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Well, it's that time of the year again. September is usually the month when Apple updates its iPod lineup from top to bottom and the boys from Cupertino didn't disappoint with today's announcement which was delivered by none other than Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs kicked things off today by bragging about the performance of the iTunes App Store and announced iPhone OS 3.1. As Global Tech News has reported before, iPhone OS 3.1 adds improved voice control via Bluetooth, better video editing, and faster boot times among other things. The update will be made available today for free to both iPhone and iPod touch owners.
Jobs also announced iTunes 9 which brings a wealth of new features including Home Sharing (allows you to share music, TV shows, movies, audiobook, and apps with up five PCs on a network), Genius Mixes, improved syncing capabilities, a revised iTunes Store appearance, iTunes LP (music, photography, liner notes), and the ability to manage how apps appears on your iPhone or iPod touch directly from the iTunes interface (no more dragging app icons from page to page on your iPhone's touchscreen).
Before revealing the latest generation of iPods, Jobs was more than happy to announce that over 225 million iPods have been sold since its introduction with the iPod touch representing 20 million of that total. Apple is currently sitting at nearly 74% marketshare with its iPod family, while SanDisk is far behind with 7.2%. Microsoft is barely a blip on the screen with just 1.1% marketshare.
Leading up to today's announcement, Apple went on a price slashing spree for its current iPod models as witnessed by the second generation 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB iPod touch models dropping from $229, $299, and $399 respectively to $189, $249, and $279 respectively. The lower pricing makes room for Apple third generation iPod touch lineup.
As expected, the 3G iPod touch lineup comes packing the same processing platform (32GB and 64GB models only) as the recently introduced iPhone 3GS. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that Apple wants the iPod touch to have a camera just yet. The new iPod touch models start at $199 for the 8GB model, then ramp up to $299 for the 32GB model and $399 for the 64GB model – there is no longer a 16GB model in the lineup.
"At just $199 the iPod touch is the most affordable gateway to Apple's revolutionary App Store with more than 75,000 applications that you can wirelessly download right into your iPod touch," said Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "You get a great iPod, a great pocket computer with the industry's best mobile web browser and a great game player, all in this super-thin beautiful enclosure."
The traditional HDD-based iPod Classic got a storage bump to 160GB (from 120GB) and keeps the same $249 price tag.
Apple's iPod nano also got a revamp and is now available in capacities up to 16GB. While the basic design remains unchanged from the previous model, the new iPod nano gains a camera for pictures/video, a microphone, and a speaker for audio playback. And what may be one of the most improbable features added to an iPod (after years of discounting the feature) is the addition of an FM radio tuner on the iPod nano. The 8GB iPod nano is priced at $149 and the 16GB model is priced at $179.
"iPod nano is the world's most popular music player with over 100 million sold," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs. "And now we've added a video camera to its incredibly thin design, without any additional cost to the user."
Last year's refresh of the iPod shuffle didn't go over so well with the iPod community. The model's lack of physical controls and featureless design left many puzzled. Apple didn't rectify those issues this time around, but prices are now lower (2GB for $59 and 4GB for $79). The shuffle is also now available in blue, pink, green, silver, and black – there's also a polished steel 4G version for $99.
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subset: commoncrawl


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Today in History: March 7
Today is Thursday, March 7, the 66th day of 2013. There are 299 days left in the year.
Today's Highlight in History:
On March 7, 1965, a march by civil rights demonstrators was violently broken up at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., by state troopers and a sheriff's posse in what came to be known as "Bloody Sunday."
On this date:
In 1793, during the French Revolutionary Wars, France declared war on Spain.
In 1850, in a three-hour speech to the U.S. Senate, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts endorsed the Compromise of 1850 as a means of preserving the Union.
In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for his telephone.
In 1912, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen arrived in Hobart, Australia, where he dispatched telegrams announcing his success in leading the first expedition to the South Pole the previous December.
In 1926, the first successful trans-Atlantic radio-telephone conversations took place between New York and London.
In 1936, Adolf Hitler ordered his troops to march into the Rhineland, thereby breaking the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact.
In 1945, during World War II, U.S. forces crossed the Rhine River at Remagen (reh-MAH'-gehn), Germany, using the damaged but still usable Ludendorff Bridge.
In 1960, Jack Paar returned as host of NBC's "Tonight Show" nearly a month after walking off in a censorship dispute with the network.
