Apple hides original iPod in Apple Music so you can relive the magic 25-years on, click by click

Apple is celebrating the iPod’s music player’s 25th anniversary today and is offering up a little easter egg to commemorate the transformational product that changed the company’s trajectory forever.

The company is hiding a fully functional iPod emulator within an error page on Apple Music. When following this link (don’t use Safari, it’ll open the Apple Music app instead) in your web browser. “Page Not Found – Give this a spin instead” Apple says on the 404 page.

It’s a faithful digital recreation of the original, click wheel iPod. There’s the physical play/pause, skip, menu and the centre select buttons. You can operate the click wheel by using a multi touch gesture on your laptop’s trackpad.

The iPod is loaded with a library of tracks and playlists with hits from the year in question and the 2000s in general. There’s a 90-second preview of each of the tracks available.

There’s also access to the classic Brick game, which was build into the original iPod in 2001. You can access it in the same way you did on the OG iPod, by holding down the select button within the Settings > About menu. It was a significant little Easter egg even back then because Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wosniak helped build the similar Breakout game for Atari, as an evolution of the Pong game. Very cool indeed.

iPod sales have risen once again in recent years, despite Apple discontinuing the line in 2022. There’s something just a little magical about a device that only focuses on delivering music to your ears.