New iPods Today?

Well, the rumors have been flying hard and fast for the last couple of weeks about what today's keynote by Apple CEO Steve Jobs will reveal. The consensus seems to be that there will be at least a new touch-screen enabled iPod if not a new iPod Nano to go along with it. I was at Best Buy yesterday killing some time before dinner, so I decided to check out the iPod section to see if I could confirm any of these rumors. The first thing I noticed was that they had taken all of the display model iPods down. There were still a couple of Nanos and Shuffles, but the regular iPods were gone. I asked the guy behind the counter if they still had any iPods in stock and he said that they had a couple of 30GB iPods left, but that there was going to be a "big announcement" today and that I should wait. I told him I had already heard about the touch-screen iPod and he smiled and gave me a nervous laugh, which seemed to confirm my suspicions. So, look out today at 10:00am PST or 1:00pm EST for the big announcement. I am hoping for and predicting a new iPod almost identical to the iPhone but without the phone part; probably a little thinner, with up to a 120GB hard drive (maybe smaller versions will contain a flash drive), music, video, pictures (of course), Wi-fi, internet browser, e-mail, possibly Youtube, looking just like the picture above. It will probably keep the $350 price point, but you never know. They may jack it up to $450 with the 120GB hard drive. And I'm not sure about the new Nano rumors. They still had the old Nano display models out at Best Buy, which seems like a no-go, but they may just be biding their time. I guess we will know later today.

Update: The Apple Store is temporarily down, it is only a matter of time now.

Update 2: I was almost completely right in my predictions. I wasn't sure about the iPod Nano, but yes, there is a new one, and it looks like all of the mock-ups everyone was posting. It features video now along with music and pictures on its chubby, 2-inch screen. The 4GB version will run ya' $150 and the 8GB version goes for a reasonable $200. Of course, for $250 you can get an 80GB iPod Classic, which is the new name of the former iPod. The iPod Classic also now comes with a 160GB hard drive for just $350! The new iPod Touch, which is what I want, looks just like the iPhone, and just like all of the previews. It comes in 8 and 16GB versions for $299 and $399 respectively. Other than that, all of the rumors about it were true. It ships from the Apple store by September 28th. Also, the price has dropped on the iPhone from $599 for the 8GB to just $399! And no more 4GB iPhone. In-fuckin-sane! Well, now I just need to save me some money!