Apple updates Itunes and nano

APPLE HAS TAKEN the wraps off its highly-anticipated holiday line-up. Amongst the announcements was the unveiling of Itunes 8, a new Nano and updates to the Ipod classic and Touch.

In a live video streamed from California, Apple's CEO Steve Jobs began his presentation with a pithy message 'Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. "

Before getting into the details of the eighth iteration of Itunes, Jobs began by boasting about the success of the Itunes store, which now has over 8.5 million songs, 125,000 podcasts, stacks of TV episodes and movies and now has over 3,000 applications as well. He added that the App Store has already seen more than 100 million downloads in the 60 days since its inception. Jobs couldn't help but brag that Apple now has its paws on more than 65 million accounts and their associated credit cards

After the gloating was done, Jobs revealed that Itunes will soon be adding HD content, with HD shows costing $2.99 each, a dollar more than their inferior SD counterparts. In case you're wondering what use an HD signal is for an Ipod, you will also be able to watch these on your PCs, Macs and Apple TVs.

Itunes 8 has some new browsing and accessability features, but the big news is the inclusion of Apple's dubiously named 'Genius button' which automatically creates a playlist of 25, 50, 75 or 100 songs based on the song you are currently listening to.

In case you think it does some clever analysis of the actual music, you'd be wrong, it simply uploads your entire music list, ratings and playcounts to Apple HQ and mashes it with millions of other Itunes users to figure out likely candidates. We're assured that Apple doesn't use any of this information for any nefarious purposes.

Next was a quick nod in the direction of the Ipod Classic. The thicker version is being discontinued, while the thin version is being jumped up from 80GB to 120GB and will sell for $249 (£179).

Probably the biggest announcement was up next with the unveiling of the fourth generation Ipod nano, which returns to the previous candybar deisgn, but keeps the third generation screen size. The new design is oval with a curved glass screen, perfect for making sure it scratches right in the centre. It also comes with an accelerometer, voice recorder and has a 'shake to shuffle' feature that looks a lot like what Sandisk has been doing for ages.

The new rainbow-coloured Nano will be available in eight and 16 GB versions and sell for $149 (£109) and $199 (£149) respectively. Apparently the battery won't suck either, purportedly giving 24 hours of music or four hours video on each charge.

There will also be a new Ipod Touch which is a little slimmer, has integrated volume controls, a built-in speaker, can do the Genius playlist thing, and has a built-in Nike+ receiver. These new Touches will go for $229 (£169) for the eight GB version, $299 (£219) for the 16GB and $399 (£289) for 32GB, all are available immediately.

In a rather candid admission of guilt, Jobs went on to say that the new version 2.1 of the Iphone / Touch software would fix a raft of bugs seen since the launch of the Iphone 3G, promising fewer dropped calls, better stability when lots of apps are installed and longer battery life for most Iphone owners.

The presentation wrapped up with a few songs by some singer bloke named Jack Johnson who mentioned at one point: "I'm used to 20-something girls right here at the front of the stage," instead the poor guy was swamped by Apple fanboys, it's a rough life sometimes. µ