Steve Jobs isn't giving Apple fanatics long to get used to the touch-screen on the new iPhone. On Wednesday (September 5), the Apple CEO unveiled the latest iPod upgrade, a new version called the "iPod Touch." It has the same kind of 3.5-inch touch-screen display as the iPhone, with wireless connectivity.
The iPod Touch was part of the by-now-predictable annual upgrades to the best-selling portable digital-music player in the U.S. Jobs also introduced a new line of smaller Nanos that start at $149 for a 4-gigabyte version; come in five colors (silver, black, blue, green and Product Red special edition); and have a 2.5-inch screen on which users can watch movies and TV, and play select video games in the same resolution currently offered on the video iPod. The 8 GB version will cost $199. He also showed off the iPod Classic (formerly known as the "video iPod"), which will come in an 80 GB model ($299) and 160 GB model ($349), the latter holding up to 40,000 songs or 200 hours of video.
The centerpiece, though, was the new $299 8 GB iPod Touch, which is thinner than the iPhone; comes loaded with the Safari browser, Google and Yahoo! search engines, and YouTube accessibility; and lets users wirelessly stream more than 10 million videos from the popular site. It has the same screen functions as the iPhone, 22 hours of audio playback and up to five of video playback. The 16 GB model will cost $399.
The other major news out of the Apple event, held in San Francisco, was that the company has launched an iTunes WiFi Music Store that lets users browse, preview and buy songs and albums wirelessly at the same prices as the regular iTunes store. Additionally, iTunes users can now make custom ringtones of up to 30 seconds from a choice of more than 1 million participating songs in the iTunes library. Beyond the 99-cent cost of the song, the creation of the ringtone will cost an extra 99 cents.
Apple also announced a deal with Starbucks that will let the coffee chain's customers wirelessly browse, search for, preview, buy and download music from the new WiFi music store on their iPods, iPhones, PCs or Macs while in Starbucks outlets. The new deal will also allow customers to recognize songs that are playing in a Starbucks using the "Now Playing" service, which will tell them the name of the song and then allow them to buy and download it directly to their device.
And, in a rare move, Apple has already cut the price for the new iPhone in time for the holidays, offering an 8 GB model for $399, which is $200 less than the current list price.
For complete digital music coverage, check out the Digital Music Reports.
