Apple quietly kills the iPod Nano and Shuffle

There's now only one iPod left

iPods are displayed after an Apple special event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on September 12, 2012 in San Francisco, California (Getty Images)

Apple has killed the iPod Nano and Shuffle.

The two iconic music players have been quietly removed from the Apple Store, signalling that they join the company's many other dead but much loved products.

The line is now gradually diminishing – leaving only the iPod Touch left. That product, which is like a slimmed down iPhone without the phone, has been updated.

The two iPods were already living on borrowed time. They were the only members of the iPod line that didn't run iOS, and didn't have internet connections which meant they couldn't use Apple Music.

Neither of them had been updated in years.

In their time, both iPods were iconic parts of the Apple line-up. The Shuffle was innovative in dropping the screen and offering an incredibly shrunken music player to people like runners, and the Nano was a tiny version of the much-beloved iPod.

But both have been slowly killed off by the iPhone.

They follow the iPod Classic, which was killed in 2014. That was followed by a huge sale in the price of second hand models – though that might be unlikely with the Mini and Nano, which have fewer standout features and less nostalgia value.

The iPod Touch was updated at the same time its siblings were killed off, with more storage. The 32GB model can be bought for $199 and the 128GB one can be bought for $199, and that model received a major update relatively recently.

Apple has kept the name "Pod" around, despite the slow death of the iPod. Earlier this year it released its HomePod, a speaker for the home, that sits alongside the wireless earphones known as AirPods.