While I often long for mum-made spaghetti bolognese and Lion King Bug Pops from my childhood, it isn’t often I find myself yearning for the technology I owned as a kid. Funnily enough, not once does my technologically spoilt adult self recall pining for my old CRT TV that was too big to properly close the cabinet doors on, or the portable DVD player that I used to have to hold very still and squint at to watch in the car. Do I miss the minutes-that-felt-like-hours spent waiting for AOL dial-up internet? No more than you do.
But a few weeks ago, I read about a device from my early teen years that I would happily use today (or rather, one I would use a modern-day version of) – the iPod Shuffle. The article stated that Apple had added its last-generation Shuffle to its worldwide ‘obsolete products’ list, a tech graveyard for the company’s products that haven't been distributed for sale for seven years or longer and can no longer be serviced or have new parts ordered for. Indeed, Apple stopped distributing the 2010-released fourth-gen Shuffle (alongside the seventh-gen Nano) in mid-2017, leaving the iPod lineup comprising only two models of iPod Touch. (Those last-of-’em iPod Touches were abandoned by Apple in 2022, of course, marking the end of the iPod shelf-life and indeed era, and will therefore hit that list in 2029.)
