Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Be there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive reducer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and how the tech are Young. Now, Normally on a Wednesday,
Speaker 1: I would attempt to bring to you a tech Stuff
Speaker 1: Tidbits episode, which is ostensibly supposed to be a shorter episode,
Speaker 1: but we all know how that goes when you got
Speaker 1: chatty Cathy over here yapping into the microphone. But today
Speaker 1: I'm just going to abandon all hope of this being
Speaker 1: tid bit ish. And that's because yesterday that being made
Speaker 1: tenth two thousand twenty two, Apple brought an end to
Speaker 1: an era. The company announced that it was discontinuing the
Speaker 1: iPod Touch, which is the last model in the iPod
Speaker 1: line to be made. All the others have already been retired.
Speaker 1: So the iPod was a transformational technology, and now iPod
Speaker 1: as a brand is going away. In fact, we get
Speaker 1: the term podcasting from the iPod. Now, the iPod was
Speaker 1: not the first MP three player, but it was the
Speaker 1: model that brought that technology into the mainstream. And moreover,
Speaker 1: the iPod played a pivotal role in turning Apple's fortunes around.
Speaker 1: It's pretty easy for us to forget these days that
Speaker 1: just a couple of decades ago, the multi trillion dollar
Speaker 1: company that is Apple today back then was on the
Speaker 1: verge of collapse. So I thought we could do a
Speaker 1: quick rundown of the history of the iPod and why
Speaker 1: I argue it is one of the most important technologies
Speaker 1: to emerge, specifically for me to get real selfish and
Speaker 1: egotistical about it, but one of the most technologies to
Speaker 1: emerge over the last couple of decades. Uh. And I
Speaker 1: think this dovetails nicely with Monday's episode about dr M disasters.
Speaker 1: In that episode, I talked about how Apple, under pressure
Speaker 1: from music labels, included DRM or digital rights management on
Speaker 1: digital files, that is, songs and albums that it sold
Speaker 1: through its iTunes music store. A few years later, Apple
Speaker 1: would be the company that was able to dictate its
Speaker 1: own terms because the tables had turned. And that's how
Speaker 1: much things changed in just a few years. The glove
Speaker 1: was on the other foot. I might be getting turned around. Anyway.
Speaker 1: Let's let's roll back the clock a bit. As I said,
Speaker 1: the iPod was not the first MP three player, and
Speaker 1: it definitely wasn't the first digital music player. There was
Speaker 1: a British inventor named Kane Kramer who came up with
Speaker 1: the idea for a digital music player way back in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen seventies. He filed a patent for his design,
Speaker 1: which he called the I X I or X or
Speaker 1: maybe it's supposed to be Roman numerals, but anyway, he
Speaker 1: he filed a patent for it in ninete and he
Speaker 1: received a patent in Because these things take time, that
Speaker 1: that device was capable of holding about three and a
Speaker 1: half minutes of audio, which would be about one and
Speaker 1: a half Ramons songs or the bit in a meat
Speaker 1: Loaf song just before meat Loaf starts to sing. Anyway,
Speaker 1: three and a half minutes is hardly useful. Digital audio
Speaker 1: files were really big and storage was really limited. That
Speaker 1: combo just meant that the digital audio player technology wasn't
Speaker 1: quite ready for prime time, which is putting it lightly.
Speaker 1: Skip ahead to the early nineteen nineties and the emergence
Speaker 1: of the MP three file format. I did a whole
Speaker 1: episode about the creation and evolution of MP three's, so
Speaker 1: this is just going to be a short version of
Speaker 1: that story. So the MP three format could compress audio
Speaker 1: files down to a more manageable size. The format does
Speaker 1: this by getting rid of information that's in the file. Ideally,
Speaker 1: it's information that doesn't impact the experience of listening to
Speaker 1: the audio. There's an entire psycho acoustic side to the
Speaker 1: MP three technology that's all about determining what would be
Speaker 1: perceivable or perceptible and what would not, and you just
Speaker 1: get rid of all the stuff that isn't. The idea
Speaker 1: being that if a human is incapable of hearing a
Speaker 1: particular sound, there's no reason to include that information in
Speaker 1: the compressed file. Now, of course, you can encode m
Speaker 1: P three's so that they are more or less aggressive
Speaker 1: in their approach to compressing file sizes. The more aggressive
Speaker 1: you get, the smaller the compressed file will be, but
Speaker 1: the worst it will sound. So this is a lossy
Speaker 1: file format. But if you go easy with your compression,
Speaker 1: then the file size it won't shrink down as much,
Speaker 1: but the fidelity the quality of the audio will be better. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the MP three format made audio files more practical for
Speaker 1: you know, the average person, like whether you wanted to
Speaker 1: just have them on your computer or potentially transfer them,
Speaker 1: say over the internet, by the late nineties, there were
Speaker 1: a couple of companies that were experimenting with digital audio
Speaker 1: players that could play MP three files. See before that
Speaker 1: the really the only way to enjoy MP three's was
Speaker 1: to listen to them on a computer. Eventually, you did
Speaker 1: have some CD player manufacturers that started to produce compact
Speaker 1: disc players that could read MP three compact discs. So
Speaker 1: in those cases, you could burn a CD with you know,
Speaker 1: more than a hundred songs on it in MP three format,
Speaker 1: so they're not being burned in the the the raw
Speaker 1: audio files that you would use to digitally imprint CDs. Instead,
Speaker 1: you're you're just burning MP three files to the CD.
