John Biggs regarding “leaked” photos that CrunchGear received depicting an iPod touch with a capacitive home button:

Although I’m tending towards skepticism on this one, it could be that these blurry-cam photos of a potential iPod Touch with non-physical home button show an example of some sort of aborted trunk on the iPod Touch family tree with to a seamless, button-free face. Talking heads have been touting this button-free model for a while now and so these images lend credence to that direction in Apple iPod/iPhone trade dress.

I have no doubt that Apple has built prototypes of a home button-less iPod touch — at the very least, to test it out — but I don’t think Apple would ever release such a device. As John Gruber put it: “people love the home button.”