Farewell to the iPod, the device that ushered in too much choice
There are a couple of old iPods in my desk drawer still, tangled up with cables that will definitely come in useful one day. One is a Shuffle that I clipped to my T-shirt during a brief attempt to have a jogging phase. The other is a scuffed, black, fifth-generation iPod. If I charge it for hours, it plays for a few songs before the screen dissolves and if you press the wheel in a way it doesn’t like, the screen freezes completely. It is a frozen object in other ways, too, capturing life at a certain time, in playlists called things such as Dip It Low!!! and Happy Birthday Matt 7.
Last week, after just over 20 years, it was announced that the iPod was going to be discontinued; when the last remaining iPod Touches have sold out, there will be no more. “[It] redefined how music is discovered, listened to and shared,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice-president of worldwide marketing, wheeled out for the quote to accompany the announcement. Given the sorry state of the music industry for anyone not at the very top of it, I’m not sure that is something to be proud of entirely, but of course it redefined music. As the iPod’s capacity grew, from 5GB to 160GB, it put vast choice in our pockets and made it portable.
You could settle on almost any of the iPod’s innovations and see it as a turning point in how music became something we talked about consuming rather than listening to, but I keep thinking about that element of choice. It is a luxurious position to be in, I know, but two decades later I often feel stifled by choice, not just when it comes to music but with all entertainment. It is easy to throw away time on choosing which TV series to watch on a streaming service, for example, and more often than I would like to
Read more on theguardian.com