Speaker 1: But those weren't commonplace, and there certainly weren't very many
Speaker 1: portable solutions around until the two thousand's, so it just
Speaker 1: was not a very convenient form factor yet. Then you
Speaker 1: had a couple of companies like Elgar Labs that started
Speaker 1: to introduce digital audio players that could play m P three's.
Speaker 1: Uh the Elgar Labs one was the mp man F ten.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing they were kind of naming their products so
Speaker 1: it was kind of similar to Sony's Walkman trademark, and
Speaker 1: the F ten had thirty two whole megabytes of memory,
Speaker 1: and it cost two hundred fifty dollars. There was also
Speaker 1: the Diamond Rio p MP three hundred, which was more popular.
Speaker 1: It also only had thirty two megabytes of storage. It
Speaker 1: hit the market not long after the F ten did.
Speaker 1: And please keep in mind that these play years didn't
Speaker 1: have native connectivity on them. You could not download music
Speaker 1: directly to the device. You could not stream anything to
Speaker 1: the device. Instead, you would have to use software on
Speaker 1: your computer to manage your music library. Then you would
Speaker 1: transfer songs from your computer to your MP three player
Speaker 1: using a physical cable that connected the two. This would
Speaker 1: be true for early iPods as well, In fact, true
Speaker 1: for everything up to and including the iPod Touch, at
Speaker 1: least in the early stages. The p MP three in
Speaker 1: particular helped start to churn up interest in the MP
Speaker 1: three format, right Like, there were geeks like me who
Speaker 1: were interested in MP three's back then. But once you
Speaker 1: got to a player that could actually store and play
Speaker 1: that stuff on its own and you could carry it
Speaker 1: around with you, that's when MP three's really started to
Speaker 1: gain some traction. That's also when the music industry really
Speaker 1: got involved. The recording Industry Association of America or r
Speaker 1: I double A sued real Port, which was in charge
Speaker 1: of making RIO and the software used to manage the RIO,
Speaker 1: because there was a general fear that folks would start
Speaker 1: buying compact discs, rip music from the c d s,
Speaker 1: and then share that music online without you know, everyone
Speaker 1: going through the proper process of forking cash over to
Speaker 1: the music labels, and the r I double A lost
Speaker 1: that lawsuit. The court said, no, the existence of this
Speaker 1: saying does not automatically mean what you say. It means.
Speaker 1: They're certainly not liable for people taking that that path.
Speaker 1: People might, but it's not the fault of the company
Speaker 1: for that, and MP three players and the software needed
Speaker 1: to transfer music from PCs two MP three players were
Speaker 1: deemed to be totally legal. It turned out the r
Speaker 1: I double A was kind of on point with its fears,
Speaker 1: even if it didn't have legal grounds to stop in
Speaker 1: P three players, because people did start to share music online,
Speaker 1: and then once the peer to peer network technology began
Speaker 1: to emerge, it really took off. It became pretty easy
Speaker 1: to distribute music files across lots of computers. So this
Speaker 1: was the birth of napster. In n and the music
Speaker 1: labels went banana. A downturn and media sales sent a
Speaker 1: shock way through the music industry, and they went nuclear
Speaker 1: on Napster and its users. Now on the MP three
Speaker 1: player side, developments began to push the technology forward. The
Speaker 1: remote solutions Personal jukebox MP three player did a big
Speaker 1: leap frog over earlier devices because it actually included a
Speaker 1: small hard drive from a laptop as its storage device,
Speaker 1: and that pushed the jukebox's capacity to four point eight gigabytes,
Speaker 1: which was leagues better than that thirty two megabyte limitation
Speaker 1: of the earliest MP three players. But generally speaking, these
Speaker 1: MP three players were bulky, They were not really attractive.
Speaker 1: The ones with hard drives were also very heavy and
Speaker 1: delicate because hard drives have moving mechanical components and if
Speaker 1: you were to say, drop your MP three player, you
Speaker 1: could damage those mechanical components and it wouldn't work anymore.
Speaker 1: And again, they weren't really stylish and they were really expensive.
Speaker 1: But Steve Jobs had an idea to change all that.
Speaker 1: I'll explain more when we come back after this quick break. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I had set the stage for the early days
Speaker 1: of the MP three player Steve Jobs was in charge
Speaker 1: of Apple at this time, and you know he had
Speaker 1: been a co founder of Apple. He essentially got for
Speaker 1: style of the company, or essentially pushed aside enough so
Speaker 1: that he left the company all depends on which account
Speaker 1: you listened to, then ultimately came back to rescue the
Speaker 1: company when it was on the verge of financial collapse.
Speaker 1: He saw the potential of the MP three player space,
Speaker 1: but the devices on the market lacked style, they lacked utility.
Speaker 1: No one was knocking it out of the park. The
Speaker 1: existing ones were just too big and bulky, and they
Speaker 1: were too ugly. And there were early adopter types who
Speaker 1: met the Venn diagram overlap of computer nerd and music
Speaker 1: nerd who were buying some of those early MP three players,
Speaker 1: But most MP three players just weren't user friendly enough
Speaker 1: or attractive enough to hit mainstream success. So Jobs goes
Speaker 1: to his senior VP of Industrial Design, Johnny I've, who
Speaker 1: was not yet a knight of the realm at this time.
Speaker 1: He is Sir Jonathan I've now, and Jobs laid out
Speaker 1: what he wanted. He wanted definitive MP three player that
Speaker 1: the average person would want to buy. It had to attractive,
Speaker 1: it had to be useful, it had to hold enough
Speaker 1: music to make it worthwhile, and this could really be
Speaker 1: Apple's next big thing. It took Johnny i'ves team a
Speaker 1: little less than a year to design, prototype, and finalize
Speaker 1: the first iPod, which Jobs himself with debut to a
Speaker 1: small crowd on October twenty three, two thousand one, and
Speaker 1: Jobs knew he had to win some skeptics over because
Speaker 1: this was a brand new business that Apple was getting into.
Speaker 1: So before unveiling the device itself, he explained that Apple
Speaker 1: was getting into this industry because quote, music is a
Speaker 1: part of everyone's life end quote. He made a business
Speaker 1: case for Apple to get into the MP three player business.
Speaker 1: He said, it's not a speculative business. This isn't something
Speaker 1: where we're placing a bet. This is a sure thing.
Speaker 1: Music is important for everyone, and so all he had
Speaker 1: to do is in at the history of the music
Speaker 1: industry and say there's your proof. So he was really
Speaker 1: dismantling criticisms before they could even be formed, which was
Speaker 1: pretty genius. He was also, by the way, totally right.
Speaker 1: So Jobs argued that there was no established leader in
Speaker 1: the digital music player space. He called out a couple
Speaker 1: of companies. He called out Creative, which made a model
Speaker 1: called the Zen. Actually owned a Creative Zen way back
Speaker 1: in the day, and he said, well, that one has
Speaker 1: had some success, but still a very small company. It
Speaker 1: can't produce these things at scale. Then you had Sony,
Speaker 1: which was a very very large company, but it had
Speaker 1: failed to produce a device that was a hit with consumers.
Speaker 1: So Jobs was saying this gave Apple the opportunity to
Speaker 1: swoop in and take the lead spot in a blossoming market.
Speaker 1: And he said that the iPod, the new Apple music device,
Speaker 1: could play the four most popular digital formats for music
Speaker 1: at the time, which were MP three, MP three VBR,
Speaker 1: Wave or w A V and ai F F H.
Speaker 1: The wave and ai F formats were for uncompressed audio,
Speaker 1: wave being essentially developed for Microsoft machines, and ai F
Speaker 1: being an Apple development. That means you you end up
Speaker 1: with better sound quality, but the file sizes are much larger,
Speaker 1: so you're able to store fewer files on your device. Now.
