Having gone without a refresh since 2009, the iPod classic is one of the oldest products still on sale in the Apple Store. Will Apple finally update it this fall to add flash storage and a Lightning connector? Probably not. In fact, some expect the Cupertino company to finally kill it off.
“I don’t see Apple investing any more into the iPod classic, even just to upgrade the connector,” Forrester analyst Charles Golvin told Wired.
It’s not hard to see why Apple is still selling the iPod classic. It’s the only iPod that offers 160GB of storage, which is enough to store up to 40,000 songs, 250 hours of music, or around 25,000 photos. That’s ten times the storage you get in an iPod nano, and two-and-a-half times the amount you get with the high-end iPod touch.
What’s more, the fact that it’s four years old must mean the iPod classic is fairly easy for Apple to produce now — it’s been doing it long enough — and it’s probably very cheap to make as well. So even though the device may not sell incredibly well, its high margins probably mean it’s worth the space it takes up on store shelves anyway.
And there are still plenty of iPod classic fans out there. “I’ve had it forever,” Michael Simmons, co-founder of Flexibits — the company that makes Fantastical for Mac and iOS — told Wired. “I’m a musician. I love music so I have a ton of music.”
Simmons likes the fact that he can store tens of thousands of tracks on the iPod classic at any one time, which means he doesn’t have to worry about frequently syncing it to swap out albums when he’s running out of storage. But he could see himself switching to an iPod touch if Apple was to release a 128GB version.
Until that time comes, however, it’s likely the iPod classic will stick around. It may be getting a little long in the tooth, but there’s clearly enough demand to warrant its place in Apple’s product lineup.
What do you think? Are you a fan of the iPod classic, or do you think it’s time it was scrapped?
Source: Wired
Killian Bell is a freelance writer based in the U.K. He has an interest in all things tech and also covers Android over at CultofAndroid.com. You can follow him on Twitter via @killianbell.
5 responses to “Will Apple Finally Discontinue The iPod Classic This Year?”
I really wish Apple still cared about the iPods. iPhones are nice, the iPod touch is the same sans the phone but Apple hasn’t crafted a high-end dedicated music player for far too long. They’ll never do this, but I would have liked to have seen the iPod classic in an aluminum unibody, flash storage, slightly larger screen, and click-wheel.
Don’t forget. The Mac Pro went without a refresh for several years. Then they rebuilt it from the ground up.
The headline of those story uses the word “finally” as if there’s some big demand to axe the iPod Classic. My take on this is why should anyone care? Apple clearly has a reason for keeping it around, and maybe it’s simply because of the storage capacity. If they kill it off, fine. This is just more proof of what I always say about Apple… That no matter what they do with their products, someone will always see a reason to gripe, and a lot of people with absolutely no stake in what Apple does will comment and analyze the situation to death until it becomes very clear that their only purpose for doing so is to keep the dialog going so that they can feel relevant.
What do you mean by “high-end”? The click wheel was awesome, but I vastly prefer a touch screen. While I don’t have an iPod Classic for comparison, I would assume that Apple has improved the music playing capability of the iPod Touch over the years, and it’s likely that the processor and memory in the iPod Touch far out class what’s in the iPod Classic. I like the iPod Classics a lot, but they wouldn’t be my first choice since I don’t need that much storage, they don’t have any way of working with iTunes Match. All this being said, I see no compelling reason for Apple to kill off the Classic unless its sales don’t justify the costs of producing it.
The Classic is still the only iPod I will own. I don’t care for the touch screen because it comes with smaller storage options. I agree though, with the author that if they came out with at least a 128GB model i may consider updating.