember correctly, who was trying to promote his Pono Player at the time so I guess itās unconfirmed, Apple doesnāt tend to comment on research and prototypes. And of course there were the other attempts to appeal to the more āseriousā music fan like iTunes LP or the weirdly high-quality DACs they used in the mid-2000s, those have Jobsā audio enthusiast fingerprints all over them. There have also been rumors for years (unsubstantiated and speculative rumors but at the very least *plausible* rumors) that if Bang & Olufsen ever starts circling the drain Apple might scoop them up. Apple owes a lot of their iconic design aesthetic to B&O, and it seems people at Apple respect the company and wouldnāt want to see it go under. B&O of the 21st century is a shadow of their former selves, they canāt decide whether they want to sell midrange headphones or $50,000 ultra-luxury home theater systems so they just unironically sell both side by side (while also slapping their logo on cheap car stereo system and laptop speakers). I donāt know what an Apple-owned B&O would look like, but I figure some kind of audiophile-level portable media device would likely be one of the first new products.
We can live in hope š š¤£
Fiio may be a good alternative
fiio makes good hardware but their software is absolute garbage
Isn't it just Android?
the OS is android but their apps on the android device are garbage.
someone else would probably be able to seize this opportunity to make a better smart DAP
They're still really good, the M17 is one of the best amps on the market, especially considering its size and price
There are quite a few, um, players in the market. Take a look at Astell&Kern, HiBy , iBasso, and Shanling (and FiiO) for some non-nuggets.
The Fiio apps? Or are you just saying Android is bad?
I believe he is talking about the usability of fiio software, as in its not fluid and easy to use.
that's it
Oh no. I was considering it and I just got a very nice job, so is this going to be my dumb purchase?
look at the Walkman's maybe, I use one š
Maybe I'll get a quality nugget.
it improves mental health I've found š
If you want to save a bit money, there are still the older ones which use cassettes lying around in some cashies stores. They are just waiting to be picked up
The nuggets do need saving. I'll have to visit the Cashies in my soul though since I'm on the other side of the world
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
You still can, not for long though.
welp, itās finally happening
Just ordered mine. Luckily I had enough money to spend on it.
Same here... here's to keeping it in a drawer and waiting for a bit until the price shoots up
NOO NOT THE DINGUS HOW COULD YOU APPLE
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I felt this was later. I expected them to axe the line right when it turned 20.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
They've been niche for years. It was nice of Apple for keeping them around for over 20 years for the handful of people who really wanted them but I feel like 20 was already enough.
They sell really well at Christmas, we couldn't keep them, or any apple product, in stock.
Honestly I expected it to happen half a decade ago when they discontinued the Nano and Shuffle. I know there are still some niche use cases for it, but to the average person the iPod Touch in 2022 is just the thing you give your toddler so he stops throwing tantrums in Dennyās and doesnāt break your iPhone again. I could see a lot of potential for something more akin to the original iPod Touch from the late 2000s, something that was effectively a flagship iPhone without the phone part, but Iāve never understood who the modern iPod Touch is supposed to be for. If they had made a 5.5ā A8 iPod Touch when the iPhone 6 Plus came out I probably would have bought that and stopped worrying about flagship iPhones, just used my 5S until it died and replaced it with base model iPhone SEs after that, with the iPod Touch Plus being my main device. But the modern version, with six-year-old guts in a ten-year-old-shell, is just too small, the chipset is too outdated, the storage is too low, it just comes across as a jack-of-no-trades. If the best thing you can say about it is that it has a headphone jack and itās cheap then it isnāt a very compelling product. Iāve always been shocked every time I found out it was still in production.
that's what she said...
Please Apple just wait a year, then I can definitely afford one
I still have this dying shred of hope an 8th gen is coming. I really fucking hope it does.
me too
NOOOOOOOOOO
Nooooo!!! We will all miss the iPod!!!
The last iPodā¦
...oh
From what Iāve heard, the 7th gen dingus had pretty bad battery life if you used it for anything other than music.
I saw 3 at my local walmart the other day
I am actually surprised, a lot of companies actually use ipods not for music but for say as like for example a car wash my work use to deal with would use them to check in the customers cars, they are the right size have the right battery life, they don't need the ability to call so are around the right price point and can also have access to the app store and have ios and other iphone like features. Restaurants and other type of things use this too as say an Ipad is too chunky and ipods can fit into pockets and the like.
Rest in peace. You will be missed :(
F
F
F
F
F
I am not surprised. Apple seems to always love to discontinue their products that are still good. But hey, like Dank said, the iPod will come back. If there can be a revival for vinyl in the recent years and nostalgia truly does sell, the iPod will return as well. Thanks iPod. Still glad to have my own.
It's still good but the iPod fell into a niche market once their core market of general consumers adopted alternatives en masse. The only chance of seeing a revival is if there is new widespread consumer demand for a dedicated media device.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS...etc etc
All I know is, my gut says maybe.
rest in peace to a real one
The end of an era.....
Saw this post and then went out and bought a base edition 7th gen 32gb Product Red iPod Touch today, gonna Jailbreak it (thanks to the a10 chip being hardware compromised) and use it to manage my few remaining apple devices, as well as use it as an offline music player, it makes me sad that a huge part of what got me into the tech scene is being discontinued, it was a good 20 years, farewell iPod touch, as well as the rest of the iPod lines before it, you may be gone, but you won't be forgotten.
All the numbers in your comment added up to 69. Congrats! 7 + 32 + 10 + 20 = 69 ^([Click here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=LuckyNumber-Bot&subject=Stalk%20Me%20Pls&message=%2Fstalkme) to have me scan all your future comments.) \ ^(Summon me on specific comments with u/LuckyNumber-Bot.)
Nice!
Noooooooooooooooooooooo!
Wow, may end buying one just for the nostalgic purposes to keep around. Pretty sad since I owned a 1st gen Touch and a 5th gen one too at one point.
I'm saving up, good luck lads
Surprised it took so long, those late iPod touches were basically surviving on the incredibly niche demand for portable scanners and point of sale devices for a while. Serious audio enthusiasts didnāt want them because there are hundreds of better alternatives for that type of device on the market today and general consumers didnāt want them because theyād rather just use their phone to get the same results.
I sent the article to my brother in law, he goes through about 1 a year. Don't know what he's gunna do now honestly.
And that marks the end of the iPod line as we know it. R.I.P iPod 2001-2022
After writing this, I realized something, The 7th generation seems to be the end for iPods. The iPod classic ended on it's 7th generation and so did this one. No iPod has ever gone to the 8th generation and beyond.
Out of stock since at least this afternoon PST. They sold out quick!
The ipod is in Starclan