Fittingly titling their music event after the Rolling Stones' "It's Only Rock and Roll", Apple made a series of music-focused announcements today from San Francisco by introducing an updated line of iPods and a new version of iTunes, its media player software and online store.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who made his first public appearance since October 2008, was met with loud cheers from the crowd in attendance. He, along with other Apple executives, announced a newer iPod nano that will double as a pocket video camera, a faster iPod touch and revamps to iTunes to simplify certain processes and offer more to consumers shopping on the iTunes Store.

A newer iPod and improvements to the others

The iPod nano had the biggest splash of the iPod line, thanks to the addition of a video camera and microphone on the back. A small speaker has also been included. And yet, with the additions, the size of the nano is unchanged from last year's model. Video footage shot with the nano can be viewed on the nano's larger 2.2" screen or copied over to iPhoto on a Mac and then uploaded to YouTube with one click.

The new nano also has the VoiceOver feature introduced in the iPod shuffle, Genius Mixes and a long overdue FM radio tuner. Users will be able to pause music being played on the radio and also use a "tagging" feature to determine the name of the song. They also included a built-in voice recorder and pedometer. There will be an 8GB version for $169 and a 16GB version for $199, and they are available now. Colours include silver, black, purple, blue, green, orange, yellow, red and pink.

Apple pushed the iPod touch as a gaming platform that could rival Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP) and Nintendo's DSi handheld units. There are now over 21,000 games available on the App Store, which Apple boasted was far more than the other two combined. Part of the allure, they say, is that your music can be integrated with the games you play. Listen to your favourite tunes while playing a shooting game, or even dabble your thumbs on music-based games. For football fanatics who love the Madden franchise of video games, there will now be a version of the game for the iPod touch and iPhone, which you can download now.

Aside from that, the touch is, well, generally untouched. There is a larger 64GB version of the unit, and it was announced that the 32GB and 64GB versions should operate "50 percent faster" and offer "better graphics" than previous models. The prices have been cut, too, and they are: $219 for the 8GB model, $329 for the 32GB model and $429 for the 64GB model

The tiny iPod shuffle is still the same under the hood, but it now comes in pink, green and blue, on top of the existing black and silver versions. The price has also dropped to $69 for the 2GB version and $89 for the 4GB version. Responding to all the criticism surrounding the lack of third-party headphones for the shuffle, Apple announced that companies like, Belkin, Scosche and Sony have released their own models of headphones that include playback controls on the cord. A new stainless steel edition of the shuffle was announced, but it appears that Canadian availability isn't in the cards just yet.

Perhaps surprisingly, Apple has kept the iPod classic alive by introducing a thinner version of the player with expanded storage capacity from 120GB to 160GB. The new 160GB classic is available now for $279.

A new version of iTunes

iTunes 9 is the latest major release of Apple's music player software and store, and some of the new features include something called Genius Mixes. This feature will take a song you're playing and automatically create a playlist from your music library that should go well together. It will generate up to 12 of them, and they will continue to play like a radio station thereafter. The idea behind it is to make you look for and click songs less than before.

Improved syncing means you can better decide what music is transferred over to your iPod or iPhone. The Music tab will now allow you to go beyond just syncing over playlists, but also offer you the option of selecting specific artists and genres to move those over automatically instead. Ringtones will also be available for purchase directly from the music labels, though there are already numerous ways to make your own for free, like the iTunes method and another Web-based one.

If you have an iPhone or iPod touch, you will now be able to arrange the applications you have stored on either device. A new tab in iTunes 9 will let you see your iPhone/iPod touch's home screen and let you arrange the apps in whatever order you want, as well as how they sync with iTunes.

The Home Sharing feature, which allows two iTunes users on the same network to share their respective music libraries, now includes the ability to copy songs, movies and TV shows from one computer to another, so long as it stays within a limit of five authorized machines. If you prefer not to copy the file over, you can stream it instead. There is also a control layout that will only display the songs that you don't have from another user's library. And in an added bonus, there is an "automatic syncing" feature that will allow you to copy over stuff you don't have in your collection right on the spot. The one caveat to this is that you must have an iTunes account in order to make this work.

Aside from a new layout in the iTunes Store, Jobs also introduced iTunes LP, an ode to days gone by where LPs had everything from liner notes, lyrics and other goodies to go with the record. Music labels will have the opportunity to offer a lot of extra content to consumers who buy entire albums from the store.

Extra features for movies purchased on iTunes, aptly called "iTunes Extras", should provide things like deleted scenes, featurettes and other content, but these will likely come at an extra cost.