Apple has succumbed to what has felt like the inevitable and announced that it's discontinuing the last of its iPods, the latest iPod Touch, which will only be available new from retailers while supplies last.

It means that a 20-year stint of revolutionary (and eventually old-fashioned) music players will come to an end, and the iPhone or Apple Watch will become the only way to get a new device from Apple to play music on the go.

Apple hasn't said when it stopped making new iPods, so we'd be surprised if it had too much surplus stock to sell off, so this might be more of an emotive farewell to a product that arguably changed Apple's status in the eyes of the public.

The blog post announcing the iPod's demise features some images of iPods down the ages, from its very first model to the great touch-wheel years, through to the varied iPod Touch models that have come out in more recent times.

These touch-screen iPods' similarities to the iPhone were already making them look an odd proposition, while the unstoppable rise of streaming platforms like Spotify and subsequently Apple Music made it clear that the market for a local-storage music player is far smaller than it once was.

Apple iPod touch (7th gen)

Amazon