Apple proudly introduced its iPhone 6 smartphones, Apple Pay, Apple Watch, iOS 8 and HealthKit on the day its iPod classic quietly faded away in tech extinction.
As the iPod Classic moved into antique territory, Apple didn't even say a formal goodbye. Once a flagship for the tech titan's line of media players, the original iPod was discretely de-listed form Apple's website.
The iPod Classic came into the world in October of 2001. It introduced the click wheel, an innovating approach for scrolling through tens of thousands of songs and videos on media players.
The Classic had an aluminum front, a chrome back and a big hard drive that brought countless hours of joy to music lovers the world over.
The iPod Classic is survived by the revamped iPod Touch, the iPhone, iPad, Ipod Shuffle and iPod Nano.
The iPod line has been on a steady decline, after sales of the products peaked at approximately 54.83 million units moved in 2008, according to reports from Statistica. In 2013, the entire iPod line move 26.38 million units.
Back in June of 2009, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said he expected his company's original lines of MP3 players to decline, due to Apple's integration of the products core features into new series.
"For traditional MP3 players, which includes Shuffle, Nano, and Classic, we saw a year-over-year decline which we internally had forecasted to occur," said Oppenheimer. "This is one of the original reasons we developed the iPhone and the iPod Touch. We expect our traditional MP3 players to decline over time as we cannibalize ourselves with the iPod Touch and the iPhone."
On a day as full of hope for the future as Apple's Sept. 9 media event, it shouldn't surprise many of the company's fans that it avoided damping the presentation with a eulogy of one of its most prolific products.
With the latest line of iPhones available in capacities of up to 128GB and the compact Apple Watch offering more functionality than both the Touch and Shuffle, Rob Enderle, analyst at Enderle Group Principal, indicated in an interview with Bezinga that Apple's incoming smart watch leaves even less space for its dying iPod line.
"[The Apple Watch is] basically an iPod Nano with a strap," Enderle said. "And we knew a couple years ago that there was a market for iPod Nanos with straps. People were wearing them a lot. Then they changed the design and you couldn't use them with straps anymore! Folks were disappointed."
