"Thinnest" Ipod ever?

Apple launch 'thinnest' iPod

APPLE boss Steve Jobs came back from the "dead" last night to take the wraps off a revamped line of iPods.

Speculation has been rife that the 53-year-old Apple boss was seriously ill but despite looking gaunt and clearly had lost a lot of weight he introduced the thinnest ever made iPod at a press conference in San Francisco, beamed live to London.

He kicked off the event by flashing a huge message on a screen behind him: "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."

Steve played off a famous line from Mark Twain in referring to obituary preparedness on him that was accidentally posted by Bloomberg News and then retracted.

He showed off three new versions of the iPod Touch, the closest cousin to the iPhone.

An 8GB version of the new model will sell for £169 a 16GB version will be £219 and a 32 GB model will be £289.

The new iPod Touch is the thinnest the company has ever made.

He also introduced an upgraded iPod nano, which lets users shuffle songs by shaking it. They come in aluminium and a range of colours from purple to lime green.

The new nano's 8GB and 16GB versions will cost £109 and £149 respectively.

All the new versions will be in Apple stores within days Apple also introduced a updated iTunes version and a new feature, Genius, that lets iTunes shoppers get recommendations of songs or movies based on their interests.

iTunes, which now boasts 65 million accounts, will feature High Definition television shows and an updated browser allowing users to skim through album covers.

Mr Jobs said the new Genius function worked by taking one song and creating a play list based on the user's play list library and could also give suggestions of other songs the user might want to buy.

He said Apple had sold more than 160 million iPods since the MP3 player was introduced seven years ago.

Finally, he announced new software for the iPhone that would be free to all users and would "fix a lot of bugs" including dropped calls and connection problems reported by customers.

He said: "We're really, really excited about all these products. We think people are going to have a lot of fun."