Apple did what many people thought it would do today as it unveiled a new generation of iPods by debuting one which shares the same touch screen interface as the iPhone. Enter the iPod touch, set to be available later this month in an 8GB model for $299 and a 16GB model for $399.

The iPod touch sports a 3.5-inch widescreen display which is touch sensitive and the heart of controlling this iPod’s features. Users touch the screen to select features they want, be it music, videos or digital photos. There’s also a lot more under the hood on the iPod touch, including Wi-Fi wireless networking for downloading music and browsing the Web, Cover Flow display for browsing music by cover art, a built-in ambient light sensor and up to 22 hours of audio or five hours of video playback.

Today Apple launched the much anticipated, “fatter-style” iPod Nano with a 2-inch, 320×240 resolution video screen at 204 pixels per inch, more than any other current iPod device. The new design is surprisingly similar to the rumored pics that were floating around.

The new iPod Nano measures just 0.26″ thick and weighs 1.74 ounces with a battery that will give up to 24 continuous hours of audio playback and 5 hours of video. It comes in Flash drive capacities of 4GB ($149) or 8GB ($199) and in a choice of 5 different colors, but the 4GB model will only be available in silver.

Steve Jobs and Apple announced today that they will have a new version of iTunes which will be released tonight that supports ringtones for the iPhone.

The new version of iTunes will have a little “bell” icon next to the songs that can be created into a ringtone (about 500,000 initially) and will let you select your own, up to 30 second excerpt from the song to create your ringtone.

It certainly didn’t take NBC very long to get over its break-up with Apple’s iTunes. Only a few days after NBC announced that they intended to pull their video content from iTunes, and after a well publicized dispute, NBC has now announced a new partner.

Today NBC Universal and Amazon announced that NBC’s video content will now be available on Amazon’s Unbox media download service. Amazon and NBC are offering a number of incentives hype up the launch of the new content, too. The pilots of the new series of Bionic Woman and Chuck are available for free, even before the first episodes air. Other shows will normally be available for download the day after they air and the companies are even offering 30% off for buying seasons in advance.

In the month of July the Apple iPhone accounted for 1.8% of all handsets sold in the U.S., making it the leader in smartphone sales for the month. In it’s first full month the new mobile multimedia handset from Apple managed to outsell popular, long-standing competitors such as Blackberry and Palm devices. Whether or not the iPhone will continue to hold a true market share will remain to be seen, however. Much of the initial sales could easily be attributed to the hype that Apple is so good at building prior to the phone’s launch.

According to the market research firm iSuppli, the “real proof” of Apple’s ability to hold onto the market share it saw in July will come in the next few months leading up to the holidays. But, the number of sales that Apple was able to generate out of the gate for such a relatively expensive device is impressive, nonetheless. ISuppli is predicting that Apple will ship 4.5 million iPhones in 2007, and as many as 30 million by 2011.

We’ve seen a few different grainy photos of what might be a new video iPod Nano from Apple floating around the web, but here is the best quality one yet. We’re still chalking this one up to the “rumors” list but this photo fits the bill from what we’ve heard so far; appearing shorter with a small video screen that frankly may be just too small to watch videos on, anyway.

There’s a very good chance that this is the result of some skilled Photoshop work based on a hand holding the current Nano but either way I don’t think we’re going to have to wait long to find out as Jobs and the rest of Apple are still gearing up for some “The Beat Goes On” announcement on Wednesday. Keep watching…

In a sign that shows how powerful the branding of Apple’s iPod is and how much hurt the car manufacturing sector has come to, Apple and automobile manufacturer Volkswagon AG are now in discussions about making a so-called “iCar” that would be the ideal mode of transportation for any iEnthusiast. Apple CEOe Steve Jobs and Volkswagen’s prexy Martin Winterkorn have already met to talk about ideas for their collaboration and will be having more sessions to spitball ideas for their lifestyle ride.

So what kind of features could an iCar have beside the port for your iPod and iPhone? What about smart technology that lets you download iTunes to the car’s stereo? What about a dashboard that has a user interface like the one in the iPhone? The mind boggles at the possibilities but one more idea that we would like to mention are car commercials along the lines of Apple’s “I’m a PC and I’m a Mac” series. How about “I’m an SUV and I’m a iCar?”

NBC was an early-adopter of Apple iTunes, being the second major company back in 2005 to sign on with Apple to provide video content for the download service. Now, a short two years later NBC has announced its intentions to end their relationship with Apple and discontinue providing content for iTunes citing that they are unhappy with iTunes pricing policy and piracy control, or lack thereof.

