iPod lifespan rated at 4 years

Apple’s iPods are pretty well known for the occasional glitch as well as its iconic status, but the failure rate seem higher than others due to its extreme popularity and coverage. Although each iPod was built to last for 4 years, Macintouch performed a survey last year and noticed the iPod had a failure rate that averaged 13.7% from a pool of nearly 9,000 iPods. Most of these iPods died due to hard drive and battery related issues. With the shift to solid state flash memory in its Shuffle and nano line, the failure rate has dropped by quite a bit. Here’s an interesting piece of trivia – the iPod turns five when October rolls around, so if you have a first-gen iPod still running, count yourself blessed.