iPod off after 20 years: Bye

Some of you may have been surprised when you saw the report on SPIEGEL.de this morning that Apple was stopping production of iPods.

To get this straight, yes, iPods still exist and will continue to be sold -- at least while supplies last.

At least that's how Apple puts it now and doesn't say a word about the fact that the production of the legendary music player is ending.

Perhaps the pain of separation would be too great.

In addition to the iMac, the iPod was not just a gadget that brought Apple back into the black after its total crash in the 1990s.

Above all, it was the device that made the relationship between Apple and its customers personal.

By entrusting one's very private music collection to the player, which by today's standards is not that small, the technical device became a personal companion – a companion that could trigger emotions.

And an emotional bond between customers and the products is every marketing manager's wet dream.

She creates fans.

One such fan was designer Karl Lagerfeld, who was rumored early on to own dozens of iPods—a formidable misjudgment.

Just a few days ago, the auction house Sotheby's auctioned parts from Lagerfeld's estate, including about half of his iPod collection: 310 of 600 copies.

The fashion designer is said to have reserved each of them for a music genre or a musician.

Photos of the devices show stickers that say "Lily Allen", "MIX 15x12" or "KL 10.8.12".

Steve Jobs with the first iPod

Photo: ?

Susan Ragan / Reuters/ REUTERS

Many of these iPods are probably only partially filled with music, after all, one of the advantages of iPods was that they offered so much space.

As a reminder: When Steve Jobs presented the first iPod in October 2001, many people still equated mobile music listening with portable CD players. The MP3 players that were common at the time sometimes only had a few megabytes of storage space.

And then Jobs suddenly held up this little thing, which with its five gigabytes (GB) was supposed to offer space for 1000 songs.

Crazy.

But that was just the beginning.

My first iPod - I bought it almost two years after Jobs' legendary keynote to be able to write "The iPod Book" with my friend and colleague Sönke Jahn - already had 30 GB.

At that time, it could hardly be filled with music alone.

But you could already see the first hints of what the iPhone would later become and be able to do.

An address book, a calendar, notes and voice memos and, yes, even a few games could be played on the small screen's 160 by 128 monochrome pixels.

Because the iPod had a hard drive, it could also be used for things that USB sticks later became popular for.

In addition to a lot of music, Microsoft's Windows and Apple's Mac OS X could also be installed in order to start other computers with "his" operating system.

Anyone who was particularly bored could install Linux on the little machine.

At the time, Will Gilbert of the Hubbard Center for Genome Studies at the University of New Hampshire used his iPod to transfer data from a human genome from computer to computer.

This »sneaker network« was faster than the data lines that were common at the time.

But the iPod's descent began with the "next big thing."

Again, it was Steve Jobs who had the key words when he touted the first iPhone as "an iPod, a cell phone, a revolutionary internet device."

Apple tried for a while to carve out a niche for the iPod alongside the new smartphone.

The capacity of the larger models increased, while the small iPods became smaller and smaller.

The iPod touch was eventually offered as an iPhone without a phone and was last updated in 2019.

It's been a long time since my last iPod test, I wrote it down and filmed it in September 2010.

Over time it has become quiet about Apple's music player, which turned the company from a computer manufacturer into a consumer electronics group.

With the iTunes Music Store, Apple paved the way for its services division, which is becoming more important for the group every year.

Last quarter, it generated nearly $20 billion in revenue, a fifth of total revenue.

Apple does not break down how much, or rather how little, of this was generated with iPods.

The company's accountants will not find it difficult to say goodbye.

Apple's longtime marketing chief Phil Schiller, on the other hand, only last year described the iPod as a project of which he was particularly proud.

In the best marketing language, Schiller is quoted in Apple's press release on the iPod end as saying that "the spirit of the iPod" lives on in devices like the iPhone and the HomePod.

The iPod itself, however, will soon be history.

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Get through the week well - and listen to music at the same time.

Matthew Kremp