The iPod Touch is Officially Dead. Long Live the iPod Touch

Not since the Sony Walkman has a gadget made such an indelible impact on the trajectory of portable music. But now, the era of the iPod has officially come to an end. 

As Deadline reports, Apple is discontinuing the iPod touch just shy of 15 years after its introduction in September 2007. The news hasn’t exactly come as a surprise. For one thing, smartphones have long replaced iPods as everyone’s favorite on-the-go music listening device—and Apple stopped producing the iPod nano and iPod shuffle way back in 2017.

To put it plainly, the iPod is widely regarded as an obsolete relic of a bygone time. In fact, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History already has two in its collection; and early models can fetch a pretty penny on eBay. But that doesn’t mean the news of the iPod touch’s company-sanctioned death doesn’t sting. For Millennials, it might even serve as an unwelcome reminder that they’re now old enough to have witnessed the entire life cycle of a revolutionary invention. The first iPod was unveiled in October 2001, when the youngest Millennials were roughly 5 years old and the eldest were turning 20. That particular MP3 player boasted room to hold 1000 songs and a battery that lasted for 10 hours.

“Music has always been part of our core at Apple, and bringing it to hundreds of millions of users in the way iPod did impacted more than just the music industry—it also redefined how music is discovered, listened to, and shared,” Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, said in a news release. He added that “the spirit of iPod lives on” in Apple’s more modern devices, all of which can play music.

While Apple will no longer manufacture new iPod touches, they’ll still be available to buy from Apple stores and other retailers until supplies run out.