Lets Not Bring The iPod Back

Across the internet, but most likely not in real life, we see people wanting to ‘bring back the iPod,’ a time when you were not bombarded with notifications and didn’t have a time-sucking smartphone. Let me explain why this is ridiculous. First of all, smartphones had been around since the 1990s, with PDAs springing up around the same time, cellphones gaining popularity, and Apple making MP3 players popular with the iPod in the early 2000s. If you wanted the capability of a modern phone in 2005, you would need to carry around two or three devices. The modern smartphone just combines those devices into one.

Sure, it may feel nostalgic to watch an old movie like Sleepover or The Clique and see the kids hanging out with each other and using dedicated pieces of tech. But if you are actually a music fan, it is far more affordable to be one today than it ever was in human history. And if you truly feel distracted by your phone, companies are not offset by some weird guilt and smart capitalism. Let’s look at a popular phone category from the era that people love so much: the music phone. These were phones that allowed you to play music and make calls, and yet the social psyche was not affected. People were not whining with nostalgia on the internet about wanting the return of the MP3 player. The reason phone companies sell millions of phones every year is not because you cannot buy a flip phone, an MP3 player, and a camcorder — it’s because nobody wants to. It is also very expensive to live that way in 2026.

Let’s compare the cost of buying an album on iTunes in 2005 to listening to music now in 2026. In 2005, one album cost $9.99 on iTunes. On Spotify, an album is free. If you wanted to listen to more songs than just that album, you would have to pay $9.99 again. Spotify is free, but if you pay for Premium, it costs $12.99 a month, meaning that to break even with an iTunes album, you would only need to listen to 15.6 albums a year, or a little under one an a half a month.

Now yes, iTunes MP3s are owned, but on smartphones today you can still buy and own MP3s. The smartphone offers the choice to buy MP3s or stream them. This outrage is just virtue signaling and nostalgia that is going to stifle innovation. We have real problems with smartphones , I agree people should not spend hours a day watching social media, but the solution is not to pick your favorite 2000s movie and look at the tech being used in it. The solution is not to ‘bring back the flip phone.’ The solution is to bring back and create more iconic software: yes, AI chatbots, but more interesting things as well. Things that will use the full might and power of the phone’s chip — better reading and book discovery software, an offline encyclopedia, an offline version of CapCut without the endless Chinese slop. Things that will improve your life and not make it worse. God bless and Tech Talk To You Later!!!