Apple wasn’t exactly promising anything that would set the world on fire with today’s “Let’s Rock” event. In fact, many were forecasting that the stock would fall in reaction to what would be little to get excited about, in comparison to some of Apple’s past blockbuster announcements.

But there was some news made today, and Steve Jobs was there to deliver it. Perhaps the biggest news was the new iPod Nano, which is no longer short and fat, but tall and skinny. It also has a new tapered design and an accelerometer that allows for vertical and horizontal display on the new screen. The accelerometer can also be used to “shake-shuffle” your songs, which is kind of cool (but available on other MP3 players, not unique to Apple). Additionally, the price has not changed but the Nanos have more storage capacity, with 8GB models for $149 and 16GB for $199.

Now on to the iPod Touch: it’s got a new, thinner case, and a speaker for better game play. The availability of the speaker has been getting a lot of people riled up with the admittedly frightening possibility of kids playing bad music through their iPod Touch on the subway or the bus, but the speaker is a necessity for Apple to compete when it comes to games. Notable are some of the absences on the new iPod Touch, namely better storage and GPS. But it is cheaper, with the 8GB model at $229, 16GB at $299 and 32GB at $399. A cool and unique product for people without iPhones. Undoubtedly great for checking email and surfing the web in the bathroom.

NBC shows are also back on iTunes, and they are in HD. If you’ve been jonesing for Battlestar Galactica on iTunes and don’t want to illegally download it, it’s available in HD for $2.99.

In other news, the biggest (and only) iPod Classic available now is 120GB and is being offered for $249. No more 160GB model, so you can only store 30,000 songs or 150 hours of video.

Probably the most pressing news of the day came with the announcement of OS X 2.1 for iPhone and iPod Touch. Available Friday, Jobs promises it addresses the problems of dropped calls, app crashes, poor battery life, and slow iTunes syncing on the iPhone.

Jack Johnson then showed up to put everybody to sleep who wasn’t already. Apparently, Johnson is the biggest selling male artist in iTunes history. Apple’s stock closed down about 4%.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 at 2:28 pmand is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.