Tim Cook on iPod Classic: 'We Couldn't Get the Parts Anymore'

SeattleMoose said:

For me, the click wheel was the perfect design. I could manipulate it in the dark, in a pocket, or with my eyes closed. Touch screens on tiny devices make NO SENSE from my POV.

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The click wheel is quite nice for a player. If I wanted a nano I would seek out the last generation with the wheel as I would want it for a player and it makes more sense then some micro point touchscreen. I also think the design is much better.

sracer said:

Do you think that the cost of hard drive technology (or SSD) has remained the same over the past few years?

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That's irrelevant because in the case of the iPod Classic, it's not an off-the-shelf component. If they wanted to move from a HDD to a SSD that would still require a design change and I believe it's just probably not worth it for the volumes they were selling it or could expect to sell it.

Still got mine, leave it in the car for my favorite tracks via the MDI cable, and then I use Bluetooth to stream from my iPhone the newest music I've purchased. I suppose when mine eventually dies I may just see what I can squeeze onto a 32GB SD card, but since iTunes doesn't manage and SD card like an i-device, I will probably search for a used iPod on eBay or something.

giantfan1224 said:

That's irrelevant because in the case of the iPod Classic, it's not an off-the-shelf component. If they wanted to move from a HDD to a SSD that would still require a design change and I believe it's just probably not worth it for the volumes they were selling it or could expect to sell it.

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Fair enough.

The whole "we couldn't get the parts anymore" is an overly simplistic statement that doesn't make much sense when spending more than 30 seconds thinking about it.

It's not like the VP overseeing iPods woke up one day and said, "oh crap! We ran out of hard drives! Where can we get more?!"

They are fully aware of supply chains. They know (or their manufacturing contractors) the inventory of parts, and if they were even still manufacturing them or simply selling existing stock.

At some point a decision was made to discontinue the iPod Classic well before Tim's "can't get parts" statement and well before the day-after (iPhone 6 debut) after-the-fact announcement.

If there were really so few people who bought iPod Classics, then there would be no harm in simply being upfront about it. From the places I checked, in-store inventory was yanked the day of the iPhone 6 announcement.

Those who were waiting to hear if there was going to be an iPod announcement that day before purchasing a Classic were left out in the cold. There was no need to do that to the pitiful few luddites who wanted one.

Suture said:

Still got mine, leave it in the car for my favorite tracks via the MDI cable, and then I use Bluetooth to stream from my iPhone the newest music I've purchased. I suppose when mine eventually dies I may just see what I can squeeze onto a 32GB SD card, but since iTunes doesn't manage and SD card like an i-device, I will probably search for a used iPod on eBay or something.

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This. Mine has been my primary music play in my last 6 vehicles.

Makosuke said:

Just to offer actual numbers, the 160GB 1.8" hard drive Apple was using in the Classic retailed for a list price of $160; it obviously cost much less that that for Apple in bulk, but Apple also needs to factor in their own margin, and retail markups on the iPod itself, so using list price works to get a rough idea, and when comparing proportionally.

$/GB of rotating storage is obviously much cheaper now, but Toshiba hasn't manufactured a 1.8" hard drive for years and volume isn't going to be high enough to get them to build out a factory line just for iPod Classics, so SSD is the obvious replacement--we'll look at mSATA since it's a similar form factor to 1.8" hard drives, though Apple would probably have built the chips straight onto the main board of the product.

A 120GB TLC mSATA drive from a tier-1 manufacturer lists for $150; a 250GB one lists for $260.

So basically, replacing the drive with a 120 or 128GB of flash memory would have hypothetically kept the price more or less constant, leaving engineering costs and the cost of re-tooling a factory line out of the picture, and the list price would have gone up somewhat to keep the storage at least the same, probably by at least $100 if the cap went up to 250GB+.

I expect, given the use case, iPod Classic fans would have been glad to pay this.

First, thank you for taking the time to reply and explain in more detail at least one of the differing opinions; I appreciate it. Whether I agree with you or not, there is a logical foundation to your opinion so I can see why you hold it.

In a nutshell, if I understand correctly, you don't believe Cook; you think that the problem isn't that they won't make some money from selling Classics, it's that they won't make enough (particularly when factoring in after-market selling of apps and music).

