Apple Unveils New iPods, iTunes Upgrades, and HD Television Shows

As most in the online blogosphere had been predicting, Apple CEO Steve Jobs today announced a bunch of new updates, additions, and replacements to the iPod and iTunes family. Fellow AOL Tech blog Engadget was there live blogging the event, if you want details, but here's the gist of the new announcements.

iTunes 8 Adds HD TV Shows, NBC, and New Genius Feature: The latest upgrade to iTunes brings back NBC shows to iPod owners who were missing the ability to watch 'Battlestar Galactica' and 'The Office' on their portable devices. Also added, HD versions of said TV shows, a welcome addition to the existing HD movie lineup on iTunes. Meanwhile, Genius is a LastFM/Pandora-like song recommendation feature that will help you automatically generate playlists of your existing music based on your actual listening tastes. It'll also, of course, make intelligent suggestions based on music you're buying in the store. We have yet to try it out in person, though, so more on that later.

Slimmest iPod Nano Ever: Shipping in nine colors, the new Nano kind of looks like the Nano-before-last, but is apparently the slimmest ever, according to Jobs. It comes with some of the innovations found in the iPhone and iPod Touch, such as an accelerometer, so that the screen can automatically switch between portrait and landscape mode. It also has the new Apple Genius feature built in.

New 120-Gigabyte (GB) iPod Classic: The overly thick 160GB model will be scrapped to make way for this slimmer, 30,000-song-holding model, for the nice price of $249.

32-Gigabyte (GB) iPod Touch: Now you'll have twice as much space to hold all those movies you've been wanting to watch on the Touch's stunning widescreen. It'll cost you a hefty $399, but the 8-gigabyte Touch is now only $229.

New In-Ear Headphones: Plenty of earbud-style headphones exist, but so few that'll match your iPod so nicely. For $79, you get a pair of these dual-drive 'phones, along with a fit kit featuring three earbud sizes.

For more details and commentary, be sure to check out Engadget's Apple announcement coverage and TUAW's meta-live-blog.

Tags: apple, breaking news, BreakingNews, ipod classic, ipod nano, ipod touch, IpodClassic, IpodNano, IpodTouch, itunes, itunes 8, Itunes8