Speaker 1: The original iPod featured a digital screen and had a
Speaker 1: mechanical wheel to scroll through options and song choices. That
Speaker 1: mechanical wheel was flush with the front of the the
Speaker 1: iPods face so in other words, you would put your
Speaker 1: thumb on the surface of this wheel and rotate the
Speaker 1: wheel around in order to scroll through a menu or
Speaker 1: through your music's collection. It had a five gigabyte hard drive,
Speaker 1: which Job said was capable of holding up to one
Speaker 1: thou and songs, although he said like for most people,
Speaker 1: that would be their entire music library, so you could
Speaker 1: just have your whole library in your pocket. He also
Speaker 1: said those one thousand songs could be encoded at a
Speaker 1: bit rate of a hundred sixty kilobits. The hard drive
Speaker 1: in the original iPod had a platter that measured just
Speaker 1: one point eight inches in diameter and was point two
Speaker 1: inches thick, so very very thin. The iPod itself measured
Speaker 1: four inches tall, two point four inches wide, and was
Speaker 1: point seven eight inches thick. It was, as Jobs put it,
Speaker 1: the size of a deck of cards. Now I realized
Speaker 1: I mentioned just a second ago bit rate and I
Speaker 1: didn't really clarify what that was. But I do plan
Speaker 1: on doing a Tidbits episode in the near future to
Speaker 1: explain sample rate and bit rate for digital audio. Those
Speaker 1: two factors play an important part in how large an
Speaker 1: audio file is and the audio quality of that file.
Speaker 1: But I didn't want to take up all of this
Speaker 1: episode to talk about it, so let's get back to
Speaker 1: the iPod now. To connect the iPod to a computer,
Speaker 1: which originally was just limited to Mac computers, Apple built
Speaker 1: in a FireWire port on the iPod. Jobs said it
Speaker 1: would take ten seconds to load a CDs worth of
Speaker 1: music onto the iPod, compared to five minutes if you
Speaker 1: were using an old USB cable between a computer and
Speaker 1: an MP three player. He also said it could take
Speaker 1: up to ten minutes to transfer the full one thousand
Speaker 1: songs to an iPod, but it would take five hours
Speaker 1: if you wanted to do the same with USB, so
Speaker 1: he was really touting the superiority of FireWire over USB
Speaker 1: at the time. Jobs also said that the iPods battery
Speaker 1: would supply ten hours of continuous play, and that it
Speaker 1: would have fast charge capability to regain eighty percent of
Speaker 1: its capacity in one hour of charging, and that the
Speaker 1: FireWire cable would provide not just data transfer, but also
Speaker 1: provide power, so you could plug your iPod into your
Speaker 1: computer using the FireWire cable and you could charge your
Speaker 1: iPod while you're also transferring music to it, and all
Speaker 1: this for the low, low price of three dollars. If
Speaker 1: we were to adjust for inflation today, that would be
Speaker 1: about the same as six hundred fifty bucks yells them. Now,
Speaker 1: by the time Apple unveiled the iPod, the company had
Speaker 1: already launched iTunes. They launched iTunes at the beginning of
Speaker 1: two thousand one, and the iPod was announced in October
Speaker 1: of that year. Now, at that time, iTunes was strictly
Speaker 1: a digital music management program. You could put a CD
Speaker 1: into a Mac and you could rip music from that
Speaker 1: c D and make digital files of it and use
Speaker 1: iTunes to organize your music collection, but it would live
Speaker 1: on your computer. iTunes would then become the software component
Speaker 1: to manage iPods, at least on max, and connecting an
Speaker 1: iPod to your computer with iTunes would allow for automatic synchronization.
Speaker 1: So if you had added new music to your computer, well,
Speaker 1: the next time you plug your iPod in, those new
Speaker 1: tracks could transition seamlessly to your iPod, so you'd have
Speaker 1: them ready for when you're on the go. The iPod
Speaker 1: was a pretty big departure for Apple, and it was
Speaker 1: a success. You know, Apple had experimented with some uh
Speaker 1: consumer electronics outside of computers a bit in the past
Speaker 1: and had had let's say, mixed success. The Newton is
Speaker 1: a an infamous flop for Apple, right, but the iPod
Speaker 1: was not a flop, and the following year, in two
Speaker 1: thousand two, Apple updated the iPod. It would ultimately offer
Speaker 1: two models of the iPod, one that had a ten
Speaker 1: gigabyte hard drive, so twice of the size of the original,
Speaker 1: and the second would have a twenty gigabyte hard drive.
Speaker 1: They also replaced the old mechanical scroll wheel, so you
Speaker 1: no longer had a wheel that you could physically turn
Speaker 1: around on the face of this iPod, and they replaced
Speaker 1: it with a capacitive sensing touch wheel, so kind of
Speaker 1: like a touch screen in a sense, except it wasn't
Speaker 1: a screen. It was just this round, rounded section of
Speaker 1: the surface of the iPod, so you are no longer
Speaker 1: physically turning a wheel to scroll through stuff. The new
Speaker 1: iPods were also compatible with Windows PCs, which dramatically expanded
Speaker 1: the potential customer base for Apple in the process. Now,
Speaker 1: at the time, there was no iTunes for PC for
Speaker 1: for Windows, so PC users had to rely on software
Speaker 1: called Music Match Jukebox in order to organize their music
Speaker 1: collections and send music over to their iPods. The new
Speaker 1: iPod also had a thirty pin dock connector, and then
Speaker 1: you could use a dock that had FireWire or a
Speaker 1: dock that had USB. That was good because FireWire was
Speaker 1: pretty much unheard of on Windows PCs. There were some
Speaker 1: that had FireWire reports, but it was not a standard.
Speaker 1: It was far more common to run into USB connections.
Speaker 1: In two thousand three, Apple introduced iTunes for Windows and
Speaker 1: thus migrated away from Music Match, Jukebox and UM. iTunes
Speaker 1: for Windows was pants, meaning it was not good, at
Speaker 1: least in my opinion, at least back in those days.
Speaker 1: It felt bloated and unwieldy. It had massive processor demands.
Speaker 1: It took up too much of your computer memory. At
Speaker 1: least in my experience, I really didn't like using it.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I would have felt differently if I had
Speaker 1: owned a Mac computer instead of a Windows PC, but
Speaker 1: on Windows it was a shore. Oh. In two thousand
Speaker 1: three was also when Apple launched the iTunes music store,
Speaker 1: that that you could actually purchase digital music directly from Apple,
Speaker 1: rather than rip it from c D s uh. That
Speaker 1: was the other way you could really get music. There
Speaker 1: were some other independent and and studio owned digital music
Speaker 1: stores out there, but none of them had really taken
Speaker 1: off in popularity. And of course there was the black
Speaker 1: market piracy trading culture out there. Napster was gone by
Speaker 1: two thousand three. It had been sued out of existence.
Speaker 1: But it's not like piracy just went away after that.
Speaker 1: But this is when Apple introduced the legit iTunes music store.
Speaker 1: It's also when Apple would introduce the fair Play Digital
Speaker 1: Rights Management or DRM solution, which restricted iTunes purchases to
Speaker 1: play only on authorized devices. So this was again back
Speaker 1: when music labels had a lot of leverage over Apple.
Speaker 1: All Right, we've got a lot more to get through
Speaker 1: with the evil of the iPod and its eventual demise.
Speaker 1: But before we get into any of that, let's take
Speaker 1: another quick break. Okay, we're up to two thousand four.
Speaker 1: That's when Apple would expand iPod line again. So earlier
Speaker 1: years had seen iPods with you know, larger hard drive
Speaker 1: sizes and that kind of thing, like modest improvements, but
Speaker 1: two thousand four saw entirely new iPod models. Apple introduced
Speaker 1: the iPod many in two thousand four, and as the
Speaker 1: name suggests, it was significantly smaller than the standard iPod
Speaker 1: and it had a hard drive that could hold up
Speaker 1: to one thousand songs, similar to the original iPod. Apple
Speaker 1: also introduced the iPod Photo, which was an iPod with
Speaker 1: a color digital screen that could display photos on it. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you would transfer the photos from your computer to your iPod,
Speaker 1: you could scroll through them, and there was also a
Speaker 1: fourth generation standard iPod as well. Two thousand four was
Speaker 1: also when the term podcasting began to catch on. Now,
Speaker 1: the practice had been around for a while, right There
Speaker 1: had already been cases of serialized digital audio content that
Speaker 1: people could subscribe to that dated back a few years
Speaker 1: from before two thousand four, But two thousand four was
Speaker 1: where podcasting as a word really emerged. I would argue
Speaker 1: that that really drove home how Apple had nailed the
Speaker 1: MP three player technology and the marketing for digital audio
Speaker 1: players because it had become the de facto leader in
Speaker 1: the space and had to find the technology. You know,
Speaker 1: it didn't it didn't invent it, but they refined it
Speaker 1: to a point where that was the standard, so much
Speaker 1: so that an entire medium was named after the iPod podcasting.
Speaker 1: Then in two thousand five, we got the iPod Nano,
Speaker 1: which was an even smaller iPod than the iPod Mini.
Speaker 1: It used flash storage rather than a hard drive, and
Speaker 1: in the early days of digital audio players, flash storage
Speaker 1: was a real limitter and it was really expensive. It
Speaker 1: couldn't hold very much, and it cost a lot to produce.