You should check your timeline on this; the iPhone was released in June 2007, while the Touch didn't debut until September of that year, so it DEFINITELY wasn't a trial run for the iPhone--the phone was first.

[Edit: In fact, if you remember the original iPhone announcement, Steve made a big deal out of the fact that it was "a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and an Internet communicator". At the time it was announced, it was very much framed as being the next iPod evolution.]

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Actually, having read your post, I did check the timeline and am somewhat surprised, but you are absolutely right, and thanks for drawing my attention to this. It wasn't something which I paid much heed to, at the time, but I do seem to remember that it was marketed in terms of being an exceptionally advanced iPod (which they knew worked, in sales and marketing terms) rather than a phone with iPod characteristics.

However, I do recall having been contacted by marketers, or researchers, from Apple sometime in late 2006, or early 2007 - the exact date escapes me, as, when it happened, I was more irked than interested (although I did answer their questions). As it happens, I had bought my first iPod (the old 30GB classic) in February 2006; my details must have been on file.

Anyway, while the survey purported to be about iPods, mulling it over subsequently, I realised that most of the questions they asked concerned touch screen capabilities and other potential functions and futures for the device. They wished to know which possible future feature would interest me: As it happened, none did, as all I wanted was a sublime, stylish and uber-portable, neat, music player which would carry all of my music library in one gorgeous device, and I kept stressing that fact. What is also of interest (looking back) is that I was never contacted (by Apple) with a view to participation in any such survey - or information of preference gathering exercise - ever again…..

giantfan1224 said:

Then tell me, how do you convince a supplier to continue supplying you a key component at the same price level but at a much lower volume? Tooling costs money. Production lines cost money. Suppliers like to turn a profit as well. Sure, Apple could continue to sell the classic, jack up the price. And a few diehard fans would continue to buy it, but at the volumes they'd move the product it's not even worth keeping in inventory.

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Tim said they can't find parts anymore. The actual meaning was: We don't want to make anymore because it is a diminishing market. They have enough money to make another classic with a SSD. But they won't. I didn't say they were going to profit off of it, just saying that's a lame excuse.

Scepticalscribe said:

Now, I love that; I am old school, in that I still buy CDs - and rip them onto my iTunes library, and then, onto my iPod. For what it is worth, I have never bought music from iTunes and I have never used the Cloud to store or access music or other content. It is not that I dislike 'progress'; it is that I have huge 'issues' of trust re storage (and access to same).

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This isn't a disagreement with your analysis or opinion, but I wanted to add something (that's admittedly getting pretty far afield of what the topic is about), since you brought this up.

I like CDs and owning my music, too. I still buy some--usually from Japan--although they always get ripped directly into iTunes and never touched again. I've only played music from iCloud maybe two or three times.

That said, the iTunes store, as it exists currently, gives you DRM-free downloads of tracks to back up, copy, move around, and do with as you please, so I am not offended by it as a distribution medium. (Amazon MP3 store is the same.) If you're not interested in the cloud features--and I'm not--you buy a track or album, download it once, keep it on your computer and backups, and copy it to whatever iDevices (or non-iDevices that play AAC audio) you want to play it on. I have no obligation to continue to use the iTunes store, to maintain any sort of cloud presence with Apple, or to have any network connection on any of my devices--it all works as if I had purchased a CD apart from slight lossy compression and no booklet, and the fact that I can't sell the "used" music to someone else if I want to at a later date as I could with a physical CD.

(It's also cheaper to back up, since it goes along with my other backups rather than needing to periodically burn copies or maintain a lossless digital copy of a CD to protect against physical media degradation; it's as secure as any of the rest of the data in my digital lifestyle, which is more secure than any of my physical belongings due to a stringent backup regimen.)

There is a notable advantage to this digital storefront, though: For someone like me, who is a fan of fairly obscure foreign music that is simply not available on CD in the US, usually costs $25 or more on disc in Japan and nearly twice that as an import if I can get my hands on it at all, and in many cases has been out of print for years, buying CDs isn't even a realistic option. If I could even find the used disc and get someone to buy it and import it for me (things I in fact do regularly) it could cost me literally a hundred dollars.

I could just pirate the music, of course, but if I want to legitimately own it, I have only one realistic option, and it is shockingly convenient for the increasing number of tracks available on the US store (some obviously the artist just checked the "sell in the US box"--they don't even have metadata in English). I pay $10 or so for an album, don't wait, and get a legitimate copy of the music I want.

