Hello and welcome to the Geeky Brummie Tech Roundup!

Each roundup I’ll be deep diving into the world of technology. Bringing back some new pearls from Birmingham and beyond! If you want to send any local tech articles over, feel free to reach out to me at ryan@geekybrummie.com.

Hello All!

This week, we say goodbye to perhaps the best well known Digital Audio Player range.

Goodbye-Pod

After 20 years and 6 months it’s time to wave goodbye to the best selling MP3 player range, the iPod.

For many it was their first foray into the Apple Ecosystem with the infuriating plague on all our houses, iTunes as part of the package.

Whether you used Napster, Kazaa, Limewire or an MP3 store (lol) to fill your player with the freshest tunes from Britney, N-SYNC, Limp Bizkit, Destiny’s Child, S Club 7 or Nickelback, chances are you’d be loading them onto your iPod.

You’d probably pop those classic (awful) earbuds in as you put on your bootcut jeans, popped your collar, frosted your tips and played snake on your 3310 whilst waiting for the bus to watch Zoolander, or possibly that new Harry Potter movie people were raving about.

To say that technology was a very different place 20 years ago is an understatement. Before the smartphones ruled the world, there was a separate device for EVERYTHING; your phone did calls and texts, your MP3 only did music and you had a digital camera for pictures.

Impact

And the iPod was a revelation; it wasn’t the first MP3 player, probably not the best but it was ‘cool’ and the first to be widely adopted, the ‘Model-T’ of MP3.

With 450 million in sales as of this month over its lifespan, there were 27 varieties over 5 models (Classic, Mini, Nano, Shuffle and the longest living of them all, Touch).

Without the iPod, we’d never have had the iPhone and Apple’s transformation from a computer manufacturer to a tech conglomerate and the second largest company in the world by market cap at time of writing. The word ‘podcast’ is a direct descendent from the device.

This video from the always excellent Mr DankPod on the YouTube probably sums it up better than I could: