IS THE IPOD DEAD? How America’s Favorite MP3 Player Fell Out of Favor — and Found a New Audience
Winter Settlements Getting Clients What They Deserve
Media outlets have been declaring the iPod “over” for years. In 2017, a USA Today article blared, “Say goodbye to the iPod era,” and a 2018 Reddit thread asked, “Why are iPods still a thing?” But, despite that lack of consumer confidence, Apple continues to sell brand-new Apple iPod Touches on its website for $199 and up, and it just updated them in 2019 — why? As it turns out, the iPod is now a tool almost exclusively for kids. When the first iPod MP3 player was released in 2001, adults went nuts for it, but these days, we can listen to music on our versatile smartphones, which have supplanted the iPod for most people. Young children, however, don’t necessarily have the smartphone option — and many parents don’t want them to. An iPod has become a gateway device: It’s the perfect way to give a kid the independence of listening to music on the go without exposing them to everything a smartphone has to offer. According to a Medium post by Yash Patel, the Apple iPod Touch has stuck around to serve this new audience because the pairing benefits both parents and Apple. There is a plethora of pluses for parents:
On a cold morning in January 2018, our client Jackie (a school bus matron for special education students) was walking to the bus stop to get to work. At approximately 5:30 a.m. that day, she slipped and fell on snow and ice in front of a commercial building in Astoria, New York. As a result, 40-year-old Jackie broke her ankle, required surgery, and missed three months of work. A few days before Jackie fell, the owner of the commercial building had hired a company to remove the snow; the company argued that they acted reasonably under the circumstances. However, after the snow removal — and before the fall — the temperature had fluctuated above and below the freezing mark. This resulted in ice melting and re-freezing on the sidewalk. One of the ground-floor tenants of this building had vacated the premises before the end of their lease. Despite leaving the building, the tenant was still responsible for snow and ice removal from the sidewalk at the time of the accident. We were able to establish that in the few days between the snowstorm and the accident, the tenant had not attended to the thawing and re-freezing of the ice on the sidewalk, thereby allowing for a dangerous condition to exist as Jackie went to work. Jackie received a $260,000 settlement.
• iPods have music and games to keep kids busy.
• Kids can stay in touch with their families using FaceTime and iMessage on an iPod, but they can’t call or text (as there’s no service plan). • A $199 iPod isn’t as big of a loss as its more expensive counterpart, the iPhone, if your toddler drops it in the toilet. For Apple, selling iPods brings in additional revenue, but there’s an even bigger perk. As Patel puts it, giving a kid an iPod “brings them into the Apple ecosystem, thus making them more likely to buy an iPhone when they are ready for an upgrade.” With a net worth of more than $2 trillion, Apple can afford to play the long game. If you’re interested in buying an iPod for your child but you’re not sold on the $199 price tag, we can’t blame you. Luckily, there are plenty of secondhand and refurbished iPods floating around the internet at deeply discounted prices. BackMarket.com sells refurbished Nanos, Classics, and Touches with a 12-month warranty for as low as $40. Whether you’re shopping for your kids or just want to kick it old school, that’s a great place to start.
2
FRIEDMANSIMON.COM
Published by Newsletter Pro • www.NewsletterPro.com
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker