Flash iPod rumour-mongering continues

Does a flash iPod exist? Only a few souls know, and they’re either informing The Mac Mind accurately or pulling our legs. Daring Fireball’s John Gruber thinks it’s the latter:

I just don’t see no screen at all as a feasible design. Without a graphical interface, the only thing left would be an audio interface — some sort of text-to-speech output to read menu items, playlist titles, and so forth through the earphones. This seems like a recipe for a frustrating experience, trying to locate a specific song that isn’t a few spots away from the one you’re currently listening to.

True that with no screen, what you hear is what you get. Perhaps it’s the ultimate zen listening device? Perhaps it’s a hot new digital music player with all the charm of an analog tape? Or perhaps, Gruber suggests, the screen is actually tucked away somewhere:

So, why not an iPod roughly the size of a clickwheel, but with the display in a slide-out drawer? (Or, alternatively, in a hinged clamshell.) Keep the clickwheel accessible even in the collapsed state, and you can access essential controls with the display tucked away: play/pause, volume, next/previous song. But when you need the screen, there it is. And, duh, this is how cellphones got smaller without getting rid of displays.

That would make the flash iPod the very coolest, mp3-playing pocket watch. One that knows it’s always time to rock and roll.