iCame. iSaw. iPod.

I was probably thirteen when I first heard of the iPod. Back then, in the early 2000s, the concept of an ‘MP3 player’ had already realised, even if only just, and had found its way into the hands of early adopters. Given that Apple was still a hardcore computer manufacturer then, their announcement of the iPod didn’t exactly tickle my curiosity.

However, when my uncle—the most avant-garde tech user of my family—bought an iPod mini to replace his gum pack-like Philips music player some years later, I got a chance to give it a whirl. To my surprise, the device left me thoroughly impressed. In the flesh the device was radically much cooler than what I’d seen in tech articles. It was made mostly of shiny anodised aluminium. It employed a tiny four-gigabyte hard drive to store songs. And the interface included the famous Click Wheel. Having only used a dull, unresponsive trackpad on laptops before, I was blown by this magic wheel of speed and tactility. With other music players the volume of sound was usually just about adequate for earphones and most definitely inadequate for large headphones, but here, with the iPod, there was a surfeit. Apple seemed to have included an amplifier powerful enough to slake the desires of every head-banger in the 2000s. It was properly awesome.

Before I knew it, the iPod had become a huge rave in India. It was without a doubt first a badge of coolness and then a music player. In college you either had an iPod or you didn’t; any other brand of portable music player just didn’t cut it. I was graduating high school then, and predictably, I didn’t own one. Instead I sported a Philips GoGear that had almost a gigabyte of flash storage and sounded decent. While it certainly beat carrying the cumbersome CD Walkman around, I knew I had to get my hands on an iPod.

It was around that time the new iPod nano was set to go on sale. Successor to the iPod mini, it was about the size of a pocket mirror, offered up to eight gigabytes of flash storage, and was the first model capable of playing videos. I tried my luck when my dad made a business trip to the US. I innocently offered that it might be cheaper to buy an iPod there than in India. To my great surprise, he agreed!

My dad returned to his hotel room from the nearby Target store and phoned me to tell me that he’d bought it. I was thoroughly ecstatic, but I could sense that he shared little of my emotion. I particularly remember how chagrined he was that the iPod had powered on fine but had shipped with no sample songs with which to test the audio playback. Instead the matchbox of a device demanded that it be connected to something called iTunes to sync music. He added gruffly, ‘149 dollars and nothing in it to play!’ or words to that effect. I quietly chuckled.

When I finally had the iPod in my hands I fiddled with it for hours on end. I’d play some music. I’d tweak the equaliser. I’d try another pair of earphones. I’d download some free movie trailers from iTunes and watch those. Heck I’d even sync contacts and notes from my Outlook to see how they appeared on the tiny display.

Today—ten years on—it’s still alive, and is my constant companion to the gym every morning. The display has formed a few vertical lines and the battery runs down more frequently, but other than that, she sings just fine. These days though, I simply turn on the iPod while entering the gym, listen to an audiobook for about fifty minutes, and then turn it off as I get into the car.

Apple announced last month that they would no longer sell the iPod nano and the iPod shuffle, making the iPod touch the last standing iPod model. Bearing in mind that the iPod touch is practically an iPhone sans the mobile module, it’s safe to say that the iPod brand is dead.

Is it a bad idea? No, not really. I’m actually surprised that Apple decided to keep the product alive for so long amidst smartphones and Android-based music players. People have long since stopped connecting their devices to their computers to ‘sync’ media. Online music is the norm.

Will I lament its death? Yes, but to be more specific, it’s not the product I’ll miss so much as the concept, and the company’s ability to wow the world with a new generation of meaner and sleeker devices every few years. The iPod started life looking like a brick with a tiny display and a capacitive wheel on it, but over the years assumed more diminutive forms.

The first generation iPod shuffle was the size of a glue stick tube and had a full-size USB connector. With the second generation, they ditched the USB connector altogether and found a way to sync media using only the 3.5mm audio jack. This allowed them to make the shuffle really compact and even clippable, just like a clothes peg. And suddenly you wore an iPod, and not carried one around. It’s this sort of innovation that made me believe Apple products were seriously cool.

Don’t get me wrong though. Apple still makes cool (and shamelessly expensive) products, but it’s just that a great deal of innovation these days is fixed on that one device that eclipses all other material things in our daily lives. With our entire collection of music now living along with our emails, texts, and videos of cats falling into the sink, I fear that a tangible identity for music and music lovers is lost for good.

Owning a mobile phone was pretty much a necessity even ten or fifteen years ago, whereas owning an iPod was not. But if you owned one, it meant that you loved music enough to invest in the one of the top portable music players in the market. The iPod was to music lovers what the Xbox and the PlayStation is to gamers—a way of identifying themselves in a crowd that either loves music or is indifferent to it. In the US you could order an iPod from the Apple Store with a custom message laser-engraved on the back, making the iPod a very personal and special music device. Fans of the popular American TV show, The Office, might recognise its romantic element in the show, where Jim and Pam, the prime couple, share a pivotal scene with one.

The iPod’s presence showed even while buying complementing audio gear. You could rest assured that car stereos and home theatres that bore the ‘Made for iPod’ label on their packaging would work readily with your iPod without any fuss. You could also confidently buy headphones without any fear of an impedance mismatch.

Picture of the 'Made for iPod' label lifted from an Apple page.

Today, music is more evolved; music is more accessible, and is all backed up in a cloud we can’t see. I love the convenience we have today, I really do. I love how my playlists show up exactly the same way on my phone, my PC, and my tablet. But I’m also cognizant of the fact that with each passing year, music is becoming more of a service to which we subscribe periodically and less of that special something you got for your birthday or for Christmas.

On the bright side, iPod will score big on nostalgia points in the years to come. I imagine there will be iPod memorabilia flooding the online stores soon enough. And my t-shirt that now pays tribute to the old cassette era will soon be joined by another one for the good old iPod that sang aloud for a good fifteen years without pause.

Until next time...
Vignesh