Hot new iPods introduced

If it ain’t broke, improve it. That seems to be the mantra of Apple as it unveiled still another lineup of iPods, boasting bigger storage capacities, new designs and more versatile and powerful features like the ability to watch HD TV shows.

At a San Francisco event dubbed “Let’s Rock,” Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs showed off the the latest iPod line, headlined by a new stretched and slimmed down version of the best-selling nano in new colors of purple, yellow and orange (as well as blue, red, pink and silver) and new storage capacity of up to 16GB.

Instead of the old familiar white ear buds, which exercisers and active people have long complained about because they so easily fall out, Jobs revealed that the new players will come with in-ear headphones. “We think we’ve finally got these right,” said Jobs.

Added to the Pod nano is a voice recorder, improved battery life of 24 hours of music and 6 hours of video. The 8GB version is priced at $149, the 16GB version will sell for $199.

One new feature on the nano is motion detection through something called the accelerometer as used in the iPhone, which senses the orientation of the iPod and whether video and images should be displayed vertically or horizontally.

Another new iPod wide feature is “Genius,” which makes automatic playlists of songs that go together from a user’s music library. A sidebar on the screen makes suggestions of music that can be bought and downloaded from the iTunes store that match the user’s different Genius playlists.

In addition there were software updates for the iTunes music and video store and the iTouch, Apple’s high end iPod that has everything the iPhone has except telephone capabilities.

Jobs joked that “the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,” in an attempt to put to rest grisly health rumors that followed his last event in the spring. He still looks as gaunt as he did several months ago, however.

Other iPod changes and features announced today include:

- The iPod classic now has a capacity of 120GB, or 30,000 songs, up from 80GB. Its price remains unchanged at $249.

- The iTouch looks more like the iPhone, has easier volume control and a built-in receiver for the Nike + iPod gizmo used by runners to measure distance and time.
For the iTouch, the 8GB model sells for $229; the 16GB for $299 and the 32 GB for $399, slight decreases from the current models.

- The iPhone will get a major software upgrade Friday which Job says will fix a number of glitches that have plaged the popular phone. The new 3G iPhone and older models using the latest iPhone 2.0 software, both released in mid July, have been plagued by complaints across the country of dropped calls and erractic connections. Jobs said the upgrade should take care of thos issues.

He also spent a lot of time demonstrating new games available from the iTunes App store for the iPhone and iTouch. In the 60 days that it has been open, Jobs said 100 million applications have been downloaded. More than 700 games are now sold through the App store.

Jobs used the event to reveal some new iPod-related statistics, clearly aimed at impressing the loyalists and scaring the competition.

iTunes, he said, now has a library of over 8.5 million sings, 35,000 TV shows, 2,600 Hollywood movies and 3,000 applications for the iPhone and iTouch. More than 65 million users have registered for iTunes, boasted Jobs.

Today’s Apple announcement, though, was particllay upstaged yesterday when Microsoft announced new designs and capabilities of its rival Zune music player that signify a new cometitiveness by Microsoft in going after the 73% market share held by the iPod. (See my previous blog post here at freep.com for Zune details).

Still, it’s going to be not just an uphill fight for Microsoft but a mountainous one. Microsoft, noted Jobs quoting sales statistics from the NPD data research firm, has only a 2.6% share of the digital music player market.