Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

I do not know when, the Internet quietly set off a trend of retro digital. People have dug up more than ten or two decades of popular equipment, listening to vinyl records, holding NDS games, looking for a sense of ritual. For Xiao Lei, Apple's discontinued iPod has a different meaning.

IPod was once one of Apple's most important product lines, and iPod profoundly changed the music industry before iPhone changed the smartphone market. In the process of development, iPod has derived a number of product lines, in addition to audio playback, but also extends the tentacles to video, pictures, applications and other fields.

How did iPod withdraw from the stage of history? Do we need another iPod on this day in 2023?

How does iPod, as a music player, change the world? Listening to music can be said to be the rigid demand of human beings for thousands of years. In order to listen to music more conveniently, people have made too many efforts. With the development of technology, the audio equipment we use is also constantly changing. Radios, vinyl record players, portable CD players, tape players and so on were all popular music players. The original iPod released in 2001 has epoch-making significance.

The original iPod is light and compact, equipped with a screen, physical buttons and rollers, making it easy to operate. Even more shocking to users at the time was the high capacity of its 5GB, which was particularly extravagant in 2001, so Apple stuffed a small hard drive.

(image source wikipedia) however, it was not uncommon for MP3 to store and play digital audio at that time. If iPod wins in terms of shape and configuration, it's just a high-end version of MP3. But two years later, Apple used its trump card, and the iTunes came online. This difficult-to-use software, which was later reviled by countless fruit fans, was groundbreaking at that time.

Apple persuaded music rights companies to sell songs on iTunes. Users can buy a single song for $0.99 each, which is much cheaper than the traditional model of packing and buying an album, allowing a large number of pirated users to fall into the arms of genuine copies. When users can easily buy music, Apple and music companies have become beneficiaries, making a lot of money from iTunes. When iTunes launched that year, it sold 1 million songs in less than a week.

(picture Source MacRumors) as smartphone users, today, the way iTunes is used is very cumbersome and anti-human. However, 20 years ago, when the mobile network was still underdeveloped, PC was still the core Internet equipment. It was convenient and efficient to download and manage music files through iTunes on the PC side, and then synchronize them to iPod.

IPod successfully tied hardware to content, upending the entire music industry, and Apple continues to be the number one brand in the Walkman market.

IPod forms are diversified, and after the great success of cheap iPhoneiPod, the product line is constantly updated. In 2005, the first iPod with a color screen appeared, and then Apple released an iPod that could play videos. The subsequent birth of iPod classic, with its super-large capacity (maximum 160GB), exquisite design, aluminum alloy shell and attracted countless people. IPod classic can be called a masterpiece of music Walkman equipment, focusing on high-end positioning.

(photo Source Apple) the iPod shuffle that Xiao Lei bought that year is the lowest-end model, which has no screen, can only rely on physical buttons to select songs, and the charging port and data port are even shared with the headphone Jack. However, the price of this product is also relatively low, and only about 20 grams, the size is extremely small.

The iPod series also introduces iPod mini and iPod nano product lines, which are smaller in appearance, but the basic hardware design is still a combination of screen and physical buttons. However, the appearance of the iPod nano 6 released in 2010 has changed so much that it has cut off the original physical keys and turned the front into a rectangular capacitive screen that supports touch. Many users fitted the iPod nano 6 with a watch strap and turned it into an electronic watch, which inspired the later Apple Watch.

(image source wikipedia) the appearance of iPod nano 7 released in 2012 was updated again, with a rectangular screen and a Home key. Obviously, after the great success of iPhone, the design elements of iPhone have gradually infiltrated into iPod products.

More than a decade ago, iPhone overturned the entire mobile phone industry, but Apple could not swallow such a huge mobile phone market at once. In order to make more people feel the charm of iPhone and iOS at lower prices, Apple has directly expanded a new product line, iPod Touch, in the iPod series.

(Tuyuan Apple) in fact, from the current point of view, iPod Touch has less to do with the original iPod series, more like iPhone castrated with honeycomb function. In the case of iPod touch 4, which was released in 2010, its processor, screen and system are basically the same as iPhone 4, and the price of just over 1000 yuan gives it a price-to-performance advantage compared with iPhone 4.

Moreover, at that time, third-party manufacturers developed the "Apple skin" mobile phone case, which could make a phone call after putting it on the iPod touch, which became a cheap iPhone solution.

Complete its historic mission, iPod ushered in the end of the chapter in 2009, Apple released the last-generation iPod classic and removed it from the website in 2014; in 2012, the last-generation iPod nano was released, which was discontinued by Apple after 2017; and in 2019, the last-generation iPod touch was released and stopped selling in 2022.

No doubt it was the smartphone that killed iPod. As an unprecedented highly integrated smart device, mobile phones kill too many products, such as radios, MP3, PDA, MP4, alarm clocks. None of them can escape from its claws. After the widespread popularity of smartphones and Apple becoming the dominant player in the mobile phone industry, iPod has fulfilled its historical mission.

The business model on iPod has been carried forward on iPhone. Users can not only buy audio content on iPhone, but also download vast amounts of third-party App to pay for games, tools, movies and other richer content. It is no exaggeration to say that the years of accumulation of the iPod series have laid the foundation for iPhone's success. Of course, compared with the classical buyout system, Apple and other manufacturers now prefer subscription systems that allow users to pay on time, and streaming is becoming popular.

For now, iPod products represent the Apple characteristics of the Jobs era: excellence in products, amazing design and interactive UI, bold innovation, experimenting with new elements such as physical wheels and multi-touch, and focusing on the user experience to ensure the supply of content with a closed ecology of hardware and software.

But the iPod is after all the product of the pre-smartphone era, is it necessary for us to buy and use an iPod today in 2023?

For different people, there may be different answers. From a pragmatic point of view, iPod is obviously not a product that adapts to the times, and its core advantage may be focus. Like Kindle's main reading scene, many models of iPod almost only have the core function of listening to music, which eliminates the interference of listening to music immersively, and does have an advantage over mobile iPod.

However, there is still no lack of professional music playback equipment in the market, and there are music enthusiasts of a certain scale behind it. Compared with iPod, they have better sound quality and more playability. If you take into account that iPod has been discontinued, the lack of reliable purchase channels and warranty services, then iPod is even more unsuitable for novice users to buy.

(Tuyuan Meizu) of course, people who are willing to buy iPod today are more likely to be nostalgic than because of the remaining product value of iPod. What they remember is not only the iPod, which is all the rage for a time, but also their own green days and nostalgia for the old days that will never return. IPod, which was very popular at that time, became a symbol of that period. Take out the iPod, put on headphones and return to yesterday's world with familiar melodies, which may be the ultimate meaning of iPod to them.

(the picture is from Pixabay)

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: Xiao Lei Bei (ID:xiaoleibbb), author: Chongjia

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