Apple to hold September "special event"

7 August 2008 10:17 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

There's been a September launch for new iPods for the past 3 years, and analyst Gene Munster has said he expects this year to be no different.

With all the new product rumours currently swirling in cyberspace, it's perhaps not a huge leap, but investment bank Piper Jaffray has told clients it expects Apple to hold a special event in September for not just iPods, but an array of new products.

At this year's event, Munster, a long-time Apple watcher, is predicting that Apple will refresh the iPod family with a "pricing and capacity changes" for the shuffle and nano, expected to get bigger memory, and the touch, expected to get a price drop to $199, with a possible redesign.

In addition, a complete overhaul of the company's notebooks is due, says Munster: "We note that the MacBook has had the same design since its launch over two years ago, and the MacBook Pro has had essentially the same design since its launch over 2.5 years ago, which was very similar in design to the PowerBook G4 released over 5.5 years ago"

As rumours have suggested, Munster believes that touch tech will be prevalent across Apple's ranges, with the touch-enabled notebook products available now "just the beginning of Apple's exploration of multi-touch on the Mac".

But, Munster does not expect either the rumoured new Newton, or a full touchscreen MacBook "until the technology has fully matured over the next 2-3 years".

Full tags

Audio, iPod, Apple, Rumours, Apple MacBook Pro, Hardware