The next Apple event is set to take place on October 4th, and the invitation going out to journalists is captioned, “Let’s talk iPhone”. This caption has led to speculation on the part of tech journalists that the new iPhone will include advanced voice-recognition features that have been in the offing since Apple bought Siri 18 months ago.
They also speculate that Apple will just be introducing only one new phone—and not the rumored “low-end iPhone” that some investors have been expecting. Rather than a new low-end model, Apple can just continue to keep last year’s iPhone around as the discounted device du jour.
It looks as though, for the first time, Apple will be doing a combined iPhone/iPod event. Up to this point, Apple has pretty consistently released its new iPhones in June or July and iPods in September, but this year they seem to be combining the two into one. Perhaps in the wake of Steve Jobs’s departure, they’re concentrating their efforts since they no longer have the trademark reality distortion field to count on.
MacRumors thinks the new iPod Touch will be very similar to last year’s model, with the only additions being largely cosmetic. (Which is fine with me, since it will mean I wouldn’t be missing very much if I waited until it made last year’s model even cheaper.) There are other rumors of a 3G-enabled model, but they don’t seem very likely to me.
Regardless, I’ll be interested to see what the future brings.
