The Death Of the iPod: Music Player That Changed The World Is Gone

John Dodge

John Dodge is the Executive Producer of CBS Chicago's website. (You...

By John Dodge

CHICAGO (CBS) - Lost in all the buzz over Apple's new 'wearable device' and bigger, badder phones, was the death of the device that was the patriarch of the company's portable digital revolution.

Apple will no longer sell the standalone MP3 player knowns as the iPod Classic.

Steve Jobs unveiled the original iPod about a month after the Sept 11 attacks in 2001. The $399 original had 5 GB of storage, enough for '1,000 songs in your pocket.'

Now, there simply isn't the need for it, with the technological leaps of smart phones with 20 times the storage and wireless internet access giving users access to a variety of online music services.

The last iPod classic had the capacity to hold more than 30,000 songs.

Apple is still selling the iPod shuffle, Nano and Touch. The tiny shuffle sells for $49 and has 2 GB of storage, a bit less than half of the original iPod.

On the Apple website, an old link to the iPod Classic redirects users to the Shuffle, Nano and Touch page.

There was no formal announcement, as the company focused instead this week on its new Apple Watch and bigger, more capable iPhones.

The iPod reportedly accounted for just 2 percent of Apple's revenue in 2013.