This week, Apple introduced that it’s discontinuing the iPod Touch, its final product with the “iPod” identify. More than 20 years after the unique iPod was introduced, and after over a decade within the shadow of the iPhone, it may be arduous to recollect simply how essential the system was to Apple. But the music participant helped outline the corporate we all know at the moment — and was a giant think about bringing it again from the brink of damage.

The story of Apple’s comeback has been instructed time and again to the purpose of turning into mythologized, so I’ll attempt to preserve it temporary. The Nineties weren’t sort to the corporate, virtually leaving it bankrupt. By the flip of the century, although, issues had been beginning to flip round: the iMac G3 was promoting properly, and Apple’s income was beginning to develop once more. But whereas the unique iMac stabilized Apple as an organization, Apple was still a niche player when it got here to the general client electronics market.

Enter the iPod. In October 2001, Steve Jobs introduced the now-iconic portable music player, which synced to your Mac over FireWire, and held 1,000 MP3 songs on a 5GB arduous drive. It wasn’t the primary transportable media participant, however certainly one of the iPod’s first commercials (which featured loads of dancing however no silhouettes) immediately confirmed why you’d need one: with only a few clicks, you could possibly take your pc’s music library on the go along with a tool that slot in your pocket.

iPod gross sales exploded over the subsequent few years as Apple launched extra fashions and added Windows assist. In 2002, Apple offered round 400,000 iPods, according to Statista. By 2006, Apple was selling 39 million of them a year. The iPod had rapidly outstripped the Mac by way of items offered, reaching a far wider viewers and, critically, making most people accustomed to Apple as an organization that makes merchandise you carry round in your pocket.

And the gross sales saved rising. According to Statista, the corporate would promote over 51 million in 2007. But that was the 12 months Apple launched its subsequent massive factor: the iPhone.

The iPod looms giant over the iPhone’s announcement — a lot in order that the first thing Steve Jobs says in regards to the smartphone is that it’s “a wide-screen iPod with touch controls.” It was an apt comparability, because the iPhone constructed on many ideas the iPod launched.

Let’s begin with the plain: when the iPhone first got here out, you had to sync it with iTunes to activate it and set it up. Jobs used that as a promoting level when introducing it, saying that iPod house owners would already know the right way to arrange their telephone and would possible have their knowledge already in iTunes. And after you set the telephone up, you’d see an app referred to as iPod on it — its icon depicting a traditional scrollwheel-adorned system.

Then there’s the App Store, which got here to outline the iPhone, regardless of not even being one of its original features. By the time it launched in 2008, Apple already had half a decade of expertise constructing and sustaining a digital storefront. It had launched the iTunes Music Store in 2003 as a method to buy digital music on your then-new third-gen iPod. And Apple started selling movies on iTunes in 2006 because it constructed out its infrastructure for the age of transportable media consumption. The iPhone was a revolution in some ways, however it’s arduous to think about what it could’ve seemed like with out the iPod.

Of course, the iPod doesn’t deserve credit score for all the things that the iPhone popularized. It had video games, however they weren’t certainly one of its predominant promoting factors till the iPod Touch. And regardless of Steve Jobs’ joke during the iPhone announcement, the clicking wheel was largely usurped by the touchscreen regardless of many individuals’s fond reminiscences of the enter system.

While the iPod would dwell on for years after the iPhone was launched (even the Nano and Shuffle held on for a few decade after iOS got here onto the scene), its days because the factor Apple was recognized for had been numbered. Apple’s gross sales report for iPods was in Q1 2009 — customers purchased 23 million of them. At the time, these would’ve been second-gen Shuffles, first and second-gen iPod Touches, fourth-gen Nanos, and the iPod Classic.

The iPod would by no means attain these heights once more. As iPhone gross sales took off like a rocket, fewer and fewer individuals purchased iPods. In 2010, the iPad (which Apple dreamed up as a touchscreen system before it came up with the idea for the iPhone) was launched. Within two years, it too was outselling the iPod at its peak. The iPod Touch was system in the event you needed an iPhone with out the telephone — however, for most individuals, the iPad match that mildew even higher.

The iPod’s significance at Apple continued to decrease over the subsequent decade. By 2015, Apple’s earnings studies lumped the iPod into an “Other Products” class with the Apple TV, Apple Watch, Beats, and “Apple-branded and third-party accessories.” The iPod Classic, the final within the line began by the unique iPod, was discontinued in 2014. The iPod Nano and Shuffle can be subsequent to go in 2017, and the iPod Touch lastly fell in 2022.

It’s arduous to think about that Apple offered many seventh-gen iPod Touches over the previous few years, however there are positive to be a minimum of just a few those who’ll miss it — after I went to my native Apple Store on Tuesday to purchase one, the staff instructed me I used to be removed from the primary individual to take action upon listening to the information that it was discontinued. Starting at $199 for a 32GB mannequin, it was the most affordable iOS system you could possibly purchase new from Apple. That honor now falls to the entry-level iPad, which begins at $329 for a 64GB mannequin. The Touch was additionally the final simply pocketable system that Apple offered with (say it with me now) a headphone jack.

While the iPod could also be no extra, its legacy lives on. You can draw loads of traces from the iPod lineup to what Apple’s doing efficiently at the moment — music remains to be a giant a part of its id, each with its streaming service and astoundingly popular AirPod lineup. Apple cherished video a lot it named an entire iPod model after it; now, it has Apple TV Plus, and markets the iPhone on its video prowess. And do not forget that time individuals had been sporting the sq. touchscreen iPod Nanos as a watch?

But whereas providers, wearables, and equipment are essential to Apple, the iPhone remains to be its greatest money-maker by far. That kind of success doesn’t come all the way down to anybody issue; it occurs because of a decade-plus-long sequence of excellent selections and stable advertising. But Apple might solely make the iPhone because of all of the momentum it constructed up within the 2000s — and lots of that occurred because of the chord it struck with the iPod.