View iPod Oddities slideshow.

In honor of this anniversary, I decided to look back weird accessories, strange artistic tributes, and other odd sidelights of the world’s most iconic digital music player. So put in your earbuds and zone out from civilized society — it’s time for iPod Oddities.

(My classic-style iPod and I were inseparable for eons, and I once looked down at the iPhone because of its comparatively small capacity–but it’s been a long time since I’ve so much as booted up an iPod. Do you use one?)

Thanks to everyone who entered our drawing for the new Tapper World Tour game and an iPod Touch to play it on. And congratulations to John Erickson, whose name came up when our random-number generator had done its magic.

Speaking of Tapper, I had fun last week meeting Don Bluth and his longtime artistic associate Gary Goldman, the creators of Tapper’s visuals and the animation for two iconic 1980s arcade games: Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace. (That’s Bluth and Goldman in the photo above.) I wrote about Bluth’s take on his videogame work over at Techland.

The unfortunately-named Apple Bitch reports that Apple’s iPod Classic is out of stock Best Buy and Amazon, and the Apple Store is shipping the media players a bit slower than usual as well. CNet adds that Target and J&R are also out of stock.

It could just be a random supply glitch, but the other two possibilities are more intriguing: Either Apple is about to refresh the iPod Classic with a bigger hard drive, or it’s discontinuing the iPod Classic altogether.

Apple ignored the Classic at the last iPod event in September, and for good reason: Compared to the bite-sized iPod Nano and the high-tech iPod Touch, the Classic is a decidedly unglamorous device. The only way it can improve is with a bigger hard drive, and that’s just not Stevenote material. A quieter product update makes more sense, and with Toshiba recently updating iPod-sized hard drives to 220 GB, a larger iPod Classic certainly seems plausible.

As for whether the iPod Classic’s days are numbered, I don’t see enough of a change in the rest of Apple’s iPod line to justify killing the Classic — yet. A 128 GB iPod Touch didn’t happen last year, and the iPod Nano was downsized to a square-shaped device that only plays music. The iPod Classic now stands alone as Apple’s low-cost multimedia player.

I’ll just throw out one more wacky theory as long as we’re speculating: These supply shortages give Apple a chance to see what happens when the iPod Classic isn’t available. If a significant number of people decide to buy an iPod Touch instead, Apple will know that it can get away with killing the Classic for good.

I’m sorry I wasn’t at Apple’s music event today to cover it live. I had fun watching it via Apple’s live video stream from the lobby bar here at the Grand Hyatt in Berlin, though. (I give the experience a B- from a technical standpoint: Eighty percent of the time, the stream worked well, fifteen percent I got audio but the picture froze, five percent it misbehaved in other ways. Then again, I was on iffy hotel Wi-Fi, so the glitchiness might have been on my end rather than Apple’s.)

Just about all of today’s news turned out to be less than dramatic: It was expected (the new iPod Touch) or less radical than the rumors had it (the new Apple TV) or involved minor products (the Shuffle and Nano). But as usual, I’m left asking questions about the upshot of the morning’s announcements. Such as:

Is the main message of the new Nano that the old Nano was irrelevant? It’s basically got two new features: It’s way small and it has a touch-screen interface. But it has a smaller screen than its predecessor (1.54″ vs. 2.2″). It doesn’t have a camera anymore (looks like it’s official that the camera-enabled Nano never killed the Flip). I assume it can’t play video. The pedometer is presumably gone. It’s essentially a different device–more like a Shuffle with a screen than a more fully-evolved Nano. If you want video and a camera, Apple is saying, buy an iPod Touch–a larger, pricier, more complex gadget. It’s logical advice for a lot of people, but is there nobody left who wants a fairly feature-rich iPod with the simplicity of the old interface?

Is the new Nano an iOS device? It has an iOS-like skin, and Jobs seemed to call it an iOS-based product when he referred to “other” iOS devices. But he never addressed the issue explicitly. Of course,the Nano’s OS only matters if Apple lets developers write Nano-compatible apps–which sounds like it might involve a lot of complexity without that much payoff.

What explains the iPod Shuffle’s evolution/devolution? I kind of liked the buttonless, voice-controlled version, but I apparently didn’t have much company. The new square Shuffle is an improved version of the Shuffle before the last one, retaining the last one’s voice control as an option but abandoning everything else about it. I’m trying to think of other examples of Apple, or anyone else, taking a detour like the last Shuffle before.

Is the iPod Classic a non-product? Steve Jobs said that Apple was updating all the iPods, and then didn’t mention the poor Classic–which left me thinking it was a goner. But it’s still in the lineup, in unchanged form. Will the last iPod with the original iconic click wheel design ever get a meaningful upgrade? Will it still be in the lineup one year from now?

Does Ping have anything to do with Lala? I still miss the brilliant music service which was bought and shuttered by Apple, and wonder whether parts of it will return, in one form or another, as Apple products. Among Lala’s features were social network-like aspects that let you friend people and see what they were listening to–similar, in broad concept, to iTunes’ new Ping features. Is Ping just vaguely Lala-like, or is does it really represent the return of (part of) Lala?

Does Ping show Apple wants to be a social-networking powerhouse? Sure, there have been features in Apple products which flirted with being social for years. But Ping is something new: a full-blown attempt to turn millions of iTunes users into one of the world’s largest social networks. During the event, I tweeted that there’s a war between Ping, Facebook, and Gmail brewing. I was joking–but if the version of Ping which Apple announced today is just the start of the company’s social ambitions, it involves new competitive fronts for sure.

Is Ping a bad idea? Hey, I’m not saying it is–in fact, it gets my vote as today’s most interesting news, by quite a lot. But people already complain that iTunes is too bloated and unfocused. And the notion of doing Facebook/Twitter-like social networking in an application rather than on the Web sounds a tad odd. I’m looking forward to trying it out and forming opinions one way or the other.

Is the new Apple TV more than a hobby? Apple has been ratcheting down expectations for the original Apple TV almost from the moment it released it, saying it’s just a hobby and that’s not selling particularly well. The new version represents a major rethinking of the hardware (it’s tiny and diskless) and offers new services and features (cheap HP TV downloads, Airplay streaming from iOS devices). There’s nothing strikingly innovative about the new Apple TV, though-at best, it looks like a nice rival to the very similar device known as Roku. (Google TV, which is designed to play all the video on the Web, looks more inventive.) Still, with Apple behind it, there’s a chance that the new Apple TV will be a game-changing breakout hit. I guess we’ll know if Steve Jobs starts quoting sales figures rather than disparaging the whole idea.

What happened to the idea of an Apple TV App Store? It was a cool idea. There may be iOS lurking somewhere within the new Apple TV, but Jobs didn’t say so, and it’s clear that the new one won’t run third-party software–at least not right now. Is this model an intermediary step on the road to an app-enabled Apple TV?

Can they make November come a little quicker? I’m really anxious to get iOS 4.2, which finally brings multitasking, folders, and the rest of the goodness of iOS 4 to the iPad.

Any answers to any of the above musings? Any additional questions of your own?

Such a move is quite unusual for a company that typically lets none of its flagship products go more than a year without some type of redesign or rework. But it’s also telling — Apple likely thinks the days of the classic are numbered.

As it stands right now, Apple is unable to offer a high-capacity flash based iPod as flash memory prices are still too high. Remember that the iPod classic has a maximum storage capacity of 160GB at $249: the highest capacity iPod touch comes in at 64GB, but has a fairly prohibitive $399 price tag along with it.

Not a good deal for those of us with insanely big digital media collections.

It is quite possible that Apple is hedging its bets that flash will continue to drop in price allowing it to offer a comparatively sized iPod touch in the near future. Also, there is not much more that the Cupertino company could do to the design other than add multi-touch — but the touch line is the future of the iPod so why bother?

I don’t fancy myself a Apple prognosticator but I would venture an educated guess that the classic has only a few more months left. It just so happened that the market didn’t cooperate with Apple’s scheduling that it could have announced a phase out at its September music event. It is coming though, and likely very soon.

As usual, I surveyed you guys and asked you to give your best guesses at what the news will involve. For questions in which you could choose only one answer, whatever answer got a plurality of responses counts as the prediction. For questions that let you choose multiple answers, any answer that more than fifty percent of you chose counts as a prediction. (I’ll note the percentage that chose each answer).

* You don’t think Apple’s going to announce an array of new stuff at the event–in fact, it’s only going to unveil three new products:

–a new iPod touch (88%)

–a new iPod Nano (71%)

–a new Apple TV or “iTV” (60%)

* (You don’t think there will be a new iPhone, iPad, iPod Classic, iPod Shuffle, MacBook, iMac, Mac Pro, iLife, iWorks, Mobile Me, movie/TV service, or, pretty much, any other new Apple product, period.)

* You think the iPod Touch will get cameras on both its front and back (60%), but don’t think the iPad will get any cameras at all.

* You think the iPad will get at least some of iOS 4′s major features, such as multitasking (59%)–but that it won’t get most or all of them.

* If there’s a new Apple TV, you say it’ll run iOS and have third party apps.

* You’re very confident that Steve Jobs will host the event (87%). And almost as confident that there will be no news involving the Beatles coming to iTunes (82%).

* I asked about a bunch of musical artists who might perform at the event’s conclusion. For the record, the top vote getter only got 5.6 percent of your votes. But it was…Paul McCartney. And Ringo. (I won’t be at the event, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the protracted negotiations between Apple and the lads delay their performance until next year’s event.)

I also gave you the ability to provide free-form predictions. Here are some of the ones you provided:

I think they will start pushing payments and near field communication (nfc).

They may not launch it today but they are going to announce something to do with payments through iPhone OS and probably includes nfc.

They will push forward with iOS (stole name again from Cisco – just like iPhone) on a bevy of entry level consumer devices, no programming or intelligence necessary.

Apple will introduce a streaming music/movies subscription service. Streamed music will be at a lower bit rate, but you will be able to stream anything in the Apple catalog. iPod Classic will begin phasing out, but may find new life by having touch screen replace click wheel.

New iTV will act as an accessory to iPhone/iPod touch; use WiFi or bluetooth to connect devices for use as controllers for games or remotes for navigating iTV.

Prepare to be underwhelmed by a cosmetic only Touch and shuffle update; new form factor like iphone on Touch and no screen on the Shuffle; The “iTV” will have a ship date of Nov.2010; Apps in Jan. 2011

iPod classic and shuffle will disappear, in favor of the touch and nano respectively. This emans no more clickwheel and iOS everywhere.

Apple will announce 6 million iPads sold. 99¢ movie rentals might also be in the cards. And iPhone on T-Mobile.

Oh, and four of you say Lady Gaga will close out the event tomorrow. Okay by me, but she’s playing in Saint Paul, Minnesota tonight, so she’ll have to rush to San Francisco to make it there for a morning mini-concert.

Paul and Ringo aside, most of your prognostications sound sensible to me. Once the event’s come and gone, I’ll tally up how we did.

But wait. I try to avoid making Apple predictions, but the company could make an end-run around the limitations of flash storage. Here’s how.

What makes the iPod Classic the iPod Classic? Three things, really:

• A ton of capacity–enough gigs for nearly anyone to tote nearly all of his or her music collection, and/or copious amounts of video;
• The iconic iPod click wheel interface and corresponding onscreen menu system;
• The inability to run iOS apps;
• The lack of any way to communicate with the outside world except via USB connection.

Massive storage is unquestionably a pro, not a con. The classic iPod interface is a good thing, but it, like the original 1984 Macintosh design which went away in 1995, is a good thing from another era. It won’t be with us forever, and that’s okay.

Inability to run apps? Definitely a con. And these days, not having a direct wireless connection to the Internet is also a con.

Apple could very easily respond to all this next week with one simple move: It could retire the iPod Classic as we know it and introduce an iPod Touch that packs all the goodness of the current Touch, cameras on the front and back, FaceTime capability, and…a 160GB (or larger) hard drive. Hard disks are way cheaper per gigabyte than flash memory, so it should be possible to sell a disk-based Touch at a price that makes sense. Folks who want humongous amount of storage would get it–plus the other features that define the iPod Touch, the iPhone, and the iPad.

The only real downside: this Touch would have to be a tad thicker than flash-based models. Apple products almost never get portlier, but seems to me that the tradeoff would be well worth it. And it would buy Apple time until it can release an affordable 128GB flash-based iPod Touch.

If a disk-based Touch is imminent, it’ll probably look very similar to the other next-generation Touches. But it’s more fun to mock one up that retains a hint of the Classic’s styling:

We need a name for this thing–I propose iPod Megatouch. But knowing Apple, it’s more likely that it would simply call it the iPod Touch. That’s assuming that it would make it, period–and like I say, I’m not predicting that. Unless it happens next week, in which case you heard it here first…

Business Insider’s Dan Frommer is the latest journalist to question the iPod Classic’s future, ahead of Apple’s September 1 music event. The usual arguments apply — without Wi-Fi, apps or a touch screen, the classic iPod is looking pretty stale — but his prediction hinges on whether Apple will introduce a 128 GB iPod Touch this year. After all, the current iPod Classic’s hard drive holds 160 GB of media, and retiring it doesn’t make sense unless another device can take the high-capacity throne with flash storage.

I’m with Frommer’s logic all the way, but I doubt that 128 GB flash drives will even be ready in time for the next iPod Touch.

The 128 GB flash drive does exist. Toshiba, Apple’s frequent source for mobile device storage, created a 128 GB flash drive in June, with samples to be available in September. Full production begins later this fall, according to Electronista.

That timeline pretty much rules out 128 GB drives for the next-generation iPod Touch. Apple’s tendency with new iPods is to start selling them on the day of its press events. Given that Toshiba’s 128 GB drives won’t even be available for testing until some time next month, they simply won’t be ready for Apple’s products unless development sped up significantly since June.

Besides, the price for 128 GB at this point would be astronomical. At present, the 64 GB iPod Touch costs $399, compared to $250 for the iPod Classic. I’m guessing the price for 64 GB flash hasn’t dropped considerably since last year, because Apple doesn’t even offer that capacity in the iPhone 4. I just don’t see the iPod Touch making such a huge leap in storage.

If Apple proves me wrong, I’ll be shocked. Otherwise, anyone want to start making bets for next year?

Update: Commenter Hamranhansenhansen points out that the iPod Touch uses two memory chips, as confirmed by iFixit’s teardown. That means Apple would only have to use two 64 GB chips. This still seems unlikely given that Toshiba’s 64 GB chip — using the same 32 nm process as its larger counterpart — won’t be ready until the fall either, and even less likely if you believe Apple won’t use larger chips than those found in the iPhone.