After crowning September 12 with the new iPod, nano, and Shuffle, as well as iTunes 7 and iTV, how will Steve Jobs and Apple top themselves now? Two bets running in the rumor mill are the iPod phone and the touchscreen iPod.

With the phone, ThinkSecret's thinking that it'll be announced in time for the upcoming MacWorld Expo this January. Every rumor can only be tested with official confirmation and time, though, so the coming months will tell if the trilling of a mobile iPod will greet the new year.

Well, now it's the touchscreen's turn to survive the mill. ThinkSecret's other sources - those same sources which first revealed the Apple touchscreen patents - are also saying that Apple's pouring in a significant amount of resources to complete the final specifications of the new design and that it might, just might (and we have to repeat, just might) enter the production line in late October, barely in time for Christmas.

Like all Apple rumors, though, this one is unconfirmed (it bears repeating, doesn't it? It's unconfirmed). ThinkSecret's also thinking that the odds for a 2006 release are stacked against a touchscreen iPod - and besides, as someone pointed out, Apple usually launches its next-best-thing gadgets during its big press events - like last September 12, or the upcoming MacWorld Expo. This makes January the more likely launch date for this device - if it really is in the pipeline right now.

But it would probably be a good, profitable idea for Apple to launch such a device (either in Christmas or during the Expo). The patent specs showed that such a design could dispense with the familiar click wheel in favor of the touch screen from end to end. Reports are that Apple won't be advertising this as the "sixth generation iPod," but as its very own product line, and this this would boast a 3.5in widescreen display. Such a device would be perfect to watch videos from iTunes with. Finally, one thought going around is that Apple might be setting this (and maybe even the phone) up against Microsoft's Zune. Competition does squeeze the best out of all of us, don't it?

But again, it always bears repeating: with all the evidence so circumstantial, nothing is confirmed until Cupertino says so.