Apple has announced that it’s discontinuing the iPod Touch, the last remaining model in its lineup of portable music players. In a news post on Tuesday, the company says that it will sell the current Touch “while supplies last.”

While Apple may be done with making dedicated music players, the company says that “the spirit of iPod lives on” in all of its devices that play music, such as the iPhone, iPad, and HomePod Mini.

The iPod Touch going away marks the end of an era. As Apple notes, it introduced the first iPod “over 20 years ago.” The original FireWire-equipped model acted as just a portable music player, and Apple made models that were pretty much exclusively for listening to audio up until 2017, when it discontinued the iPod Nano and Shuffle. While the iPod Touch has been embraced by some iPod enthusiasts as the new classic music player, it also found a following for those who wanted an iPhone-like experience but didn’t actually need a phone.

While the iPod Touch has had its fans, the writing’s been on the wall for a while. The seventh-gen iPod Touch Apple discontinued Tuesday was introduced in 2019 via a press release. While the iPhone 11 would be released later that year, the 2019 touch had the same A10 processor as the iPhone 7. The sixth-gen iPod Touch launched in 2015. Despite people like me crying for a simplistic music player designed for the age of streaming, the time between releases and older hardware made it clear that Apple wasn’t looking to spend much time on the iPod.

It’s hard to blame the company for that. Most people aren’t particularly interested in carrying a second device that does something their smartphone is perfectly capable of (see also: the drying up of the point-and-shoot camera market). Tony Fadell, one of the developers of the original iPod, mentioned in an interview with The Verge that the iPod team knew the iPhone could end up overtaking music players. “It became very clear to us that there was a real threat from mobile phones, feature phones. They were starting to add music, MP3 playing, to the cell phones that they were shipping at the time,” he said.

Apple didn’t see that as a problem, according to Fadell. “At Apple, every single thing that was tried — at least under Steve — needed to ship because it was existential. You couldn’t not make the iPhone successful because you were cannibalizing the iPod business.”

While the iPod may soon disappear from store shelves, it’s hard to completely do away with something so iconic. We’ll likely continue to see iPod modification projectsfrom enthusiasts or web experiences designed to evoke nostalgia for the age of dedicated music players. Apple didn’t invent the market for them, but it did rocket them to popularity — now, the torch has been passed to companies like Sony and Fiio to keep the legacy alive for hardcore music enthusiasts.

Correction, May 10th 1:49PM ET: The original version of this article said that the seventh-gen iPod Touch was released alongside the iPhone 7. It has the same chip as the iPhone 7, but was released around three years later. We regret the error.

The last of the traditional iPods that lacked internet connectivity are gone. Apple has quietly taken down the websites for both the iPod nano and iPod shuffle today. As of now, searching for the products still results in “learn more” and “buy” links, but they lead to URLs that are no longer available. An Apple spokesperson confirmed to The Verge that both products have met their end and are now officially discontinued. Apple has long maintained that the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch would ultimately cannibalize its traditional music player hardware. The iconic iPod classic was discontinued in 2014.

”Today, we are simplifying our iPod lineup with two models of iPod touch now with double the capacity starting at just $199 and we are discontinuing the iPod shuffle and iPod nano,” the spokesperson said by email. The iPod touch now comes in 32GB and 128GB storage options, with the latter priced at $299. The previous 16GB and 64GB capacities are no longer available.

You should still be able to find some remaining iPod shuffle and nano units from Best Buy and other authorized retailers until stock runs out.

The iPod nano hasn’t been significantly updated since 2012, when the company redesigned it with Bluetooth support for wireless headphones and speakers. Apple released a new batch of colors for that seventh-generation model in 2015. The clip-on iPod shuffle last saw a redesign with the fourth-gen model in 2010, which made a quick return to physical controls after the poorly received third-generation model of 2009. Since then, Apple has updated the color options from time to time — just like the nano.

Personally, I think my favorite iPod nano always stayed the second-generation model, though the fourth-gen was pretty nice too.

The fat and short third-generation iPod nano definitely remains one of the most oddball iPods that Apple ever released. That aside, I don’t really know anyone who has purchased a nano in recent years — except Adam Savage for his San Diego Comic Con costume.

But right up until the end, the shuffle remained a fairly decent, stress-free option for active people; it was hard to beat a tiny $50 music player that you could lose or break without the same gut-wrenching guilt that comes with cracking your phone’s screen.

Goodbye, iPods nano and shuffle.

The Walkman may have started the first portable music revolution, but the iPod began the second. It increasingly put thousands upon thousands of songs in your pocket, and made it so that no one ever had to leave behind a track from their library again. And beyond all of that, it just happened to kickstart Apple’s dominating position in mobile.

Today, just shy of the 13th anniversary of its initial release, the classic iPod is finally being discontinued. Here’s a look back across the revolutionary line of MP3 players, from its simple beginnings, to its flashy days of glory, right down to its final redesign.

Lead image by Michael Shane.
3rd generation iPod classic from Matthew Pearce (Flickr).