Cupertino reportedly doing away with hard-drive-based, screen-less players

Sep 28, 2011 09:11 GMT  ·  By

Unnamed sources cited by an Apple-centric blog seem to confirm an old rumor about Apple discontinuing some old iPod models, particularly the hard-disk-based classic and the screen-free shuffle.

As Apple is slowly but surely transitioning every one of its products to NAND Flash storage, the iPod classic is regarded as an antique, and so is the iPod shuffle which offers the least amount of features in the entire lineup of Apple players.

While the classic still makes sense for those who love to have huge libraries of music (and videos) with them at all times, it does come with spinning platters inside. The hardware is rapidly becoming obsolete, and Apple is always the first to axe the old.

TUAW has been hearing the same thing. Sources close to the blog and to Apple are signaling that the discontinuation is not far - perhaps to be announced at the October 4 iPhone event.

The shuffle is in the same boat with the classic, as in it will get phased out for becoming irrelevant in the face of touch-based nanos that boast pretty much the same form factor and portability, yet offer much more advanced functionality.

As for the rest of the iPod lineup, the sources say don’t expect much to be changed, and that includes the price of the iPod nano which isn’t incredibly expensive, but would be a much more attractive purchase at, say, $99 for the entry-level 8GB model.

The nano will reportedly become the low-end iPod starting this fall.

As for the iPod touch, Apple is not changing it one bit, the sources say. A couple of Wall Street analysts have speculated that white models are on the launch pad for this year, but there is little evidence of that for now.