WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.840
After the turn of the millennium, I don't think there was a single product that said

00:00:03.840 --> 00:00:09.440
Welcome to the future, quite as well as the iPod did. It took an incredibly mainstream activity,

00:00:09.440 --> 00:00:13.520
listening to music on the go, and made it cooler by like two orders of magnitude,

00:00:13.520 --> 00:00:18.400
as you could suddenly have a thousand songs in your pocket. Instead of the dozen or so you get

00:00:18.400 --> 00:00:23.680
with those portable CD players that always skipped and scratched your CDs, and then your batteries

00:00:23.680 --> 00:00:28.560
would all ****. But of course, in the eternal quest for do-it-all gadgets like the Swiss Army

00:00:28.800 --> 00:00:33.920
knife, the Bowflex, and the Magic Bullet, the iPod started losing popularity once smartphones hit

00:00:33.920 --> 00:00:38.960
the scene, as no one wanted to have to carry around two devices when one would do just as well.

00:00:38.960 --> 00:00:42.560
Although the iPod managed to hang on for over 20 years thanks to ease of use,

00:00:42.560 --> 00:00:46.640
slick marketing, and for a while higher storage capacities than competing smartphones,

00:00:46.640 --> 00:00:53.200
Apple finally discontinued it in May 2022. But could we possibly see a comeback of the iPod or

00:00:53.200 --> 00:00:58.480
similar portable media players? Let's think about what made the iPod so popular in the first place,

00:00:58.880 --> 00:01:04.800
it did one thing, and it did it well. It wasn't the first MP3 player, but its simple interface

00:01:04.800 --> 00:01:10.080
and design made it user-friendly and undeniably cool when it came out. Trust me, I was there,

00:01:10.080 --> 00:01:14.160
and I couldn't afford one. But the market for single-purpose devices has fallen off quite a bit

00:01:14.160 --> 00:01:18.560
since the rise of the smartphone. Pocket-sized digital cameras, for example, have become increasingly

00:01:18.560 --> 00:01:23.600
irrelevant as people are now shooting full-fledged movies on their phones. Google Maps is more

00:01:23.600 --> 00:01:28.080
responsive than trying to fiddle with a Garmin, and phone flashlights can blind you almost

00:01:28.080 --> 00:01:33.200
effectively as a pair of headlights. So digital music players would need to offer something a

00:01:33.200 --> 00:01:38.560
smartphone doesn't to remain viable. Many music players that are still in production today set

00:01:38.560 --> 00:01:43.280
themselves apart with higher audio quality than you can get on your phone. Assuming the songs you

00:01:43.280 --> 00:01:48.000
put on them were encoded at a high enough bitrate, they support very high-resolution playback and

00:01:48.000 --> 00:01:53.520
include quality amplifiers and DACs inside that can even rival desktop models. Some of them can even

00:01:53.520 --> 00:01:58.400
drive high-end high-impedance headphones that would sound quiet or distorted on typical portable

00:01:58.400 --> 00:02:02.960
players or smartphones, and some have a balanced headphone output to reduce interference.

00:02:02.960 --> 00:02:06.560
You might also see support for higher quality Bluetooth codecs than on your

00:02:06.560 --> 00:02:11.200
phone of choice, as well as a chunky battery to power all these fancy components for long enough

00:02:11.200 --> 00:02:16.160
to actually make a player like this practical to use. Of course, all this assumes that you care

00:02:16.160 --> 00:02:22.400
enough about audiophile quality sound to drop up to four figures on one of these players.

00:02:22.480 --> 00:02:27.680
Most of us don't, and most of us can't tell the difference between 98th and 99th percentiles

00:02:27.680 --> 00:02:32.400
of sound fidelity. So while there may be a niche for these enthusiast-grade players for a long time

00:02:32.400 --> 00:02:37.520
to come, could something like an iPod make a comeback for the rest of us? Instead of overkill

00:02:37.520 --> 00:02:43.760
audio quality, maybe the average person could be sold on more practical improvements, offer a 4G

00:02:43.760 --> 00:02:48.720
or 5G data service that can only be used for music streaming when you sign up for a service like Apple

00:02:48.720 --> 00:02:53.760
Music or Spotify. Home Security Company Ring notably uses this same paradigm for cellular

00:02:53.760 --> 00:02:58.080
backup already. Give it longer battery life than a smartphone and better storage options for when

00:02:58.080 --> 00:03:02.560
we want to listen to music in areas with poor signal. Most phones don't even offer SD cards

00:03:02.560 --> 00:03:07.760
slots anymore, so simply giving people the freedom to expand would be a major plus if they spend

00:03:07.760 --> 00:03:13.040
lots of time living in or visiting places with slower, unreliable internet. But you know,

00:03:13.040 --> 00:03:17.600
I don't see any of these things being a good enough reason for Apple to bring back the iPod.

00:03:17.680 --> 00:03:22.400
It's just not their style. Maybe the closest thing we'll get is a pair of AirPods with built-in

00:03:22.400 --> 00:03:27.040
cellular connectivity and mandatory subscription to Apple Music. That would be a mass market product

00:03:27.040 --> 00:03:31.600
that couldn't be simpler to use and is guaranteed to be money back to the Apple spaceship,

00:03:31.600 --> 00:03:36.800
but that wouldn't really be an iPod. Which leads us to believe that the iPod as we know it

00:03:36.800 --> 00:03:41.040
is probably permanently dead. But I mean, of course we'll never forget it. I mean,

00:03:41.040 --> 00:03:45.280
record players were invented in the 1870s, but you can still just walk into a Walmart and buy one,

00:03:46.080 --> 00:03:50.400
RIP iPod. So thanks for watching guys. If you liked this video, hit like, hit subscribe,

00:03:50.400 --> 00:03:53.600
and hit us up in the comments section with your suggestions for topics that we should

00:03:53.600 --> 00:03:56.800
cover in the future or maybe your memories of your first iPod.