Will Apple Knock-Off iPods Classic and Shuffle?

Apple will launch its latest smartphone iPhone 5 on October 4, 2011 but it appears that something more is connected with this event. Apple will abandon iPod Classic and Shuffle on this event to  redirect its efforts more effectively to iPod Nano and iPod Touch  according to a statement from TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog). But Apple doesn’t mention about iPhone 5 in its announcement.

iPod Shuffle doesn’t have the screen so its a good thing to remove it from Apple product list. So by doing this, all Apple iPods will have touch screens and apparently Apple wants it that way. The previous iPods had platter-based memory while the  new ones have flash-based memory which is more convenient.

So basically Apple is converting ‘past’ iPods to ‘future’ iPods. But  still if you want to buy iPods Classic and Shuffle then you better hurry up because the sooner the better. 160GB iPod classic’s recent price is  $249 while that of iPod shuffle is $49. When these iPods are abandoned  then the ‘future’ iPods will replace them. But how far will Apple go futuristically?