Hey, what are the odds of Apple introducing a new iPod during next month's Worldwide Developers Conference? It'd be a bit off-topic, we know, what with WWDC being much more of a hardcore nerdfest than the general-purpose family fun of the Macworld Expo, but hardcore nerds need music too. Besides, as we've mentioned before, the third-generation iPod is getting so long in the tooth it needs to floss with a pair of Gopher Pick-Up and Reach Tools. That's not to say that Apple might not choose to intro a fourth-gen iPod at one of those "special media events" and keep WWDC limited to geekier stuff like new Power Macs, but one way or another, Apple needs to ship a new iPod soon-- not because sales are flagging, but because we're getting bored. And as you're all fully aware, everything is all about us.

Until the big day arrives, though, we suppose we'll just have to content ourselves with still more speculation on the matter. Luckily, AppleInsider dishes up a little more fodder: a "seemingly reliable yet unconfirmed report" claims that Apple will be using a new chip in the fourth-gen iPod-- one that includes "several ENCODE capabilities." Sadly, the source provides absolutely no details whatsoever, and even admits that he has "no inside knowledge of how Apple plans on using the ENCODE capability," or even if it'll do so; the logic is simply that the capability's in the chip, so "it would be churlish of the company to ignore the feature." Because, you know, Apple's never been churlish or anything.

See, the thing is, just because the iPod will be using a chip with a given feature, that doesn't mean that the iPod will actually use said feature, churlishness notwithstanding. We seem to remember hearing that the iPod's existing chip supports WMA decoding, for example, and yet Apple has reportedly disabled the feature; indeed, if you try to play a WMA on an iPod, it'll fly out of your hands with a scream of rage and go straight for your throat. Don't try this at home without wearing a nice, thick dog collar or something, unless you don't mind Gopher Tool suction cup bruises all over your neck. The point is, even if the rumor that an iPod-destined chip includes encoding capabilities turns out to be true, that's no guarantee that the iPod will bother to use it. Apple's been churlish about this kind of stuff before.

So actually, there isn't a whole lot to chew on, here. AI's report also includes a reminder that PortalPlayer, the company that churns out the chips 'n' salsa for the current iPods, took the wraps off its "Photo Edition" architecture last December, but since we covered that last December (and the early news about Photo Edition never mentioned anything about any encoding), it's not exactly anything that sheds much new light on what sort of features Apple might want to play up in the iPod Mark IV.

Okay, we admit it: we only mentioned this in the first place because 1) this is a really slow news day, and 2) we were pretty psyched about getting to use the word "churlish" a bunch of times. No, really, try it-- it's fun!