No I don’t have any inside information and no I’m not just going on a hunch here. The iPod event cannot be held on September 9th because the “free iPod with the purchase of a Mac” deal for college students is still available until September 15th meaning that if Apple changes the iPod lineup 6 days beforehand it is going to be incredibly confusing to those who still want the free iPod (or incredibly frustrating to those who purchased a new Mac the day before because of the deal).
Kevin Rose proclaimed the date September 9th on the podcast This Week In Tech produced by the wonderful Leo Laporte but no one seemed to argue with him on that date. Kevin Rose does seem to have some pretty good evidence that his recent information is correct, even emailing another batch of images to Leo Laporte who seemed to think they were real as well. But, the date didn’t come under scrutiny at all.
The event will still come in September but I find it unlikely that it will be released in the first half of the month.
Along with the September 9th prediction Kevin also suggested that one of the new features in iTunes 8 would be the ability for iTunes to suggest music that you may like based on the contents of your music library. Now, iTunes already suggests music based on your music purchases but that doesn’t include music gathered from other sources. This new feature doesn’t seem that far fetched and if anything else just seems like the logical progression for iTunes to take.
I will be willing to admit that I’m wrong on this but like I said above, it doesn’t seem very likely that Apple would release new iPods before the college promotion is over.