Tony Fadell, who invented the iPod, was in a New York City subway station when he spotted a massive five-by-four-foot poster promoting the device he designed over two decades ago.
The twist: the iPod Shuffle is being revived with a specific pitch—"Zero screen time." The campaign has struck a chord.
"For somebody like me who knows that thing intimately, it's like seeing your kid's picture," Fadell told TechCrunch about encountering the Back Market ad campaign.
This is part of a broader shift toward "slowtech." While most people manage push notifications, algorithm-driven feeds, and apps designed to capture attention, younger consumers are returning to devices with minimal function: wired headphones, retro gaming consoles, CDs, and digital point-and-shoot cameras. Devices that don't know your name, don't track your behavior, and won't show you gambling ads.
Joy Howard, the CMO behind the iPod Shuffle revival at Back Market, said: "People are very oversaturated and overstimulated, and they really want to have a more mindful approach to what they're doing with their tech."
The appeal lies in friction itself. The buttons on an iPod Shuffle that force you to shuffle through songs stop you from endlessly scrolling and optimizing every moment.
Fadell's device is having a second life.
