Will Apple end iPod classic, shuffle?

Apple

The end of the iPod classic may be close at hand

By Athima Chansanchai

While the most highly anticipated news at next week's big Apple event revolves around the iPhone 5, its birth may also signal the death of two?signature products: the iPod classic and the iPod shuffle.

TUAW has "heard those two iPods are getting the axe this year."

We're a little skeptical given how the site says it's "been sitting on a tip for awhile until things came into greater focus," but didn't let the cat out of the bag until CNET started talking out loud about the possibility of the iPods' demise.

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Do you think Apple should discontinue the iPod classic and/or shuffle?

But, we can see where it may very well be the end of the line for the biggest and smallest of the iPod family.

After all, we're living in an all-in-one era where everyone wants less devices to carry around, not more. And with the introduction of the iPhone, people were able to get it. Who needed to carry an iPod and an iPhone? Apple's introduction of the iPhone was the beginning of the end for the iPod, at least in sales, and now the release of the latest iPhone could be the final deathblow.

Then?other phones like the BlackBerry and?Androids followed suit, with built-in music player apps. Then came cloud music platforms that also traveled on mobile devices, like Music Beta by Google and the Amazon Cloud player, as well as the streaming wonders of Pandora and Spotify.

(Fast Company gets into many more reasons why it may be time to euthanize not just the classic and the shuffle, but also the touch and nano.)

The end of the?MP3 player has been a long time coming. October is the 10th anniversary of the once mighty iPod, a digital jukebox that changed the way we listen to music and which also laid the grave for the CD player (which killed the portable cassette player, and so on). One million were sold by 2003. The iPod changed over the years, too, with colorful iterations in the iPod mini (2004) and the U2 Special Edition (2004). The fourth generation iPod was also introduced that year, with its then-all-the-rage Click Wheel and up to 40 GB of storage for $399. (The current iPod classic can hold 160 GB.) 2005 was a big year in the iPod world with the first white iPod shuffle, the nano and iPod with video.

Apple

The clip-on shuffle arrived in 2006 and the Nano multiplied in color. By this point, 88 million iPods had been sold.

The iPod Touch and iPhone came out in 2007, and the iPod, even with 141 million sold, ceased to be the It girl, with the iPhone taking over that role. The iPod classic came out in 2007, giving users mega song, picture and video storage for $349 (now it's $249).

In recent memory, iPods have incorporated touch screens, even at the mini level, with the iPod touch and nano, which probably aren't going away anytime soon.

As of September 2010, 257 million iPods had been sold.

Evolution is what it is, and if time's up for it, then maybe that's the natural order of things.?

But what about:

• Those who still like to go to the gym or run outside with that little shuffle, what of their plight? Snap them up while you can? Wait for the fire sale?
• Those who don't have an iPhone or another smartphone and like their dedicated device that has every album and song they've ever bought?
• Those who have a smartphone, but still prefer to carry an iPod classic when they travel, especially on long plane rides where turning on a phone for streaming access is not always an option, not to mention the battery suck of the players?

How attached are you to the iPod classic and/or shuffle? Take our poll, let us know.

More stories:

Savvy 12-year-old uses iPod to foil kidnapper
Apple to 'talk iPhone' on Oct. 4
Apple No. 1 in customer satisfaction for 8th year: report

Check out Technolog on?Facebook, and on Twitter, follow?Athima Chansanchai, who is also trying to keep her head above water in the?Google+?stream.

Source: http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/28/8012632-will-apple-end-ipod-classic-shuffle

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