Wired’s Christina Bonnington speculates on Gizmodo that the end of the iPod in the near future, citing declining sales and a few curious moves on Apple’s part. iPod sales peaked in December of 2008, and the numbers continue to drop. The iPod Touch has features, like FaceTime, that used to be reserved for iPhones. And this year, Apple’s Back To School deal gives students a complimentary $100 iTunes giftcard with the purchase of a Mac, when the promo’s freebie was formerly an iPod touch.

Apple has an event planned for September that could bring the announcement of a retired iPod alongside the new tech. iPods may not be selling as well, but Apple’s general revenues are doing fine.

To get started, click on the “Call” button on the Google Voice application. Then select which phones you want to ring. Google Voice will call all of them. Below is a list of some of the other improvements made on the app:

- When you enable Push Notifications, we will automatically disable Text forwarding for you, so you won’t receive multiple notifications.
- Want some quiet time? You can send all callers straight to voicemail by turning on Do not disturb in the Settings tab.
- We made it easier for you to place calls from the address book by adding a dedicated Contacts button to the Dialer tab.
- Sending text messages is now more streamlined since you don’t need to press the OK button anymore.

[Google Voice Blog]

“It’s something to take note of when a mobile operating system passes something that’s been around forever,” stated Net Applications VP Vince Vizzaccaro. “Mobile’s growth curve is strong and mobile is becoming quite a phenomenon on the Internet.”

According to Net Applications, Android devices are 0.2% of the operating system market. “Whatever the sales are, we’re seeing iOS totally dominate the market on the Web,” added Vizzaccaro. “iOS has nearly a 6:1 advantage over Android.”

[9To5Mac]

The new iPod Touch has a Retina screen and dual camera. The new screen is the same as the iPhone 4 (960×640 and 3.5″). The rear camera on the new iPod Touch records in 720p and takes pictures at 960×720.

The new iPod Touch runs on an A4 processor and sells up to 64GB in space. There is also a gyroscope, accelerometer, and microphone built in to the new iPod Touch. And most important, FaceTime will also work on the new iPod Touch as well. The only downside to the device is the lack of a 3G connection and GPS.

Below is the cost of the new iPod Touch devices:

8GB is $229
32GB is $299
64GB is $399

The new iPod Nano is the 6th generation. The clickwheel has been removed from the Nano and now there is a touchscreen interface. The new iPod Nano is about 46% smaller and 42% lighter. There are hard volume buttons on the side and the device is in square form. The battery life lasts 24 hours. Below are the price points. The device is available for pre-order starting today.

8GB for $149
16GB for $179

[CrunchGear]

This past week Apple has made some exciting announcements.  Here is a breakdown of everything they announced.

iPad:
-On the first day, 300,000 were sold.  Thus far over 450,000 iPads have been sold.
-Best Buy sold out so Apple is trying to get them additional stock as soon as possible.
-Over 600,000 downloads occurred on iBooks.
-As of yesterday, over 3.5 million iPad apps have been downloaded.

Apple App Store:
-Over 4 billion apps have been downloaded
-Over 185,000 applications available for download now
-Over 3,500 iPad apps in the App Store

Apple iPhone:
-Apple iPhone won the JD Power award 3 years in a row
-iPhone has 64% mobile browser market share
-50 million iPhones sold to date.  About 85 million iPhones and iPod Touches on the market sold.

Apple iPhone OS 4
-Shipping this summer
-Developer preview available today
-10 billion push notifications sent
-100 New User features such as create playlists, 5x digital zoom, gift apps, geotagging, Bluetooth keyboards, spell checker, and tap to focus on video.
-Multitasking will be available on iPhone OS 4
-Folders for app icons (folder icon will have multi-icon icon)
-Unified inbox (all of your mail in one inbox) with inbox switching abilities
-iBooks arriving on the iPhone OS 4
-Enterprise: better data protection, wireless app distribution, and mobile device management.  There is also support for multiple Exchange accounts and new VPN options
-Game Center being added.  Game Center is a social gaming network for multiplayers.  There are achievements, match making, and leaderboards on Game Center. Apple has 50,700 gaming titles.
-Background audio, VoIP, background location, local notifications, task completion, and fast app switching
-iAd Mobile Advertising: There are a lot of free apps out there, but developers are having a hard time making money from them.  However most of the “advertising sucks” according to Jobs.  When you click on a banner ad on an app, it throws you out of your app and into the advertisers website.  This is why people don’t engage with the ads.  Apple has figured out a way to deliver ad content without ever taking you out of the app.  Apple will give developers 60% of ad revenue and keep 40% as part of iAd.
-The iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch 3rd generation will have access to these features this summer.  But the iPhone 3G and iPod Touch 2nd generation will run many of these features, but not multitasking.
-iPhone OS 4 will be hitting the iPad in the fall.

New Apple iPhone SDK
-Over 1,500 new APIs available in OS 4.  Developers can now access the calendar, photo library, and quicklook.
-A new framework called Accelerate is being launched for hardware accelerated math functions.

Interesting Tidbit:
“We tried to buy a company called AdMob… but Google snatched it away,” stated Jobs during a Q&A session. [Engadget]