RiPod. What Happens When Technology Dies

This is a download from BFM 89.9, the Business Station. BFM 89.9, the Business Station. My name is Rich Bradbury, and welcome to Matt's Blain. We're looking at what happens when technology dies on Matt's Blain today, and bidding farewell to Apple's iPod as we look at another icon on the threat, the petrol station, Forecord.

It seems like we're only talking about this just a few weeks ago. Hey Rich, yeah, I mean the iPod thing definitely, I know the petrol station forecord is probably a little bit of a curveball for those people, but we will get there. Yeah, I think it was only like October that we were talking about the iPod because we were celebrating its 20th anniversary. But of course, in this COVID era, there's not a lot of difference between six months ago and this morning.

So like I said, six months ago, it was the 20th birthday of the iPod, and we had a look at its colossal impact and legacy. And that legacy, it takes us straight through to smartphones and to streaming media. And at the time, that was a big news item, you'd expect it to be. It's one of our digital landmarks.

But what seems to have happened a lot more quietly is Apple announcing that it's ending production of its last music player, which is an iPod touch. Quietly in the sense that Apple, they didn't want to draw attention to it. Right. No, I mean, Apple's never really had problems retiring products when they reach the end of what they consider to be, you know, the useful span.

That's kind of the thing about innovation. You know, tomorrow turns into yesterday really quickly. So this is more about media interest and pickup. You know, as we noted at the time, most people were surprised that Apple still made any iPods and the model that most of us think of as an iPod, you know, that classic, I mean, it's the iPod classic, that little brick shape that actually ceased production back in 2014, I think.

Did it really? I loved that thing. I still love that thing. Yeah, I know.

And it's still my favorite as well. And I'll talk about that a little bit later. But the model that is going to stay on the shelves, at least until stocks last, is the 2019 refresh of the iPod touch, which is, you know, basically, it's an iPhone SE without the phone part and with, you know, a really creaky old A10 processor. Apple, of course, you know, is rightly proud of the iPod's history in the release announcing the retirement, the senior vice president of worldwide marketing, I hate all these titles.

Greg Josuhek said that, you know, the iPod redefined how music is discovered, listened to and shared, but that, you know, its spirit will live on in many of Apple's other products. But in truth, you know, the iPod really died with the retirement of the classic, the nano and the shuffle. You know, those were the iconic MP3 based players, but of course, streaming made them pretty much irrelevant. The iPod touch, you know, especially in its later iterations was much more of a kind of smartphone light.

But and I think $199 US dollars, it was the cheapest way to enter Apple's iOS ecosystem, unless, you know, of course, you got out and buy a used device. So from now on, the cheapest iOS device will be, of course, the entry level iPad. That's interesting. Did the iPod touch still make sense though in 2022?

Well, no, not really. I mean, I mentioned that thing about it being kind of an iPhone SE light. Despite that $200 price point, it's still relatively expensive in terms of market. You know, it's processor, it's old, it's slow.

Apple would either have to keep upgrading it or create a sidebar to iOS, which might not run all the apps that you might want it to anyway. And its price rises to almost $400 for a device with 256 gigs of memory. You know, as a contrast, $200 will buy you a much better equipped Android device, you know, an entry level one, which of course will work as a phone too. Or if you really want to save money, you can go for one of Amazon's bargain basement price tablets, which started around 60 or 70 US dollars.

So the iPod touch was a premium product in a niche that no one is really looking for anymore. That said, I'm sure there'll be a lot of demand for those last devices on the shelves as the collectors and the nostalgia freaks sort of run out to buy themselves a little slice of history. I'll be expecting to see them on porn stars in a couple of years time, you know, do you think this supply chain decision? Well, Apple hasn't said that explicitly, but I think that's a pretty reasonable assumption to make.

You know, why tie up all those components in a device with sales that are, you know, sluggish to underwater. Last month, of course, Apple announced that it was facing constraints and meeting demand for a lot of its key products, including iPhones, iPads and Macs. And it's expecting those constraints to worsen to become even deeper in Q3, which is typically the time that the company launches new models of its flagship phones. Do you think that this is also part of a move by Apple away from music?

