The iPod, which has had its own tab on the Apple.com web site’s homepage for over 13 years, today disappeared from Apple’s homepage and menu bar — replaced with and subordinated under a new Music button. iPod sales have been slipping for years, the result of both steadily increasing demand for iPhones and reduced support from Apple, which has left previously-introduced iPod hardware untouched and undermarketed. iPod shuffle, iPod nano, and iPod touch models remain available from Apple (and discounted elsewhere), but their de-emphasis suggests that Apple isn’t particularly concerned with promoting them to customers.
Music, a button primarily dedicated to the upcoming Apple Music service based on Beats Music, includes a small iPod section near the bottom of its tall, scrolling page. Clicking on the “Learn more about iPod” link takes you to the Apple.com/ipod section of the web site, notably including — for now — a link to the similarly under-the-radar Apple TV, which was reportedly slated to receive an update at WWDC up until the last minute.
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This is the end, beautiful friend
This is the end, my only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I’ll never look into your eyes, again
Nice poem. What’s it’s title….
“The End” by the Doors from their 1967 album “The Doors”.
iWhat?
It’s a bit sad, but hard to avoid that the iPod line is really for children, or the in the case of the Shuffle, for the quite elderly as well. For every type of iPod, there’s now a better non-iPod choice…
The iPhone doesn’t update my smart playlists until it’s synced with my Mac, and never has. That is the only thing I still use an iPod Classic for.
It’s silly and to be blunt, stupid, to buy a iPod or iPod touch. Last week you could have gotten a Verizon Moto G for $25 and Best buy would give you $25 back in the form of rewards making the phone free. And the week before that the phone was $20. I’m using it as a GPS unit for my motorcycle and it actually grown on me because it’s near stock Android.
It would be smarter to hand down old iPhones to your kids if they need to stay in the iOS ecosystem. And with Apple’s new music service working with Android phones Apple should forget about these devices.
That Moto G was $25 since you go on a contract. Verizon subsidizes the price of the phone to lure people into their service or continue it. You need to realize if you buy that phone full cost, you’d pay well over $450.
My 10-year old daughter bought an iPod Touch 5 with her pocket money for 100 euro last year. Now she is selling it for 100 euro this year in order to buy the same thing with back camera for 20 euro more.
So yes I think iPod Touch is for kids who can’t afford an iPad. But it is a fantastic deal for them.
iPod sounds a lot like “walkman” to me now.
I actually just bought an iPod Nano for my wife for working out. I use an old Nano that is probably 6 years old in my workouts. I still find the iPhone to big to strap to my arm or hang from my waist. It does one thing and one thing well and has worked well from the get go.
So are they getting rid of the ipod completely? I just like the nanos. The square one was damn near water proof.
I love my iPods…would be awesome if Apple Music was able to be synced to them…
A bit of a bummer to see the iPods going to the wayside. I much prefer to have an iPod loaded with my music for in my car than to hook up my iPhone for music use in the car. A) I don’t need to take up space on my iPhone with music and B) I don’t have to use any of my data streaming music.
iPods are invaluable if you have children and never want to have to worry about any unexpected charges at the end of the month. They only operate on wifi – that’s hugely reassuring if you don’t want to be hit with data charges.
An iPad mini does the same. Given the proximity of prices between an iPod Touch and an iPad mini, I’d much rather get my kids the iPad. The bigger screen means they’re much happier with it too.
Or maybe we don’t want our children glued to yet more expensive screens.
Children are not the only ones who use iPods.
Of interest, this means that the AppleTV is also buried far deep into the website. I’m sure this will change if they ever get around to introducing the new AppleTV but it does give me an uneasy feeling about the future of TV.
Click on store and a sub menu will open and to the right of the Shop For Ipod icon is Shop Apple TV
When you click on Store at the top a sub menu will show the iPod’s.
probably apple wants you to focus on devices that have lte/4g connection so you are able to purchase their streaming subscription, example apple music
I have a hunch (and it may be purely foolish optimism) that Apple is going to introduce a new line of premium iPods that will play all high-resolution formats, similar to Pono, FiiO, iBasso and others. There is growing demand for music players that can deliver so-called CD-quality sound, and Apple would be the perfect fit for delivering these devices–especially to promote Apple Music. If it happens, I would expect the announcement to come late summer.
I think most are actually looking for Studio Quality and not CD, because even CD lacked the quality of many vinyl records. There is a company that has came out with software that does give the listen the studio master sound.
