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RIP iPod. Apple’s pioneering music-in-your-pocket has gone the way of the BlackBerry, the 244-year-old Encyclopedia Britannica and the dodo. The Cupertino-based tech group this week said it was discontinuing the iPod Touch, its last remaining portable music device.
安息吧，iPod。蘋果公司首創的「口袋裏的音樂」已經走上了黑莓(BlackBerry)、有244年曆史的《大英百科全書》和渡渡鳥的道路。這家位於庫比蒂諾的科技集團本週表示，將停產iPod Touch，這是它剩下的最後一款攜帶型音樂設備。
At 20 years, the iPod had half as long a run as Sony’s Walkman, its clunkier predecessor. The Walkman allowed 1980s cool kids to listen to music cassettes while rollerblading or doing aerobics.
iPod的壽命定格在20年，只有其更笨重的前輩、索尼隨身聽(Walkman)的一半。隨身聽讓20世紀80年代的酷孩子們在滑旱冰或做健美操時聽音樂卡帶。
Sony moved with the times, transitioning to the CD Walkman when compact discs sounded the death knell for those sticky tangled tapes. But the Japanese conglomerate initially balked at devices for streamed music, fearing cannibalisation of its record label business. All told, Sony sold some 400mn Walkmans, not far short of estimated iPod sales.
索尼順應時代潮流，在CD光碟爲那些粘粘糾結的卡帶敲響喪鐘的時候，轉向了CD隨身聽。但這家日本企業集團最初對串流媒體音樂設備猶豫不決，擔心會蠶食其唱片公司業務。索尼總共賣出了4億臺隨身聽，與iPod的估計銷量相差不遠。
CDs, too, are virtual toast. Kicking off at the dawn of the 80s, the shiny discs peaked in the years spanning the millennium. The heydays were relatively brief but certainly longer than the blink-and-you-missed-it season of the laser disc, which briefly vied with video for viewer eyeballs.
CD也早已是昨日黃花。始於80年代初，這種閃亮的光碟在跨越千禧年的幾年裏達到頂峯。這段時期相對短暫，但肯定比鐳射光碟曇花一現的時間要長。鐳射光碟曾短暫地與影片爭奪觀衆的眼球。
Nostalgia and the enduring love of retro mean the iPod will not die from the collective consciousness. The Walkman survives in the Smithsonian and on online retailer eBay. A new generation of cool kids rediscovered vinyl. Even CD sales blipped up last year.
Some countries have stronger attachments to analogue technologies. BlackBerry phones enjoyed a brief renaissance in Indonesia. Outsized faxes continue to whirr across China and Japan. The latter, home to some of the most cutting-edge technology on the planet, struggles to wean itself off museum-era gadgetry. Sony stopped making Betamax tapes — the technology trounced by the VHS format — only in 2015. Local authorities and banks were still using floppy discs last year.
一些國家對模擬技術有更強的依賴性。黑莓手機曾在印尼短暫復興。超大的傳真機繼續在中國和日本各地嗡嗡作響。後者雖擁有地球上最尖端的一些技術，卻難以擺脫博物館時代的設備。直到2015年，索尼才停止生產Betamax卡帶——這項技術早已被VHS格式擊敗。日本地方政府和銀行去年仍在使用軟盤。
Of course, it’s just possible that this is more about quality than sentimentality. After all, the US military, reliant on floppy discs for its nuclear arsenal, pulled the plug on those only a couple of years ago.
當然，也有可能這更多是關於質量而不是感情的問題。畢竟，依賴軟盤管理核武庫的美國軍方，直到幾年前才停止使用軟盤。