It's literally changed the way I look at shopping for music--it's gone from being an expensive, once-a-year-when-someone-I-know-is-going-to-Japan thing, to reasonably priced, convenient, and any time I feel like it.

Singles are also back--there are now lots of singles available and affordable, where before such things were rare and almost always wildly overpriced.

Better yet, and an additional advantage, if I really only want one track on a disc--say, the one that got the radio play from a one-hit wonder, or the theme song on a soundtrack that I don't care for the instrumental backgrounds on, or just the vocal tracks on a single that also includes karaoke versions--I no longer have to buy the entire album to get it. I can only pay for what I'm interested in, which both saves me money and gives the artist support proportional to the value they're providing me, rather than disproportionately weighted by diluting "good" material with "filler" (to me) that raises the price.

Now, if we're talking about streaming-only services, it's a different ballgame entirely, since it's a wildly different model. And if we're talking about DRM'd media, which requires ongoing licensing to use, and I cannot re-compress or move around as I see fit, then that's similarly a different game.

But as-executed, right now, the iTunes store is actually very good as a supplement to physical CDs for those of us who like music that is either not easy or virtually impossible to get on CD.

(On an unrelated aside, I'll add that in my personal case my 32GB hand-me-down iPod Touch in the car is enough to provide plenty of driving music, while a 128GB iPhone is more than enough for my whole music library, plenty of apps, and room to spare.)

So went to a newly built Target this morning, (This Target opened up this week). Strolled to the Electronics department, and what do I see? a bright and shining Classic. I couldn't believe my eyes as all retail (apple and non) has been out of these for over a month! I snatched one up as quick as I could. The teller must have known the story because he was like "hmm, you gonna open this up?" like why would he ask that LOL!. My theory is that before the September D-Day where Apple killed it, this Target was not open, but they must have been filling shelves in the meantime, and they had Classics. Then Apple discontinued it and all the scramblers who ran to all the Walmarts and Targets couldn't get to this one as the doors weren't opened yet. When all the fire burned out, after a month, they opened their doors, and this Classic is sitting like a golden apple on that shelf…all for me to snag up

vartanarsen said:

So went to a newly built Target this morning, (This Target opened up this week). Strolled to the Electronics department, and what do I see? a bright and shining Classic. I couldn't believe my eyes as all retail (apple and non) has been out of these for over a month! I snatched one up as quick as I could. The teller must have known the story because he was like "hmm, you gonna open this up?" like why would he ask that LOL!. My theory is that before the September D-Day where Apple killed it, this Target was not open, but they must have been filling shelves in the meantime, and they had Classics. Then Apple discontinued it and all the scramblers who ran to all the Walmarts and Targets couldn't get to this one as the doors weren't opened yet. When all the fire burned out, after a month, they opened their doors, and this Classic is sitting like a golden apple on that shelf…all for me to snag up

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Hey, that's great! Glad you found one.

mrkramer said:

Because the engineering changes required to do that would cost more than Apple would make from the few that they will still sell.

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Which would take maybe 2-3 engineers maybe a week at most.

leroypants said:

Which would take maybe 2-3 engineers maybe a week at most.

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Plus retooling a factory to make it which would take more than 2 or 3 people (plus you lose that capacity for higher selling items, The software would have to be updated and tested, and all those things add up.

gnasher729 said:

On which planet has Samsung displaced Apple in the phone market?...

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Wow!! Things are changing, I thought this would stick around atleast for another 3 or 4 years!!!

Digital Skunk said:

Those were good times. I remember years ago people using the MASSIVE hard drive on the 40GB iPod as an external drive to store graphics and video files and the like.

For a time that was acceptable, but after a while the HDD in the iPod would get tired of all of that work, especially at 4200 rpm. We tore through so many HDDs back in uni that a few iPod repair techs popped up on campus that would repair the drive for $100.

This is of course at a time when $10 a gigabyte for an external FW400 drive was acceptable.

Goodbye faithful friend. I may go on the hunt for one more silver or black 160GB iPod Classic.

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Man I feel old... I still remember going into Newegg store and seeing a 1gb drive for $1,000.... How times have changed.

gavroche said:

Man I feel old... I still remember going into Newegg store and seeing a 1gb drive for $1,000.... How times have changed.

