Apple's New Tunes

Hit the mute button and put all the rumors to rest. Apple's new line of iPods has arrived. Before a relatively small audience of a few hundred at San Francisco's Moscone Center, Steve Jobs showed off Apple's refreshed, repriced and resized line of iPods—the first revamp of the line in two years.

Already the best-selling digital music player on the market, the iPod nano now also plays video. "It's also incredibly thin," said Jobs as he pulled out a new square nano that plays video on a 2-inch color screen and sports a metallic case that's available in silver, black, blue, green and a (Product)Red special edition. Battery life is a very respectable 24 hours for music and about five hours for video. A 4-gigabyte version of the device is priced at $149 while an 8-gigabyte version will cost $199. Both of the new models are $50 cheaper than existing versions with the same amount of memory. Apple said the entire nano line will be available immediately.

But it was the iPod Touch that created the most buzz, and with good reason. Like the iPhone, which debuted in June, the Touch doesn't operate with a click wheel. Instead, the 8mm-thick device uses a touch screen and features a 3-inch color video monitor. It's also enabled with Wi-Fi, meaning you can log on to iTunes and download songs, TV shows, movies and podcasts without first downloading and synching to your computer. To make the most of the Touch's Wi-Fi abilities, Apple is including its Safari web browser. An 8-gigabyte version will cost $299, while a 16-gigabyte version will cost $399. Both will ship later this month.

And for those who feel strongly that size really does matter, there's a new 160 iPod that can house 40,000 songs. Dubbed the iPod classic, the 160-gigabyte and a similar 80-gigabyte version are similar in appearance to previous iPods. The larger model sells for $349, while the 80-gigabyte model sells for $249.

And despite a sweet run on its iPhones, Jobs said Apple is cutting the cost of its 8-gigabyte model from $599 to $399. It's not as if sales were hurting. A recent report from research firm iSuppli found that during its first month on the market the iPhone outsold all other smart phones in the U.S. and accounted for 1.8 percent of all mobile handset sales among U.S. buyers. According to iSuppli, the two models of the iPhone beat out more entrenched rivals like Research in Motion's BlackBerry line and all of Palm's Treo devices.