Speaker 1: That's why Apple chose to go with physical hard drives
Speaker 1: for its early iPods. But by two thousand five, the
Speaker 1: capacity was starting to go up and the price was
Speaker 1: starting to come down, so the Nano was available in
Speaker 1: two gigabyte and four gigabyte capacity models. It had a
Speaker 1: color screen, and it was smaller than the iPod Mini was,
Speaker 1: which in turn was smaller than the standard iPod. A
Speaker 1: few months after it debuted, the Nano would replace the
Speaker 1: Mini and Apple would just discontinue the Mini model entirely. Also,
Speaker 1: two thousand five was when the iPod Shuffle came out.
Speaker 1: The iPod Shuffle h is an odd little thing. Most
Speaker 1: models don't have any display at all. Uh In fact,
Speaker 1: it has a pretty simple interface. It's got a power button,
Speaker 1: a play pause button, and controls that allow you to
Speaker 1: change the volume and skip a song or go back
Speaker 1: to a song. And the Shuffle could play songs you know,
Speaker 1: in whatever order was organized on the device, or as
Speaker 1: the name suggests it could shuffle them randomly, so the
Speaker 1: shovel was even smaller than the nano. It maxed out
Speaker 1: with a one gigabyte hard drive model when it launched,
Speaker 1: or I guess I should say flash drive model one
Speaker 1: gigabyte of storage when it launched. Also in two thousand five,
Speaker 1: Apple introduced a fifth generation iPod that was capable of
Speaker 1: playing video. So now we're at the point where you
Speaker 1: could transfer video files to a an iPod, which otherwise
Speaker 1: was modeled like the classic iPod, and you can watch
Speaker 1: those videos whenever you wanted. Where still in that where
Speaker 1: you had to physically connect your iPod with your your
Speaker 1: computer in order to synchronize files between the devices and
Speaker 1: to transfer new material to the iPods. So it's not
Speaker 1: like you could just download videos natively to the device.
Speaker 1: You still had to connect it physically to your computer
Speaker 1: to do that. And finally, two thousand five, finally, for
Speaker 1: two thousand five, anyway, it was a critical year for
Speaker 1: my profession. See that's the year that Steve Jobs announced
Speaker 1: that podcasts would be incorporated directly into iTunes, so iTunes
Speaker 1: users would be able to subscribe to podcasts and whenever
Speaker 1: they synchronize their iPods with their computers, any new episodes
Speaker 1: of the shows they subscribed to would automatically transfer to
Speaker 1: their iPod, and Apple took podcasting, which at that time
Speaker 1: was still a very young medium, and they pushed it
Speaker 1: further toward the mainstream. The success of the iPod in
Speaker 1: no small way contributed to the early growth of podcasts,
Speaker 1: though it would take more than a decade for podcasts
Speaker 1: to become popular enough so that the average person knew
Speaker 1: what the heck a podcast was. Occasionally I still run
Speaker 1: into people who aren't sure what a podcast is, but
Speaker 1: it's it's more rare these days now. The joke is
Speaker 1: everybody has a podcast. Back then, most people didn't even
Speaker 1: know what the heck podcast was. And it also became
Speaker 1: true pretty quickly that if you wanted your podcast to
Speaker 1: do well, you really had to hold out hope that
Speaker 1: Apple was going to feature your podcast on its podcast page,
Speaker 1: because that pretty much guaranteed you would see a rush
Speaker 1: of new subscribers. Some of the shows on our network,
Speaker 1: such as Stuff You Should Know, benefited tremendously due to
Speaker 1: Apple featuring the podcast on the iTunes podcast section. Now,
Speaker 1: I also have to point out that if it weren't
Speaker 1: for the fact that Stuff You Should Know is just
Speaker 1: a really great show with incredibly talented hosts. It wouldn't
Speaker 1: matter for all the promotion in the world, right, It
Speaker 1: wouldn't make a difference. If the show was terrible, people
Speaker 1: wouldn't stay subscribed to it. So I don't want to
Speaker 1: take any credit away from the creators. They are legitimately
Speaker 1: great at what they do, but the iTunes promotion helped
Speaker 1: them out considerably in the early days to get a
Speaker 1: big following. Now, two thousand six was less eventful than
Speaker 1: two thousand five. Apple released updated generations for the iPod
Speaker 1: and the Nano and the Shuffle. Nothing really spectacular to
Speaker 1: note here. The new models were obviously improvements over previous generations,
Speaker 1: but that was pretty much it. But then in two
Speaker 1: thousand seven we got two things that would be huge
Speaker 1: for Apple now. The really big one was the iPhone.