NBC has over 1500 hours of TV and movies currently on iTunes, and according to a NYT report the two companies are in negotiations which may mean that NBC could be doing a little bit of muscle-flexing might not really upset enough yet to want to pull all of its content.

Apple iTunes has finally begun offering something that the folks in the UK have been anticipating for some time - iTunes video. The Cupertino-based company recently signed a deal with a number of studios including ABC, the Disney Channel, MTV, Nickelodeon and Paramount Comedy to bring video content to the mammoth online media downloading site.

Prior to this move, UK users of iTunes where only able to download trailers and some music videos. Now they’re being treated to video content from 28 different shows such as TV episodes of Lost, 24, South Park, Ugly Betty and That 70’s show. Apple says that they plan to expand this selection and continue to add more programming content. The episodes are currently going for £1.89 each.

Apple also confirmed that there’s an upcoming special event on …

If you happen to be one of the lucky bunch bringing home a fancy new aluminum framed iMac today you will also have the opportunity to apply your first software update, all in the same week. Only one day after Steve Jobs announced the release of the new iMacs Apple put out its first Software Update 1.0 with a very short and to-the-point message:

“This update provides important bug fixes and is recommended for 20-inch and 24-inch iMac models with 2.0, 2.4, or 2.8GHz processors.”

It’s not clear exactly what the 5.1MB download addresses other than it has today’s release date and that it requires Mac OS X 10.4.10 and a mid-2007 iMac. Along with this, as usual, is an update to the dual-boot software Boot Camp 1.4. Since we’re on the topic of Apple software updates, …

Along with the new iMac announced today Apple has also released that rumored super-thin keyboard we heard about not too long ago. As it turns out those preview photos appear to have been pretty accurate and now we’re looking at not only one but two new, thin aluminum keyboards available from Apple.

Both keyboards are made from anodized aluminum like the new iMac and have dedicated keys to adjust the monitor brightness, volume, drive eject, Expose and play/pause. One of the two new keyboards is a wired version that is very thin and connects through USB . It’s wider than the wireless version with a number pad on the right like a standard keyboard. It also has two USB 2.0 ports built into the little legs to connect any peripherals conveniently.

The new wireless version of the …

Today Steve Jobs announced Apple’s new iMacs at the companies summer press conference. The announcement came as no surprise to most as rumors of the new iMacs and their features have been plentiful over the past weeks.

Jobs made heavy reference to the construction materials of aluminum and glass with the new iMacs, talking of its “elegant” look, the fact that the glass is scratch resistance and how both materials are recycle-friendly. The new iMacs will come three models of 20-inch and 24-inch glossy frames.

All three models feature USB 2.0, Firewire, 8x SuperDrive, and an iSight camera as you might expect. They also house aCore 2 Duo processor, ATI Radeon HD Pro graphics card, 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.0 and 1GB of RAM.

Pricing runs from $1,199 for the 20-inch model with a 2.0GHz processor, 250GB …

Apple’s iPhone update, which by the release notes indicated that there was only some security fixes, also came some new unexpected features. The 1.0.1 update for the iPhone also added on a BCC option when sending email which was previously not an option. It also now gives you up to an hour to request the password when the phone is idle which was before limited to a minute. According to MacNN there have also been users reporting some enhanced stability in general along with a resolved issue where the battery would not fully charge.

Rumors are running about regarding a new iPod from Apple that may be released next week, and presumably will be called the iPod Touch. The word is the Touch design will be a 2×2 inch square that plays music and videos, coming with flash-based storage capacities of 4GB and 8GB.

It would essentially be a “nano” sized iPhone without any phone capabilities and will run $299 for the 4GB and $399 for the 8GB. Some type of announcement for the potential iPod Touch is expected to happen on August 7th but just this afternoon it sounds like invitations went out from Apple for an event on that day regarding the new Mac. So maybe we’ll have to wait a little longer to see a new iPod, but we’ll be watching Tuesday to see exactly what pans out….

According to a report just last month Apple became the third largest retailer of music in the U.S. beating out Amazon.com and trailing only the likes of Wal-mart and Best Buy. Now Apple has announced that its overall sales have reached an incredible 3 billion songs with the last holiday season undoubtedly being a large contributor to this number.

This number consists of songs only, mind you, and doesn’t include any videos. And with Apple’s 100 million plus iPods in the market the recent launch of the iPhone and improving technology for media downloading this trend doesn’t appear to be slowing down for any music vendor, much less Apple.

Reuters