Photo credit: Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal recently got a rare look inside Apple Park as part of the company’s 50th anniversary celebrations, with reporters joining Tim Cook for a walk through an archive that Cook himself admitted he had barely visited until preparations for the milestone began pulling decades of stored material back into the light.
A tattered vintage iPod Classic rests on a workshop, its aluminum exterior bent like an overinflated balloon. Scratches mar the surface, and the screen has battle scars from being pushed into a too tight pocket. This little relic from 2007 was purchased on eBay for peanuts, held 80 gigabytes of songs on a spinning hard drive that weighed it down like a boat anchor, and was once an important part of a music lover’s everyday life. It’s now in the capable hands of YouTuber The Retro Future, who is resurrecting yesterday’s technology to become tomorrow’s best companion.
The iPod Classic made its debut in 2001 as a sleek rectangle capable of holding a thousand songs in your pocket. Its click wheel and design were legendary, but Apple discontinued it in 2014, and we’ve been waiting for a product that revolutionized portable music. Fast forward to 2025, and a little firm called Boxy Pixel has developed a mod kit to enhance the iPod Classic for today.
Photo credit: 2001amour via YankoDesign
From afar, this just looks like a 5th-generation iPod Touch, albeit a bulky version, but upon closer inspection, you’ll realize that it is actually made of two devices and functions as a wallet of sorts.
Building a modern Apple iPod with USB-C may sound simple enough, but there are a few things that make the project more technical than you think. Zachary Matchett-Smith of Zac Builds managed to get his hands on a fifth-generation iPod and decided to modernize it to show just what goes into such a project.
TinyPod is an innovative case that turns your Apple Watch into a mini iPod of sorts, complete with a functional click wheel. Most importantly, it doesn’t hinder the functionality of the watch, as you can still use the same magnetic charging cable to power the device up.
With sealed first-generation iPods selling for north of $29,000 USD, it’s only fitting that some fans are building their own alternatives using much more affordable Raspberry Pi boards. Developer Dr. Hatch is one of them, and opted to use a $6.99 Waveshare 2.13″ (250 x 122) E-ink display instead of an LCD on the ePiPod.
This 3rd generation Apple iPod prototype contains an unreleased Tetris game by Apple. Called Stacker, players would rotate the bricks using the scroll wheel and there does not appear to be any bonus stages or power ups like modern versions of the game.
The dreaded Apple iPod discontinued announcement came today after a great 20-year run, but you’re still able to get a new 7th Gen iPod Touch for a limited time or until stock runs out. The first generation model was released on October 23, 2001 in a 5GB capacity, complete with a FireWire connection to transfer music files. What you may not know is that the first model was developed in under a year.
Photo credit: Panic
The first-generation Apple iPod was unveiled by Steve Jobs on October 23, 2001, and today marks its 20th anniversary. What better way to celebrate than by taking a look at an unreleased P68 / Dulcimer iPod prototype? This was uncovered by Panic, makers of the Playdate game console, and it’s quite large as you can see, far larger than the original iPod itself.