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Speaking at the "Let's Rock" event in San Francisco, Jobs arrived on stage displaying none of the health problems that have apparently plagued him and swiftly confronted the reports with a slide which jokingly noted "rumours of my death are greatly exaggerated."

He then moved straight into the topic of the night, music, introducing a host of refreshes for the iPod lineup. The nano received the biggest makeover, dumping its squat appearance in favour of a return to the portrait design of its predecessor, bringing enthusiastic cheers from the American crowd.

Apple has also built in the accelerometer included in the iPhone and iPod touch, which can be used to flip to the cover-flow display and enable shuffle mode with a shake. Jobs is claiming 24 hours of battery life for music and four hours for video.

The

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iPod touch also received a refresh, slimming down, but at the same time receiving a hardware volume control and speaker, though Jobs warned not to expect too much from the sound quality.

"It's got the same display but it's even thinner. What's different? We've integrated volume controls, we've built in a speaker, which is really hard with something this thin... it's for causal listeners though, not audiophiles."

Alongside the introduction of a new 32GB model, the iPod touch now features the apps store built in offering a selection of hundreds of games, leading Jobs to dub it the "the funnest iPod ever," though he may have been stretching the point slightly when he claimed "there's a pretty good argument for it being the best portable device for games, too."

iTunes update

Jobs also introduced iTunes 8 which allows users to browse the shop using a tiled cover art view, and have playlists recommend using the new Genius feature. Genius scours your albums to create custom playlists of songs which it believes go together. It does this by rooting through the millions of customs playlists sent up to iTunes by its users, and aggregating the matches.

Jobs also announced that iTunes would now stock HD television shows, including those of NBC which has returned to the fold, suggesting the network has resolved its pricing conflict with Apple.