I don't think so. You know, music is still a lure that sells a lot of its premium price peripherals. You know, it's it's AirPods, the over the years, headphones, the home speakers. Music is still a core part of Apple experience.

It's more that with their other devices, you know, they they approach music differently. You can approach it differently. The iPod Touch was out of touch with the times. Phone screens are getting larger.

People are less resistant to tablets. They want their devices to do more. And increasingly, they just want to carry one device that will cover, you know, all of their entertainment and increasingly their work needs. And Apple, of course, has long lagged well behind pretty much everyone in terms of the gaming experience.

They have attempted to address that with their arcade service, you know, and all you can eat game subscription. But that was a typically Apple move. You know, they tried to redefine the way that people thought of games rather than creating devices that actually meet the needs of cutting edge gamers. Right, right.

Part of which, of course, is the ability to customize and swap out components with relative ease, which is something that Apple has long made increasingly difficult. I mean, only last week a friend was complaining that she couldn't run the Sims on one of her devices. Or one of her Apple devices. Or one of her Apple devices.

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Why?

I'm not sure. I mean, I'm not sure if it's incompatibility with the processes as it's moved from version to version. Graphics card or something. Graphics card or something.

But, you know, it's not a particularly power hungry or involved title. So, to have problems with something like that, that's, you know, it's not really looking up for the gaming community. But, you know, I'm not trying to suggest that Apple is retiring the iPod Touch as part of, you know, some master plan or play for gaming and the metaverse. But we have seen devices like the M1 chip equipped iPad Pros that are much more powerful than the operating system that constraints them.

I got one. You know, it's like having a supercard to go along an unpaved road. You know, the indications are that Apple won't be adapting the chip for use in the iPhone 14 or whatever the next iteration of the phone is called. But with those M1 Ultra chips that were released, I think a couple of months ago, it does look like Apple has the hardware, if not necessarily the clear intentions, to head into that gaming and metaverse space.

But as you mentioned, you know, they've always been issues with the graphics cards as well. But can you imagine what an Apple run metaverse would look like? I mean, I'd imagine it would be beautiful and clean and uncluttered and all of those things that we design very design conscious, you know? Well, I think so too.

I agree with you on the clean, probably a lot of white as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I don't think that it would be an awful lot of fun because I wouldn't imagine that the company would actually, you know, embrace our desire to actually do anything in the metaverse, especially if it compromised its design principles. You know, for example, would all our avatars automatically wear black polo necks, for example, or virtual meetings?

I mean, would it just be our avatars standing in a white space talking to each other? You know, I can imagine it all being a bit like that to Carl George Lucas, sci-fi THX, 1138. Yeah. Maybe a little less scary, but probably not too much.

And you know, I can imagine that Apple's idea of fun would be creating some kind of version of Minecraft that they modeled on Legos architecture series. Okay, we seem to stray a little bit away from the iPod. Can we get back to that? Well, we can.

I mean, the wider point here is about, you know, redundancy. Do we keep products and lines around because they are historically or culturally significant? You know, when you look at something like another design classic, the Eames chair, it has that timeless quality to it. If you want to, you can tweak and update that form.

You know, you can change the materials it's made from to make it stronger or cheaper or more environmentally friendly. And of course, you can keep that classic line going, the original design for the purists and the nostalgia. But that same logic doesn't really apply in the same way to technology products. I do love an Eames chair.

Well, there is a rise in interest in these feature phones again, right? Well, yes, but you know, that's part of the reaction. That's coming from a group of people turning their backs on technology. You know, they're deciding not to be on WhatsApp or limiting their social media exposure.

They've decided that they don't want to take pictures of every smiling cat or hissing baby that they come across. You know, we don't want digital devices that take half an hour to load a page. So when we see retro devices, it's usually in the form of some kind of design throwback. There'll be an outer casing that has, you know, design cues or nods to that earlier time.

But inside, it's going to be packed with the latest software and hardware. I've been watching a lot of car YouTube of late, because, you know, I've watched all the reality shows there are. And you know, there's that that's there was that spate of hot rod and classic sort of 1940s and 50s inspired reissues in the US in the early norties. The Chrysler, PT Cruiser, and there were a lot of cars and trucks in that vein.