In 1963, the Pan Am Building (today the MetLife Building) first opened in midtown Manhattan.
In 1975, the U.S. Senate revised its filibuster rule, allowing 60 senators to limit debate in most cases, instead of the previously required two-thirds of senators present.
In 1983, the original version of The Nashville Network (now Spike) made its debut.
In 1994, the Supreme Court, in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music Inc., unanimously ruled that a parody that pokes fun at an original work can be considered "fair use" that doesn't require permission from the copyright holder. (The ruling concerned a parody of the song "Pretty Woman" by the rap group 2 Live Crew.)
Ten years ago: Virtually every musical on Broadway shut down as musicians went on strike, and actors and stagehands said they wouldn't cross their picket lines; the walkout lasted four days.
Five years ago: On the heels of a gloomy report that 63,000 jobs were lost in February 2008, President George W. Bush said "it's clear our economy has slowed" as he tried to reassure an anxious public that the long-term outlook was good. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Samantha Power, who was acting as an adviser to Barack Obama, resigned after calling rival Hillary Rodham Clinton "a monster." Leon Greenman, the only Englishman sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp, died in London at age 97.
One year ago: President Barack Obama, speaking at a Daimler truck plant in Mount Holly, N.C., made his most urgent appeal to date for the nation to wean itself from oil, calling it a "fuel of the past" and demanding that the United States broaden its approach to energy. The Indianapolis Colts cut injured star Peyton Manning.
Today's Birthdays: Photographer Lord Snowdon is 83. TV personality Willard Scott is 79. Auto racer Janet Guthrie is 75. Actor Daniel J. Travanti is 73. Entertainment executive Michael Eisner is 71. Rock musician Chris White (The Zombies) is 70. Actor John Heard is 67. Rock singer Peter Wolf is 67. Rock musician Matthew Fisher (Procol Harum) is 67. Pro Football Hall-of-Famer Franco Harris is 63. Pro and College Football Hall-of-Famer Lynn Swann is 61. Rhythm-and-blues singer-musician Ernie Isley (The Isley Brothers) is 61. Actor Bryan Cranston is 57. Actress Donna Murphy is 54. Actor Nick Searcy is 54. Golfer Tom Lehman is 54. International Tennis Hall-of-Famer Ivan Lendl is 53. Actress Mary Beth Evans is 52. Singer-actress Taylor Dayne is 51. Actor Bill Brochtrup is 50. Opera singer Denyce Graves is 49. Comedian Wanda Sykes is 49. Actor Jonathan Del Arco is 47. Rock musician Randy Guss (Toad the Wet Sprocket) is 46. Actor Peter Sarsgaard is 42. Actress Rachel Weisz (wys) is 42. Classical singer Sebastien Izambard (Il Divo) is 40. Rock singer Hugo Ferreira (Tantric) is 39. Actress Jenna Fischer is 39. Actress Sarayu Rao (TV: "Monday Mornings") is 38. Actress Audrey Marie Anderson is 38. Actor TJ Thyne (TV: "Bones") is 38. Actress Laura Prepon is 33.
Thought for Today: "The telephone book is full of facts, but it doesn't contain a single idea." — Mortimer J. Adler, American philosopher (1902-2001).


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With RIM having now announced their launch event for BlackBerry 10, there are a good many folks out there wondering when exactly they'll actually be able to put a BlackBerry 10 device in their hands, myself included. According to a new article from Bloomberg, February is looking pretty solid for some, albeit, unspecified regions.
"We want to do it as quickly as possible," Chief Operating Officer Kristian Tear said in an interview following RIM's announcement of the Jan. 30 date earlier in the day. Though the first phones won't go on sale simultaneously worldwide, RIM is aiming for a release on multiple continents within 30 days of the unveiling, Tear said.
As we already know, RIM has over 50 carriers on board for BlackBerry 10 but specific roll out times will vary across carriers. A global launch is the goal for BlackBerry 10 and while it's certainly not unobtainable, it comes down to the carriers to announce availability on their individual networks.
Some carriers will be first, some carriers will be later. Either way, it's a Q1 2013 launch that we're looking at here as RIM has said repeatedly and we're sure to hear more specifics once the information is fully unveiled at the launch event. Hang onto your hats, folks!
Source: Bloomberg