The Return of Steve Jobs and an iPod refresh Video

The Return of Steve Jobs and an iPod refresh Video Transcript

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>> Brian Tong: Hey, guys. Brian Tong here with CNET.com, and Apple's latest music event here in San Francisco at the Eurobot [phonetic] Winnow Gardens, and the big news, Steve Jobs is back. [Applause] Steve had a standing ovation, and he also came with a heartfelt message to the crowd.

>> Steve Jobs: I'd like to take a moment and thank everybody in the Apple community for the heartfelt support I got too. It really meant a lot.

>> Brian Tong: After the ovation, the news here is that cameras are coming to the iPod family, but only the iPod Nano for now. Now, the pricing for the Nano will be $149 for a 8 gig model and $179 for a 16 gig model. Apple positioned the Nano camera as being high quality but did not mention the fact that the other pocket camcorders out there on the market are now shooting HD. The video quality liked like about 640 by 480 with my eyes. There were rumors that Apple is having issues with their camera, so they did not appear on the iPod Touch, but overall, they did lower the prices and bring more value. They're going to start at $199 and go up to as high as 64 gigs for $399. Apple's also really trying to position the iPod Touch and the iPhone as a gaming device. They showed over 20,000 apps on their platform versus what the Sony PSP and the Nintendo DS has to offer, but I would not put them in the same class, at least, with the quality of games at this moment. Apple also dropped some of the prices on their other iPod models. The iPod Classic will now be a 160 gig model for $249. The Shuffles are also getting a nice little price point $59 for the 2 gig models and $79 for the 4 gig models. They're going to be coming out in all these new, kind of polished popping colors, and Apple also is announcing a $99 special edition. It's going to be only available online. We talked about the hardware. Now we want to jump over to the software with iTunes 9. It's really being loaded and packed with a bunch of new features. Apple's really pushing their whole genius feature, and now not only can you get song recommendations, but the genius feature will be pumped into genius mixes. Kind of like a radio station for your favorite genres. You're also going to have improved syncing in iTunes 9. Itunes is also getting home train. So what this allows is up to five computers on a home network to not only stream content from one to another, but also drag and drop and copy music files maybe from your mom's computer over to yours if you like her kind of music. The iTunes music store is also being redesigned with a cleaner interface. You can make direct purchases without jumping into the pages, and also if you click on this drop down arrow, you do have the ability to post your purchases or song recommendations on Facebook and Twitter because Apple is getting social. Another thing that was talked about is iTunes and their interactive music albums. When they showcase it here, it's going to be called iTunes LP, which offers a lot of interactive elements like photos, videos, lyric notes, and these did look really cool. I'm not sure if it would make me buy an album just because of the content, but it only currently is going to be working through iTunes. You won't be able to access this content through an iPod Touch or your iPhone at the moment. Also, the iPhone OS 3.1 is going to be available today as well. Two of the new features that they highlighted were genius apps. So now within the iTunes store on your iPod Touch or iPhone, it will give you recommendations for applications for you to purchase based on some of the other apps that you've purchased before. Also, CNET reported here first that ring tones would be coming to the iTunes store as well through your phone. These are pre-made ring tones. They're going to be $1.29, and they will be available today as well. So the big announcements here at Apple's music event. Obviously, Steve Jobs is back in the house. Cameras are coming to the iPod Nano family for now and not the iPod Touch, and also we saw upgrades to iTunes 9 and the iPhone OS software for 3.1. [music] For CNET.com, I'm Brian Tong here in San Francisco.