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Tell me about it! I can't go back that far but i do remember breaking the 1GHz barrier, the 4GB of RAM barrier, and the HUGE 10GB iPod for $600.

gavroche said:

Man I feel old... I still remember going into Newegg store and seeing a 1gb drive for $1,000.... How times have changed.

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About thirty years ago, my first hard drive was a whopping 5 MB, and cost me $800.

At that ratio, 1 TB of storage would've cost $160,000,000. Wow. How times have changed.

I lost my iPod classic two days ago and the reality of how great a product it is smacked me in the face. I seriously panicked and went out to many stores to try to find a solution to my 160 gb loss.. I could find none...
Luckily, I found my iPod at a friends house the next day... But it really hit me how much it means to me to have all my favorite music with me all the time..... Apple seriously has to come out with something better.. You can't stream on 14 hour long plane trips to Japan or a 6 hour flight to Europe... Or any flight for that matter. And when I'm overseas, I can't stream at all. Come on Tim Cook.... Give us something...

saxman211 said:

Come on Tim Cook.... Give us something...

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He has... reason to stop waiting and look elsewhere.

sracer said:

The whole "we couldn't get the parts anymore" is an overly simplistic statement that doesn't make much sense when spending more than 30 seconds thinking about it.

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I agree, it was a very simplistic, "hey we just ran out" kind of answer to the question. But not everyone is as tech savvy as us (the users of Macrumors that even care enough to talk about the iPod Classic, or those old enough to remember when it was the iPhone of it's time).

When he said that, everything you wrote was the first thing that went through my head. Then I thought about the alternatives, and I said the same exact thing.

Fair enough.

I had an iPod touch 32GB that I used to reintroduce myself to iOS and see if it was worth switching back to the iPhone. Now that I have the iPhone the Touch can be used as the music only player. Hitting 160GB+ is Apple's next move. My classic also held all of my movies, all 96GBs of them, so it will be nice to see a 128GB Touch or even a 256GB "something else entirely."

saxman211 said:

I lost my iPod classic two days ago and the reality of how great a product it is smacked me in the face. I seriously panicked and went out to many stores to try to find a solution to my 160 gb loss.. I could find none...
Luckily, I found my iPod at a friends house the next day... But it really hit me how much it means to me to have all my favorite music with me all the time..... Apple seriously has to come out with something better.. You can't stream on 14 hour long plane trips to Japan or a 6 hour flight to Europe... Or any flight for that matter. And when I'm overseas, I can't stream at all. Come on Tim Cook.... Give us something...

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I agree. And while I believe he has in the Touch, I must say that turning on the screen to make quick changes is annoying. I liked being able to use it without looking at it. The click wheel was just too darn effective.

Have you tried Ebay or something? The classic HAS to be somewhere.

Bumping this out of nostalgia.

Just think what a refreshed classic could've been - 256 GB flash and they could've shrunk the footprint by 20-30% and made it 30% thinner (enough to make it a really attractive form factor without pushing the limits, leaving it to still be a somewhat hefty/sizable device that felt substantial in your hand.

Could've been awesome, just a smaller version of the current classic with hefty flash storage.

teleromeo said:

I bought a hard drive to repair my 4th generation iPod for ±20$ last year. I guess apple can do better.
Also, there are tutorials online how to replace hard drive to flash memory.
Try harder Tim.

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I feel its a case of stop the iPod, give a motivation to buy a bigger memory iPhone, or non iPhone users to get an iPhone. If you own an iPhone you also own an iPod

tdale said:

If you own an iPhone you also own an iPod

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This would mean I'll have to buy the 128 GB to replace my 80 Gb iPod if it fails.

tdale said:

I feel its a case of stop the iPod, give a motivation to buy a bigger memory iPhone, or non iPhone users to get an iPhone. If you own an iPhone you also own an iPod

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Only in the sense that they both play music and video and sync with iTunes.

The iPhone does not have a click wheel for navigation, nor can it be used for situation where mobility is important. (gym, working in the yard, jogging, etc.) I'm sure that there are people who attach the slab of an iPhone 6+ to their arm when jogging but I'm pretty sure those who own an iPod Classic wouldn't take to doing that with an iPhone 6/6+.