How do you like them apples?

It's around here somewhere, I think.

My iPod Mini. The only Apple product I've ever owned.

It's around here somewhere, maybe.

I haven't seen it, let alone used it, in years.

It may have been in the stack of ancient electronics - desktops, laptops, Palm Pilots, Blackberries - that I had Earthworm haul away last fall. But it's more likely that it's around here somewhere.

I remember what was on it. Some of it, anyway. Mary Black. Mary Chapin Carpenter. Bruce Springsteen. Stuff to keep me going on my road trips to Syracuse, New York, when the radio off and on I90 was spotty and often right-wing talk, and the drives were long and monotonous. Back in yesteryear, when I still had my Beetle.

It's not that I have any antipathy towards Apple. It's just that Apple was never my thing.

My career was largely in the Intel-Windows world of B2B (business to business) and T2T (techie to techie) software, which was never Apple's sandbox. Apple was consumer tech, tech for designers, tech for schools. I even worked on products that ran on - hold on to your chapeau - OS/2. And before my career was largely in the Intel-Windows world, it was in the big, fat IBM mainframe world. 

Circa 1980-ish, my husband had an Apple II that, as I recall, he used to run some stat package he used in his work. What I really remember about it was that the "k" key stuck. Eventually, he junked it, and I believe that was when we got ourselves a pair of snappy Leading Edges for our very own personal computers.

Most folks I know are Apple-ists. They all have iPhones. And/or Macs. And/or iPads. And/or Apple Watches. And/or Apple TV. (Poor me, apparently, missing out on Ted Lasso.)

I'll give it to Apple for design, especially back in the day when other designs were more primitive - or at least less colorful. (Yes, I did long for a turquoise iMac at one point.) And the Apple UI back then was admittedly easier for the U's to I with. But ease of use was never my jam. For years, I resisted using early Windows to manage files, and did much of my management at the DOS level using command line language.

But mostly, when it comes to Apple, I think a) pricey; b) cult-y: not my Apple-ist friends and family, who would never wait for hours in the sleet outside the Apple Store on Boylston to get the newest i-Whatever, but plenty cult-y; and c) meh.

Despite friends and family trying to convince me to hop on the Apple wagon I have nevertheless managed to persist in resisting.

But I did enjoy that little iPod, and it absolutely saved me on those long drives from Boston to Syracuse, which I did every few months for a good long while.

So I felt a little twinge of something or other - nostalgia, maybe; wishing I was twenty years younger, definitely - when I heard that Apple is EOL-ing (that's tech talk for end-of-life-ing) the iPod.

In a statement Tuesday, the company said it would continue selling the 7th generation iPod touch "while supplies last" -- a quiet confirmation that the age of the iPod may finally be over.

The move, while bittersweet for techies of a certain age, didn't come entirely by surprise. For years, Apple has slowly culled its line of portable media machines: the last iPod with the classic click-wheel was discontinued in 2014, and the once-popular iPod nano followed-suit three years later. (Source: Boston Globe, but originally from the Washington Post)

I only used my iPod for long drives. I'm not someone who needs to have music with me/on me 24/7. I listen to music plenty of times, either on the radio (how about that?) or on my CD player (yes, truly). I haven't bothered with Spotify or any other streaming service. But music is more "nice to have some of the time" than it is "have to have all of the time." Maybe if I had a car and drove around. Maybe if I "needed" music when I'm out walking. 

So I don't miss my own personal iPod. If I did, I'd know where it is. So I won't miss out on anything now that Apple's cutting the iPod cord. Sorry/not sorry.

If anything, as someone who's long been a reverse snob (perverse snob?) when it comes to Apple, I have a slight twinging regret that I ever got an iPod to begin with. Why not just get any old MP3 player? Grrrr.....

What was interesting about the article on the iPod's demise was the suggestion that it was the iPod that actually helped Apple get out of its "death spiral."

After a string of not-quite-right leaders, prodigal CEO Steve Jobs returned to the company and shook up its computer lineup with a slew of cheap, colorful iMacs in 1998. Then came similarly cheery iBooks a year later. But it was arguably the first iPod, unveiled in October 2001, that set a revived Apple down a different path -- one that cemented its place in people's pockets, not just on their desks.

In the past, Apple had dabbled with other super-portable gadgets in the past, like some ill-fated digital cameras and the early PDA whose lasting legacy was a throwaway joke on The Simpsons. But according to Leander Kahney, author of the book "The Cult of iPod," the company's first MP3 player was different.

"It really was a marvelous gadget," he told The Post. "So easy to use and the source of so much joy and pleasure -- because of the music it contained, of course. And it was the product that totally transformed Apple, laid the groundwork for the iPhone and kick-started massive growth."

I'll give Apple that. I was never part of the iPod Cult - who even knew there was one - but it really was a marvelous little gadget. I should go and dig mine up and see if it's worth anything to Apple buffs and iPod cultists. Maybe I can make a few bucks on eBay. Buy myself a few new CDs.