adieu ipod adieu

Daring Fireball reported on the farewell of the iPod Touch. I remember being blown away by how slender the first generation was - like Gruber says, it was hot on the heels of the first iPhone, but the thinness of the iPhone-minus-the-phone-part was a glimpse of the future of Apple form factors: in 2007 it was astonishing that a capable web browser could work on the thing.

Of course this closes the door on the iPod in general. I write about getting one in 2004 - ripping my supply of CDs into my own library actually kept me stuck with Apple ever since. (And I still don't quite get the appeal of streaming... owning music, but selecting it by the single song, is musical nirvana to me.)

But my favorite was the iPod Nano I bought in 2007, product shot shown here.

It was such a perfect minimalist piece of hardware... just thick enough to fit a headphone jack, that terrifically satisfying scrollwheel, and a nice little screen to help with navigation.

(Every once in a while I get the urge to try to be less online, go back to the less-connected time before the iPhone, maybe go back to the simplicity of a PalmPilot... But at the very least my pockets would be full of an iPod, a camera, a PDA, a regular cellphone... not to mention needing a GPS for my car...so just wishful thinking.)