As Fadell stood in the train station, he was surrounded by people wearing wireless Bluetooth headphones to stream music on their phones, effortlessly accessing music libraries with over 100 million songs. This technology that we take for granted makes Steve Jobs’ early iPod tagline – “one thousand songs in your pocket” – sound antiquated.

The postage-stamp-sized iPod Shuffle, which relied heavily on shuffle playback and offered little control compared to today’s streaming apps, should not appeal to a modern audience. But we have become so entrenched in technology that our various devices, apps, and algorithms mediate our every experience, from grocery shopping to dating. We’ve built smartphones that can do almost anything, but we’ve also created a constant connectedness that has become more exhausting than enriching.

“People are very oversaturated and overstimulated, and they really want to have a more mindful approach to what they’re doing with their tech,” Joy Howard, CMO of Back Market, an online marketplace for refurbished tech, told TechCrunch. “There’s this fatigue that we have with the need to optimize every single aspect of our life.”

Howard and her team were responsible for the iPod Shuffle ad that Fadell was so shocked to encounter. But Howard says that demand is growing for this supposedly obsolete tech – if these devices weren’t driving sales, the company wouldn’t have shelled out for a premium ad placement in a hectic New York City subway station.