Speaker 1: By this time, Apple's image had really skyrocketed. The popularity
Speaker 1: of the iPod had truly transformed the company, and the
Speaker 1: iPhone would push Apple beyond the stratosphere and into lower
Speaker 1: th orbit at least. But that same year Apple also
Speaker 1: introduced the iPod Touch. The Touch was essentially an iPhone
Speaker 1: without the phone part. There was no cellular antenna in
Speaker 1: the iPod Touch, but it featured the same multi touch
Speaker 1: screen as the iPhone. Most of the internal components were
Speaker 1: the same. They would have a camera had it was
Speaker 1: able to run apps, at least apps that didn't require
Speaker 1: a cellular connection, so in many ways it was like
Speaker 1: an iPhone, just without the phone part. And the iPod
Speaker 1: Touch also had WiFi connectivity, so you could use an
Speaker 1: iPod Touch to browse the web or message people, and
Speaker 1: you could even purchase digital music wirelessly. You still couldn't
Speaker 1: synchronize wirelessly. That would come a little bit later. Apple
Speaker 1: still offered the original iPod form factor. I mean not
Speaker 1: the original original, because we're not talking about a mechanical
Speaker 1: scroll wheel or anything, but the the form factor that
Speaker 1: we associate with the old school iPods, and from that
Speaker 1: point for at Apple would refer to those types of
Speaker 1: iPods as the iPod Classic. By the end of two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, Apple had sold more than a hundred forty
Speaker 1: million iPods. Like I said, the iPod line transformed Apple,
Speaker 1: but the iPhone was going to be way more disruptive. Now.
Speaker 1: Over the following years, Apple would continue to evolve the Nano,
Speaker 1: the Shuffle, and the Touch iPod lines. It would continue
Speaker 1: to support the classic line, but those really didn't change
Speaker 1: too much year to year. In two thousand eight, Apple
Speaker 1: added a feature that let you play a random song
Speaker 1: on your nano's playlist if you just shook your nano.
Speaker 1: I really wonder how many nano's perished as people over
Speaker 1: enthusiastically tried to search for a cool random song. In
Speaker 1: Apple changed the nano design. It used to be kind
Speaker 1: of like a thin rectangle. It was much taller than
Speaker 1: it was wide, but the model turned the Nano into
Speaker 1: a square. It kind of looks like the watch face
Speaker 1: of an Apple Watch. In fact, the fourth generation iPod
Speaker 1: Touch would have a retina display, so that was a
Speaker 1: very high definition display capable of sharp, vibrant graphics. It
Speaker 1: could also shoot HD photos and videos, and it was
Speaker 1: the first iPod Touch to have a front facing camera,
Speaker 1: which meant you could actually use the iPod Touch to
Speaker 1: make FaceTime calls over WiFi. The fourth generation Touch would
Speaker 1: also get a further update that would allow for wireless
Speaker 1: synchronization with iTunes, so now you no longer had to
Speaker 1: dock your Touch to your computer to synchronize across the
Speaker 1: two devices. The fifth generation Touch got a larger screen
Speaker 1: and a lightning DOC connector, which allowed for even faster
Speaker 1: data transfer speeds. And during this time, Apple continued to
Speaker 1: support the iPod Classic models, but the company would ultimately
Speaker 1: discontinue those in stept Tober two thousand fourteen. The iPod
Speaker 1: Shuffle and the iPod Nano would get the same treatment
Speaker 1: in two thousand seventeen. Now, the reason I'm skipping over
Speaker 1: all that, like I'm going from essentially two thousand eight
Speaker 1: to two thousand four to two thousand seventeen, is because
Speaker 1: the evolution of the devices were the kind of gradual
Speaker 1: like they weren't. They weren't monumental leaps, and it would
Speaker 1: be ridiculous just to go from year to year and say,
Speaker 1: and here's where these minor changes came into play. But
Speaker 1: now five years later, in two Apple is saying goodbye
Speaker 1: to the Touch. And you might wonder why why is
Speaker 1: Apple sunsetting the iPod line entirely, Well, it really has
Speaker 1: to do with that pesky iPhone you see, as as
Speaker 1: the iPhones battery life and storage capacity and then ultimately
Speaker 1: access to streaming music services increased the demand for a
Speaker 1: standalone music playback device decreased. The Touch held out longer
Speaker 1: than the others because it was essentially a cheaper iPhone
Speaker 1: just without the cellular phone part. You could even do
Speaker 1: WiFi style calls on a Touch. In fact, my buddy
Speaker 1: I as Actor, used an iPod Touch as his mobile
Speaker 1: phone for a short while. I remember him telling me
Speaker 1: about that at c E S and it blew my mind. Now,
Speaker 1: if you look at how much iPods have contributed to
Speaker 1: Apple's revenue, you would see that they really hit their
Speaker 1: peak in two thousand six, not peak sales. They didn't
Speaker 1: hit their peak sales till two thousand and eight, But
Speaker 1: in two thousand six they contributed the most by percentage
Speaker 1: to Apple's overall revenue. In two thousand six, they were
Speaker 1: about of all of Apple's revenue, it just came from
Speaker 1: iPod sales. So so nearly half of all of Apple's
Speaker 1: revenue came from selling iPods in two thousand six. See,
Speaker 1: I told you that I pod really turned things around
Speaker 1: for Apple. Now, actual iPod sales, like I said, they
Speaker 1: peaked in two thousand eight, So they sold more iPods
Speaker 1: in two thousand eight than they did in two thousand six,
Speaker 1: they sold fifty four point eight million units. Back in
Speaker 1: two thousand six, they had sold thirty nine point four million.
Speaker 1: But in two thousand eight, even though they sold more iPods,
Speaker 1: those sales accounted for just tw Apple's revenue. And remember
Speaker 1: in two thousand six it was of Apple's revenue. That
Speaker 1: tells you a lot right there. Right If a company
Speaker 1: sells fifteen million more units two years later, but those
Speaker 1: sales contribute a smaller amount to the company's total revenue,
Speaker 1: something else is really taking off. That's something else was
Speaker 1: the iPhone. So the iPod was still a mega success,
Speaker 1: but the iPhone was leaving it in the dust. From
Speaker 1: two thousand eight, it was a downward trend. Now, it's
Speaker 1: not like iPod sales inanked immediately, but in two thousand
Speaker 1: nine it dipped from fifty four point eight million units
Speaker 1: to fifty four point one million units, and at that
Speaker 1: point the sales were accounting for around nineteen percent of
Speaker 1: the company's total revenue, because again, the iPhone was just
Speaker 1: a monster. By two thousand fourteen, the sales numbers were
Speaker 1: down to fourteen point four million units and accounted for
Speaker 1: about one percent of the total revenue for Apple. Now,
Speaker 1: after two thousand fourteen, Apple would just lump in iPod
Speaker 1: sales with other categories, so it became impossible to see
Speaker 1: how iPod sales and revenue were going. The iPhone had
Speaker 1: really eclipsed everything else, so it's not really a surprise
Speaker 1: that the iPod touch is going away, or that the
Speaker 1: iPod line in general is riding off into the sunset.
Speaker 1: Some folks like yours truly held out for a really
Speaker 1: long time and carried both an MP three player, and yes,
Speaker 1: I eventually abandoned my creative zen for an iPod Classic
Speaker 1: and also carried a smartphone at the same time. I
Speaker 1: was one of those people. I had two devices. That
Speaker 1: was because I didn't want to run down my phone's
Speaker 1: battery while playing music, nor did I want to fill
Speaker 1: up my phone's storage within an enormous music collection. Because
Speaker 1: streaming services really were a thing yet at least not
Speaker 1: a common thing. But eventually streaming services increased capacity and
Speaker 1: better battery life all made standalone MP three players kind
Speaker 1: of obsolete because smartphones could do it all. They could
Speaker 1: act as your music library and a streaming platform and
Speaker 1: a phone and a computer. There was no reason to
Speaker 1: have to carry two of them. Apple is going to
Speaker 1: sell off all remaining iPod touches that are in stock
Speaker 1: and then puff they'll be gone. So if you want one,
Speaker 1: now's the time to buy one before they all end
Speaker 1: up on the aftermarket at ridiculously pumped up prices that
Speaker 1: they are just not worth that they range in price
Speaker 1: from about hundred ninety nine dollars for a thirty two
Speaker 1: gigabyte model up to three dollars for a two hundred
Speaker 1: fifty six gigabyte model. There are a few different colors available,
Speaker 1: though not every color of iPod Touch has all the
Speaker 1: different storage capacities available. Some of them are already out
Speaker 1: of stock, and like I said, once the rest are gone,
Speaker 1: that's it. So farewell iPod. You set Apple on a
Speaker 1: trajectory to become one of the most powerful companies in
Speaker 1: the world, and you lent your name to an art
Speaker 1: form that has become my career. Plus, even though I
Speaker 1: am an Android smartphone user and I used to own
Speaker 1: a creative Zen MP three player, I do have to
Speaker 1: admit that the iPod form factor and its performance were
Speaker 1: top notch. Just wish that darn iTunes software had worked
Speaker 1: better on Windows. That's it for this episode of Tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: If you have suggestions for topics I should tackle in
Speaker 1: future episodes, please reach out to me. The best way
Speaker 1: to do that is on Twitter. The handle for the
Speaker 1: show is text Stuff H s W and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.