Apple today held a large press event in San Francisco to update their music offerings for consumers.

The biggest announcement was that of a cell phone by Motorola featuring the iTunes software. The deal between Apple and Motorola was announced last summer, but there were delays in the announcement from earlier this summer that pushed it back to today.

The new phone, called the Motorola ROKR(pronounced “Rocker”), comes with a card that holds 512 MB of music, or about 100 songs.

“The way we think of this phone is, it’s really an iPod shuffle on your phone,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said at the announcement.

It is a regular cell phone, but at the push of a single button, the iTunes software comes up. The phone is bundled with stereo headphones, and can be used as a regular MP3 player.

When a call comes in, the music stops where it is, and you are able to take the call. The music resumes in the same place when the call ends. Music can be loaded on the phone using iTunes and the included USB cable.

ROKR features many of the same features that typical cell phones carry today including a camera with zoom and flash as well as video record, Bluetooth (though not for loading music), and talk time of up to 6.5 hours and standby time of 260 hours.

At the announcement, Apple revealed that Cingular will be the exclusive provider of the phone in the U.S., selling it for $249.99 with 2 year contract.

Motorola announced that Rogers Wireless is tabbed to sell the phone in Canada later this month. Pricing and terms were not available at press time.

Apple also announced the iPod Nano will be a replacement to the number one selling MP3 player in the world, the iPod Mini.

The Nano is much smaller than the Mini, though big enough that it still has room for a screen. The Nano improves on the Mini in that its screen is in colour. Whereas the Mini used a regular hard drive, the Nano uses a flash drive like the iPod Shuffle, meaning there are no moving parts in the player’s interior. This means there is no worry of skipping when a person is jogging, and the battery lasts much longer.

Even more remarkable is that the length is about the same as an iPod Shuffle, and it’s even flatter than the Shuffle. However it still uses Apple’s regular dock connector, and has room for Apple’s signature click wheel.

The Nano itself comes in and two colours, Apple’s signature white colour, and a new black colour. It is available immediately in Canada for $249 for the 2 GB model, and $299 for the 4 GB model.

Madonna’s 15 albums are now part of the iTunes Music Store, the same day Apple showed her in a new commercial for the Motorola ROKR.

Apple also added all 6 Harry Potter audiobooks to iTunes, and released a special 20GB iPod with the Hogwarts school crest engraved on the back. They teamed up with car manufacturers Audi, Honda, Volkswagen and Acura to include iPod connectivity options to new cars. And they released iTunes 5, which includes customization for the Shuffle feature, a cleaner interface, parental controls on the Music Store as well as album reviews, and a more powerful search feature. For Windows users, it now allows the ability to synchronize contacts and calendars from Outlook onto their iPods. iTunes 5 is now available for download at www.itunes.com.






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