The iPod Is About to Die (BLOG)

Ask yourself: When's the last time you brought an iPod? If you're like an increasing portion of Apple's consumer base, you'll probably have some difficulty remembering your last purchase. That's because the iPod, Apple's groundbreaking line of mp3 players that reinvigorated the company in the early aughts and brought it back from the brink of irrelevancy, is itself becoming more and more irrelevant to both the company's overall business plan and its customers' media consumption.Related: What Techno Goodies to Expect from Steve Jobs Today

Apple consumers have had a sense of the decline of the iPod for a while, and today Fast Company's Kit Eaton makes the case for killing off all four lines of the device altogether and creating a whole new kind of product in its place:

Of course, we're not suggesting Apple should merely throw away 6-8% of its quarterly revenues. It should transform its iPod into something new. Here's what Apple could make: It could learn its lessons from the iPhone and iPad and apply them to the Nano, refreshing it dramatically by injecting a small but powerful ARM chip and low-power Bluetooth 4 tech, along with the smallest VGA webcam unit Apple can find. This would turn it, as we've suggested, into a second-screen iPhone companion (and, yes, discrete MP3 player) that could access a whole new lucrative app marketplace. Think: specialized apps for sports fans, check-ins, wireless payment tech, and so on. It would innovate into a whole new market, pulling off a trademark Apple maneuver.