This phrase always bugged me. "At the last minute". Could someone define this as the decision must have been made a good five to six months (or more) before release since they only have a year to work with for any given generation model. Plus they need to make a good number of them at release.
Also, seeing this may be a good sign, but will the release of the new ipod touch (with tons of new features) be a counter to this or will Apple's next ipod be the answer to Samsung's invasion of their turf. They may have made the decision awhile ago to exclude certain features. Then after it was too late to change, they may have seen this and thought, "we should have done that too".