The iPod is dead, but the podcast lives on
Pour one out for the iPod, the beautiful little gadget of my teenage dreams. While Apple finally discontinued the last iPod model this week, the “pod” lives on in the digital audio medium we all love and obsess over.
The iPod was never really the format where the podcast flourished (that would be the smartphone), but at the time podcasts were getting started, the iPod was pretty much the only game in town. In 2004, the iPod controlled 60 percent of the total MP3 player market. It was the default option for listening to audio shows on the go, if an inelegant one.
“It was a terrible experience,” says Leo Laporte, founder of early digital audio outlet This Week in Tech (TwiT) and host of radio...