The iPod Classic has finished playing its final song.
The iPod Classic, the MP3 player that started it all for Apple, will no longer be part of the lineup of sleek, sexy products coming out of Cupertino starting Sept. 9, the same day Apple unveiled its hotly anticipated iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and the Apple Watch. Users bid farewell to their favorite old music player nearly 13 years after Apple brought forth the iPod Classic on Oct. 23, 2001.
Apple's online store was taken down early Tuesday morning for a makeover that included separate pages for Apple's newest devices. When the website went back up shortly after, the iPod Classic with its 160 GB of storage was no longer available.
While the Walkman was responsible for spurring the first music revolution in the 1980s, the iPod Classic was the product that allowed Apple and other technology leaders to reinvent the MP3 player and the cell phone, which also opened the doors to new product categories such as tablets and smart watches.
The death knell for the iPod Classic has been sounding for a few years now. The last time it was updated was with the introduction of the sixth-generation iPod in 2009, which replaced the iconic white iPod with aluminum versions in black and silver. Apple also began introducing the-then iPod as the iPod Classic in line with the introduction of the first iPod Touch, which has pretty much all the features of the iPhone save for its cellular capabilities and a number of newer features such as Touch ID and Apple Pay.
The first iPod Classic was marketed as being able to put "1,000 songs in your pocket." Now, with its last iteration, the music player offered hard drives that can contain up to 80 GB or 160 GB of audio and video, a long way from its 10-GB days. However, with Apple introducing the iPhone 6 with an option for a 128-GB solid-state drive, the company must find the iPod Classic a redundant product.
But in 2003, the iPod made huge waves with its first major redesign. At that time, Apple introduced the 30-pin connector that it was going to use with all of its devices until the Lightning connector came along. The next year, Apple made another hit with the fourth-generation iPod sporting the iconic clickwheel, a ring of touch-sensitive buttons that is now irrelevant with the prevalence of touchscreen devices. The fifth iPod was the first iPod to support video playback. The last accounted for the 54.83 million iPod units sold during the MP3 player's peak in 2009.
Along with the iPod Classic, Apple also cut the lifeline for the iPhone 4S on Tuesday, which means the company has stopped offering 30-pin devices in its stores in the United States, although a number of third-party stores will likely continue to offer the products at lower prices. Remaining player options include the shuffle (2 GB), nano (16 GB) and touch (32 GB or 64 GB).