But nobody actually wanted them with a period correct 1938 engine or running gear. You know, it's the same with those modern Beatles and minis. Consumers want something that has that heritage twist that they can enjoy, but they want all of the modern safety and comfort specifications, you know, to give them that modern motoring experience. Right.

I mean, I'm kind of trying to imagine the museum of the future. I mean, do you think it's going to be populated and is the first part of the 21st century just going to be represented by a bunch of identical black screen rectangles? Well, it does kind of look that way, doesn't it? You know, these incredible life changing life shaping innovations.

But there's nothing to look at when they're switched off or non-functional. You know, I hope at least that the iPod is remembered for its legacy, not to mention the fact it's got buttons. You know, and that legacy is that it helped to make it easy to transport and listen to large quantities of music without needing, you know, the advanced engineering degree to navigate its operating system that you found on a lot of the other MP3 players. So in terms of its cultural impact, how would you compare it to, I guess, the Walkman?

Well, I think this is kind of a difficult question to answer, because I think there's going to be a generational divide in most people's answers. For anyone born after, I don't know, I'm just randomly selecting say 1995, the Walkman was already a legacy technology. You know, those of us over the age of 40 have probably had those moments of trying to explain how a cassette works to someone under the age of 30. And generally, we fail because it turns out most of us don't know how cassettes work.

You know, with CDs, all we have to say is something like, oh, there's data on a disc and it's read by a laser. We might not understand what that means or how that works, but at least it sounds plausible. With cassettes, you tell someone that magnetic particles on a strand of tape are red as they roll over a static head. And it just sounds sketchy.

It just sounds like something you made up. But having said that, I bet you actually know how cassettes work, don't you? I do and you've pretty much almost hit it, you know, the nail on the head, you know, it's a tape coated with magnetic particles, normally ion oxide or chromium oxide, and they're kind of shaped like needles. And then mix with a binder, put onto polyester plastic, and once it's been smooth, dried and polished, it's cut into, you know, these strips.

And then you record sound really simply, the cassette is placed in a recorder, and the magnetic tape inside that cassette passes around a bunch of magnetic heads, normally five, and each of those heads realigns the magnetic particles on the passing tape and those patterns correspond to the loudness and frequency or the rate of vibration of certain sounds. Easy. Exactly. And for all the zoomers out there, their eyes glazed over about six seconds into that explanation.

That's why CDs are easier, easier, and laser reads a disc. It's sci-fi. But you know, going back to that cultural impact, and thank you very much for that explanation, by the way, the jokes aside, going back to that cultural impact, you know, I'd say that they're at least equal. But maybe the iPod has that cultural edge on the Walkman, because yes, the Walkman democratized music, and we do have an episode in the archive about the Walkman as well.

So you can look that one up. But until, until the Walkman came along, music on the move effectively meant radio, which meant listening to what someone else wanted you to hear. So the iPod in that sense was an evolution of the Walkman's portable music revolution. But it was also so much more.

It was the precursor of, and the primer for those smartphones and ubiquitous digital devices. It was essentially that battle between email and convergence devices that eventually swept the Blackberry away. You know, the Walkman opened the door to music, but the iPod opened the door to information. I mean, that's kind of ironic in this age of stupidity and disinformation, but it opened the door to knowledge.

And if someone asked you now, would you give up your computer or your phone, which one would you choose? You see, that's interesting, because my head and my heart say different things. I probably give up my computer and just use my phone. But really, what I really want is to give up my phone, but I can't.

Yeah, I mean, I get what you mean, because it keeps you tethered and it keeps you connected to people you don't necessarily want to be connected to all of the time. Precisely. Yeah, but for me, it would actually be the other way around. I'd rather get rid of my computer because I can get by with my phone.

Maybe not quite as easily, but I can just about get most of the stuff done with the exception, maybe of recording these shows. But even for that, I could figure out some kind of work around. So, you know, good night iPod, thanks for everything you did for us. And long may my aging iPod classic boot up when I ask it to, because you know, the day that that device dies, that's going to be a really sad one for me.

Yeah. Okay, when we come back showing some love to petrol station for court, possibly here on Matt's plane on BFM 829.9, the business station. Burning for more, BFM 899.9, the business station. BFM 899.9, the business station.

