Breaking Apple Event News: New iTouch announced along with iPhone 2.1 Firmware

Davey Winder
Wednesday, 10 September 2008 00:27

IT Industry - Market

The second half of the Let's Rock Apple Event had finished, and the news is of a new iTouch and new firmware for the iPhone, but no new MacBooks...

As expected and predicted a new iPod iTouch has been announced in San Francisco which is thinner and has an iPhone alike curved back design.

The new iTouch also comes with an integrated speaker, the volume controls for which are side-mounted on the device. Otherwise, to be honest, there is not a lot to write about here.

You will get the same Genius playlist functionality as mentioned in our previous story and if you have one of those Nike + iPod things then all the software and receiver stuff is built-in.

The iTouch is available immediately and will cost USD $229 for the 8GB model, USD $299 for 16GB and USD $399 for the top of the range 32GB.

New to the 700 or so games already available in the App Store, there are new ones that bring the arcade to the new iTouch including car racing and footie games. Oh, and also new is a TV advert for the iTouch if anyone really cares about such things.

Perhaps more exciting than the new iTouch is the final announcement from Let's Rock, that of 2.1 firmware for the iPhone and iTouch. A free upgrade for 2.0 users but a USD $9.99 purchase for everyone else.

We are told it fixes bugs, lots of them. However, more detail is not as yet available. Keep an eye on iTWire during the day for more information as it becomes available. All we have been told is that there should be no more dropped calls or web browser crashes.

Oh, and the iTunes backup is promised to be much faster.

You will have to wait until at least Friday for this though, and given the problems and delays that existed when the 2.0 firmware was released it could be much longer in reality.

We were, sadly, correct when we said that there would be no new MacBook revealed at the Let's Rock event today.

Keep tuned to iTWire during the day for more detailed analysis of these announcements...