According to Apple, the rumors of the iPod Classic’s death have been greatly exaggerated. They proved it by announcing that they will keep the iPod Classic alive, but give it a nice capacity bump.

Up until now the largest size iPod classic held 120GB, but now it will hold 160GB of music. That’s like 40,000 songs or 2 Pink Floyd albums. The rest of the good news is that Apple decided to sell it for the same price of $249. So now the classic can rest in storage, not in peace. Put the eulogies down and dry your eyes kids. Uncle Steve loves ya.

Crazy about the Simpsons, aren’t you? Your wife probably has a tall blue beehive and your youngest can’t stop sucking on her pacifier, right? You tell your religious neighbor to shut up all the time. Well, I’ve got something that will fit right into your life that you probably don’t have. A limited edition Simpsons iPod.

They come in several sizes with your choice of three different custom engravings on the back. You can get the Bart Sk8 logo, Homer saying D’Oh! and a Homer Tested insignia. They come in iPod Classic in 160 or 80GB, iPod Nano in 8 or 4GB, iPod Shuffle in 2 or 1GB and the iPod Touch in 32, 16 or 8GB. Each is limited to only 2000 units and are numbered. I’m a little disappointed that there’s no comic book guy.

As surely as new days dawn so do new iPod cases regularly make their way to market. This time around we have the quiet, recent introduction of the PDO TopSkin for iPod Classic, priced at around $20.

The PDO TopSkin for iPod Classic is in many ways your typical, somewhat stylish iPod case. It fits the 80GB or 160GB iPod classic model and comes in four body colors. There’s a clear plastic screen protector which sits in a groove inside the case to keep it in place. A layer of “silicone protection” keeps your player relatively safe, with a “play-through design” so that functions like the Click Wheel can be interacted with.

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s Apple news concerning the 80GB and 160GB iPods, Toshiba has just released its own news about two similar sized storage media units of its own. Sometime before the end of the year the ‘shiba will release the MK model 80GB and 160GB 1.8-inch hard drives which, coincidentally, also happen to be the same memory size as the just-announced iPod Classic models. Except that there is no coincidence when it comes to technology, is there?

The 160GB drive will be Toshiba’s first that uses a CE-ATA interface while the 80GB unit employs PATA technology. Both drives have a storage density of 228 Gb per square inch. Speed wise the 80GB drive gets the edge (66 MB per second transfer rate) with the 160GB second (at 52 MB/s) but it uses less power for its functions.

Even as Apple rolled out the iPod touch and new nano today the more basic model which started it all got a facelift and a new name. Apple is now making available the sixth-generation iPod, called now the iPod classic, for $249 for a 80GB model and $349 for a 160GB model.

That’s right – the first thing you’ll note with the iPod classic is the increased hard drive sizes. They are housed in a new all-metal anodized aluminum and polished stainless steel enclosure which is thinner than previous generations. The user interface has also been enhanced and includes the ability to browse music via cover art.