My name is Rich Bradbury. Welcome back to Matt's plane. So we set a fun farewell to the mighty iPod, but not everything is as easy to remove as a mobile device. You can't just throw it out of the window.

What about the physical infrastructure that technology is rendering obsolete? Yeah, I'm wondering about the state of your garden if you just throw technology out of the window. But anyway, you know, this is the kind of flip of what we were talking about before the break. You know, we mentioned those museums of the future full of dead smartphones or more likely full of NFTs of dead smartphones.

But you know, as you said, you know, what about the physical items we can't get rid of once technology moves on? Like windmills. Well, I mean, that's one analogy. I mean, it's probably not the one I would have jumped for.

But sure, there's actually a lovely windmill in the village I grew up in. I'll be saying that in a week or two. A few hundred years ago, of course, windmills were the work courses of the European countryside. Now, of course, very few of them still remain and the ones that do even fewer still work because we don't need working windmill.

So the ones that are still working, they tend to be maintained as exhibition pieces. And the majority of those remnants have been turned into homes. Waterwheels would be another similar example. I saw one of those by property abroad reality shows a couple of years back.

Like I told you, I've finished reality shows on YouTube. And there was this French farmhouse on a river that had its own water wheel. I can't remember if it was functioning. I think it was.

But you know, you could have set something like that up to generate at least some of the electricity for the house. But, you know, technology has moved on and the mills and the wheel, the waterwheels and the steam engines have moved on with technology. And many of those other once omnipresent and defining symbols of economic and industrial ingenuity have just disappeared. So you think that the petrol station is the modern windmill?

In a sense, yes. I mean, just think of how many acres of land are occupied by petrol stations. Just think about how many forecourts there are within, say, five kilometers of where you live. If you live in a dense urban environment, that could be, you know, literally dozens.

I read a lovely article called Forecourt Futures by a computer scientist and entrepreneur called Quentin Stafford Fraser. You can find his blog at statusq.org. The link will be in the show notes on podcast feed. And incidentally, I found this via John Norton's weekly column in the Guardian.

Now, I've read a few of these kind of posts. What will happen to the petrol station when we go electric? There've been a number of them over the past few years. But I guess what really brought this one home was driving past and abandoned petrol forecourt.

It was marooned between some, you know, some road restructuring that had left it inaccessible. You know, it was just standing between two flyovers. It was this piece of useless and uncared for land. But there's still this roof and a kiosk and a lot of weeds.

And it does make you wonder what's going to happen to all those other petrol stations when we switch over to, you know, electric, solar, or whatever else eventually replaces oil fired car engines. Wouldn't they just be turned into EV charging stations? Well, that's often the vision that we're sold on. But, you know, look at the average petrol station.

Like the one that I mentioned, they're often shoehorned into whatever available land that lies alongside the road. Sometimes there's enough space for a sprawling forecourt. You know, you've got your pumps, you've got lots of parking spaces. Other times you can barely squeeze the cars between the pumps.

There's a particularly fun one next to BFM that people like to park around the edges of. And you have to make these kind of quantum level calculations just to maneuver to and from the pumps. So that kind of real estate doesn't really lend itself to the idea of a charging station where a car might have to sit at that pump equivalent for maybe up to an hour. Hang on a minute.

Last week, we're talking about this breakthrough. I could bring charging times down to just six minutes. Well, we did. But it will take time for, you know, that to become the kind of dominant system and technology plus the car batteries will have to be compatible with that type of rapid charging.

That may not be possible for some of the older electric cars or it might require expensive retrofitting. Certainly, we will see some of those petrol stations being transformed into EV charging stations or hubs. In fact, BP, the petroleum company, just bought charge master, which is the UK's largest electric vehicle charging point provider. It's got something like 6,500 public points across the UK.

Shell has also made similar moves, you know, internationally. And it's something that we can expect to see more of across the industry as those petrol companies move into renewables to diversify their business model. And I'm sure they'll make it work. But I don't see them simply swapping out those petrol pumps for charging points, ports at the existing stations.

I think they'll probably look for other infrastructure options and approaches. I mean, if I turn the question around, what's it typically called when you leave your car in one place for 30 minutes to an hour? And John or off? Whichever you prefer off.