I for one love the iPod. Yes it may be a bit antiquated but with what other device can you carry your entire (almost) music collection and play it without connectivity or streaming costs. I would love it if they would bring back the classic in a non hard drive form without all the connectivity and apps…but then again, Im a dinosaur…
I’m with you, Gregg. I bought my first iPhone last fall mainly because I knew, or had a feeling that the iPods were on their way out. I’ve owned the iPod Classic, and every version of the iPod Touch. I absolutely loved them. But to have to spend nearly $1000 for an off contract iPhone just to listen to music seemed ridiculous to me. But finally I had no choice as there’d been no new iPod Touch’s in a few years so the writing was on the wall. Now don’t get me wrong, I love my iPhone 6. It’s the best phone I’ve ever owned, but I miss my iPod Touch 5.
Hmm… this brings up an interesting question: Connected devices in the i* families can access Apple Music to both stream and listen to songs offline.
What of the non-connected, or occasionally-connected devices, like the iPod Classic or Nano? As an Apple Music subscriber, will I be able to download playlists to my old Classic that I keep in my car? That feature alone would be a Spotify-killer for me, personally, since playing over the direct connection in my car both sounds better than bluetooth and doesn’t eat phone batteries. Will I be able to fill a Nano up with workout playlists generated from Apple Music, or will I have to buy all of those tracks if I want them on my portable gear? What about the Watch, for that matter?
I agree and has been the bane of my running life for a year now. I hate taking my iphone – its too big – and cant find anything small and easy to load spotify on. Even went down the road of buying old tiny not so smart phones but new spotify doesn’t work on old android. Hallelulah! apple music downloaded onto a nano would be perfect! but the more I look at it the more it feels like it will be on ipod touch but you wont be able to get on nano. The only thing I can think of is that they don’t want it on nano because its not linked to something that they can delete if you stop subscribing? Well that’s why I thought spotify wouldn’t go on a nano, but apple will still have my apple id wont they – they might not be able to delete my playlists until I plug into the computer but I could basically never update them if that was the case, still might be enough for them to block … oh its so annoying
Why would anybody want a phone to just play games and music? Why would I want a phone with a data contract that would cost 100.00 or more a month? I have a tracfone that costs me less that $8.00 a month if i need it, I can text on it if I have to when there is no wifi, which is very rarely. Everyone texts now mostly and I can do that with wifi mostly and free! More and more places are offering free wifi…heck they are putting it in cars! although that may not be free, unless it is your friends car :) I wouldn’t want to carry an iPad or even an iPad mini for a run or walk to listen to music….I take photos with my iPod, I think it looks really dumb when people take out an iPad of any size to take a picture! Try to fit an IPad in a purse or pocket to take everywhere like I do with my current iPod touch. I want a new iPod touch, probably like millions of other people and I am not a kid. But most of all I would like Apple to just let us know……is it gonna be or not!
I still use my first generation iPod Touch, though pretty much just for music. It’s very thin and light, and holds quite a bit of music. The battery has also held up well, though it is docked a lot of the time.
I had a first generation iPod with a click wheel (10GB) that was stolen years ago, and 5th generation 60GB model that I bough to replace the first one. Handed that down to one of my sons when I got the Touch, and he used it for years until we gave him the first iPad for his 13th birthday.
My wife bought me a iPhone 5 a couple years ago which became my main music portable, until I traded it in for a 6, (and made $15 on the trade in). (A have a few old android phones laying around, but I never used them for music much. I would alway use the Touch for portable music.)
The Touch still is a little jewel.
i even forget where did i put my ipod touch since i have my iphone.
I really hope the don’t stop making ipods because I love my touch. The cost of buying and ipod and cheaper phone is in my opinion cheaper than having an iPhone, but thats just my opinion. I have 16 GB of music and thats not even a huge amount compared to what some other people have, I 64GB iPhone would barely make it. I see some people saying that you can just use iPads and while you can, I like that I can slip my iPod into my back pocket you cant do that with an Ipad mini so I really hope they think the iPhone or Ipad is an appropriate substitute for the Ipod.
I miss the old IPOD video since i don’t need to pull it our from my pocket if i wish to change the music. And it has a lot of memory capacity unlike now you have to pay almost $399 for 128 GB? no way the old ipod video with the highest GB cost not even half of that.
See and I think it’s kinda sad that they are doing this. To me ipod is a great thing if you use it at the gym, and work. It seems that in most of these places the cell service no matter who you are with, what phone you have, sucks. It’s sad that after what I think may be the nearly 5 to 6 years that lte has been out, not to mention how long 3g has been out that no one provider has figured out a way to make a cell service reach within these places so the battery doesn’t drain so fast. Even these improvements, and low battery modes do nothing to improve this for me since I still manage to get 3g or less in most places and these newer phones are not built to use the weaker signals anymore without a massive powerdrain. Maybe one day they’ll fix it but until then I’ll get a ipod, and perferably a ipod classic second from someone since those would be able to store my massive music collection I never have time to finetune, and improve(I’m still missing a ton of albums from artists and most of their older stuff…)
This really depresses me, now that the A10 chip set is out in the world the poor ipod touch is just left to die, i cant stand the iphone, but i love the ipod :(