Happy 10th iPod! Sorry, But You Must Die Now. [INFOGRAPHIC]

Happy 10th Birthday! (almost - it's actually October 23rd)   BLAM!   Goodbye.

Yep, it's time that Apple put the ol' girl down and sell her to the glue factory. The world was a vastly different place in 2001. George Bush was sworn in as President, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone just came out (along with Shrek; Monsters, Inc.; and Ocean's 11), the Baltimore Ravens won the SuperBowl (34-7 over the Giants), Venus Williams won the women's Wimbeldon match, our Federal Deficit was "only" $5 trillion, unemployment was 4.8% and a stamp cost $0.34.

There were still "record stores" (Google it) where people bought physical media in order to enjoy music. Having a Sony Walkman was considered "cool" (by 2001 all the "cool kids" had a "DiscMan" - the CD version of the Walkman), but lugging those cassettes (or new-fangled CDs) around - was a hassle.

There were other players in the nascent "portable" music player category (Diamond Rio, HanGo Personal Jukebox) - but, as usual, it took Apple and their eye for industrial design (and chutzpah to charge $399 for a music player) to literally change the music industry as we know it.

There were dozens of "me-too" cheapo Mp3 players - but the iPod in all its various incarnations still out-sold all the others.

It was Google's Motorola's ROKR phone in 2005 that broke the ground on having music on your phone. It even "worked" with iTunes (although it was notoriously slow and limited to 100 songs).

Then along came January 9, 2007 - and the introduction of the iPhone... and well, you know that story. You now have a mini-laptop, game player, and GPS unit in your hand that also happens to make calls. In September 2010, Apple came out with the iPod Touch (an iPhone without the phone) - and has sold over 60,000,000 of them.

Oh, yeah, and Apple's made a coupla' bucks on the 10 billion songs and applications people have bought and downloaded... and while music downloads are nice, iCloud subscriptions and higher app prices means it will make even more money as people ditch their modern Walkman for an all-in-one device.

It's been an amazing run! Here's a look back:

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