Off parking. Well, yeah, exactly. It's parking. So we know that a lot of countries are moving to phase out petrol engine cars within the next decade or so.

In those countries, it would make a lot more sense for parking spaces to be the place where you charge your car. Yeah. Because we typically leave our cars standing around for the bulk of the day. And we've had the concept of, you know, park and ride for decades.

So now I think it's the time to, you know, park and plug. Right. Yeah. It doesn't make any sense to go looking for a charging station to wait in a queue and then sit at the charger for half an hour when your car has already been parked and stationary for most of the day.

It would make a lot more sense for urban charging networks, especially urban charging networks, to be built in collaboration with property developers to be a feature of malls and to be a feature of, you know, of the sparking spots. I mean, we have seen a little bit of an increase in EV stations inside malls. Yes, but it's still replicating the petrol station model. You get a small number of charging bays and sometimes those bays are limited to a particular brand of car.

And you get this mismatch in supply and demand. What I'm envisioning is a large chunk or even all of the parking bays being equipped with a charger. And of course, you know, we're looking by that point where almost everyone, you know, the use of EVs is pretty much universal. Do you think that's going to be economically viable though?

I mean, I genuinely couldn't say I'm certainly not with the current model, but at some point in the future, those costs for superchargers are going to have to reduce drastically because most of us are going to want or need to have them at our homes, possibly more than one if we have more than one car. For people in apartments and condos, that means charges will have to be allocated to their designated parking bays. So it may simply be that in the future, this will just be accessible and affordable technology. You know, you can imagine a future where charging is simply a feature of parking when we're in that kind of EV-based world.

In fact, nothing else really makes sense. You know, petrol stations only exist because we have to pour a flammable liquid into the machines that we drive around, stations with a solution to a problem. EVs come with a different set of problems and solutions. You know, we don't have to replicate the petrol model for EVs just because you know, they've got wheels and a steering wheel.

In fact, you know, beyond having way stations along highways where you can charge on longer trips, the forecourt model really doesn't make any kind of sense for electric vehicles at all. So then what do we do with all of those empty petrol forecourts? Well, I think, you know, the bulk of them would go the way of the windmills. Quentin Stafford Fraser mentions pivoting their business models, you know, highlighting the rest stop aspect, but he's looking at the UK in Malaysia.

Rest stops are already common along major roads and not just along the highways and at those rest stops, there are already multiple vendors providing food and services. But it is worth remembering that a lot of independent and franchise petrol operators or petrol station operators, they don't actually make that much money from the sale of the fuel. A lot of the profits come from the store that's attached to the petrol station. Hence, you know, the branded coffee machines with voices you might recognise.

And of course, the the donuts that you find them, you know, those little touches that entice you to stop and spend. But I guess, you know, most of those stations will end up being removed and the land rehabilitated and reused. You know, I'd like to say there'll be a bit of public wilding, but you know, let's face it, the land will probably become cheap offices and apartments. They'll cater to people who can't afford not to live on the edge of roads and highways.

Maybe a few will end up being preserved like the fabulous UNESCO protected Fiat Taliero station in Asmara, the capital of Eritrea. It looks like one up on Google because that really is a fantastic piece of architecture. But by and large, you know, the petrol station for I think it's just going to pass into history. It'll be something where, you know, you go to those state and country fair type events and there'll be a petrol powered car shown refueling at a pump and the crowd will be absolutely amazed that we ever did anything so primitive.

Just in the same way that we go and see steam engines at those similar fares today. And we marvel at, you know, the complexity of them. And we wonder how anyone ever took the risk of riding on one of these things that's basically a pressure bomb. Yeah.

Yeah, indeed. Thanks very much for that. Very interesting. Thanks a lot.

And petrol and iPods, the perfect combination. Indeed. Folks, you can find Matt on Instagram and Twitter at CultureMatt or you can subscribe to the CulturePop newsletter on Subsnack for more information about these shows. But if you did miss any of this show, don't forget you can download the podcast wherever you normally download it from.

I recommend the BFM app. It's available at the App Store or Google Play. This has been Matt Sblaind. I've been Rich Brandbury on BFM 89.9, the Business Station.

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