Alas, poor iPod! I knew you, a machine of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.

You hath bore my entertainment on your back a thousand times, and now how abhorr'd in my imagination it is!

- Hamlet (sort of)

Yes, the poor iPod is fighting a losing battle against smartphones and smaller bits of memory: Apple just announced that iPod sales fell off the cliff last quarter, down 20% year over year. It's the fastest quarterly decline they've ever experienced — and my bet is, this is just the beginning.

The more popular, 3G-friendly iPhone and iPad (and most non-Apple smart devices) now have more than enough memory to hold your whole music library. There is no longer a need to carry around the device that started the revolution in digital music.

When the iPod launched in 2001 — just 10 years ago — the idea of holding all of my CDs (and vinyl — yes, I still have vinyl) on one small machine that fit in the palm of my hand was... well... ridiculous. Over the years the machine kept getting more powerful — and it kept getting smaller. Have you seen the Nano lately?

I had carried my hundreds, probably thousands (who's counting), of LPs and CDs in huge, heavy boxes as I moved around the country. Now my faves all fit on that one, tiny machine.

Today, my music is safely tucked away on my iPhone and my iPad2, both of which have enough memory to carry most, if not all, of my library. A quick poll here in the CultureMap offices confirmed the same — most of us multitask, listening to music on the same device we check email on. My iPod is now gathering dust next to my Apple TV (which, by the way, will now play my iTunes library wirelessly through my multimedia center). I'll occasionally carry it out to my car for longer trips, switching it on to take in a mix of my very favorite tunes — Elvis still gets a lot of play there. But even that is changing as Pandora becomes more ubiquitous.

Not that anyone noticed. Even with iPod's crash and burn, Apple is doing fine. This quarter, the company has sold 9.25 million iPads and 20.3 million iPhones. This quarter — that's just three months. Both devices have surpassed projected sales. Further sales of Mac computers are up 14%; below expectations but still blowing away the overall sales growth of PCs, at just 2.6%.

All of this means that Apple's already atmosphereic stock price of around $380 jumped another 5%.

Apple also announced the the new OSX Lion will go on sale later this month.

Tell us what you think: Is the iPod still your choice for carrying music? What are you using?

Maybe it's too early to be predicting the Shakespearean death of the iPod. or maybe not.

Lay iPod i' th' earth,
And from her fair and unpolluted aluminum
May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish iPhone,
A minist'ring angel shall my iPod be
When, thou liest howling.

- Hamlet (sort of)

Let's jump into the time machine — here's video of Steve Jobs announing the very first iPod way back in 2001: