It's me, Pete... from the podcast.

New iPod Classic Busts Apple’s Product Introduction Scheme

For years, Apple’s made waves by wholly replacing successful products with radical revisions that truly evolve the product line. Today’s “Classic” announcement is an interesting departure. I’d fully expected the company to discontinue the current larger iPod with Video in favor of an iPhone-form factor phoneless iPod. They did introduce the phoneless iPod, the iPod “Touch”, but left a slight revision of the old school iPod in the channel.