Apple kills off the iPod Classic

As all the celebrating and frothing at the mouth was taking place last night as Apple announced iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and Watch, nary a tear was shed as the tech giant quietly put the iPod Classic to death.

Yes, the device that was launched 13 years ago – in October of 2001 – with its revolutionary clickwheel, the device that really put digital music on the map, has been discontinued permanently.

A visit to apple.com/ipod shows a range of iPods that includes the Shuffle, Nano and Touch, plus the Apple TV. But there’s no mention of the Classic on Apple’s US, UK, Canadian, Australian, Russian, Korean, Japanese or New Zealand sites.

The iPod Classic appears nowhere in the Apple Online Store, either.

The Classic was redesigned quite a few times since its launch, with the final version being made in 2007, and it came in 80GB, 120GB and 160GB versions.

These days, the 64GB iPod Touch is Apple’s most spacious music player.

There has been no word from Apple on the demise of the Classic, but one guess for its burial is that music streaming services have made devices that could hold such large amounts of music obsolete.

So farewell, old friend – it appears that you were killed by the Cloud.