Apple finally kills off iPod classic after 13 years of service

Not mentioned during today's announcements, Apple has quietly removed the venerable iPod classic from its mobile music player lineup, paring down the company's offerings to the iPod touch, iPod nano and iPod shuffle.

The iPod classic descended from the original iPod and stayed on as a Click Wheel-toting outlier in Apple's lineup as the company moved to touchscreen interfaces and iOS. With its larger chassis, Apple was able to market the iPod classic as its most capacious player option, reaching 160GB of internal storage on a spinning hard drive.

Before axing the product, Apple carried the iPod classic's design over from the sixth-generation iPod, which was first unveiled in 2007. A few aesthetic tweaks came in 2009, but the overall shape and functional features remained unchanged for over six years.

With the classic no longer showing up on the Online Apple Store or Apple's dedicated iPod webpage, it is clear that an era has come to an end. Apple's portable music and video player offerings are now limited to flash-based 16GB, 32GB and 64GB iPod touch models, the 16GB iPod nano and 2GB iPod shuffle.