Steve Jobs does his best act as huckster and traveling salesman

Steve Jobs claims # 1 in the games market with iPod Touch

Yesterday Apple CEO Steve Jobs did a live announcement of Apple’s new or improved products for the fall. Some of his claims were so preposterous it’s hard to take him with more than a grain of salt.

The show had plenty of wow’s, ooh’s and aah’s for Apple fanboys but nothing as spectacular as a new product. Most of the announcements, like the iPod Touch upgrade, had been rumored for weeks.

Apple does a good job of keeping their product line fresh and giving their competitors a target to hit.

Say it ain’t so Steve

“Steve Jobs just told an audience that the iPod touch alone outsells Nintendo’s DS and Sony’s PlayStation Portable combined, worldwide.” Engadget

Industry stats say Nintendo has sold 132 million DS consoles, 74 million Wii and Sony has sold 145 million Playstations for a total of 351 game consoles from Nintendo and Sony.

Apple has sold only 125 million iPod Touch devices and not all of them are used for games. When you talk like that Steve, it’s hard to believe what you say.

What probably is making Steve Jobs nervous is Microsoft’s announcement it shipped Windows Mobile 7 yesterday. Windows 7 will have built in Xbox 360 games and integration for multi-gamer play. Apple has not been a strong name in the game business so this is likely a shot across Nintendo and Sony’s bow but aimed at arch-enemy Microsoft. Microsoft Mobile 7 phones with Xbox 360 will ship on HTC, Samsung and a variety of other phones in time for the Christmas market.

Or Jobs might just be trying to create controversial media.

Most of the announcements were about enhanced devices at slightly lower prices.

What’s new and improved

The iPod Shuffle is smaller and costs $10 less, now $49. The iPod Nano has shrunk and still costs $149.

New iPod Touch with video and still camera

The iPod Touch has shrunk and added retina display and a screen side camera to allow for FaceTime video calls over wi-fi. A 720p HD video camera is new. The A4 processor from the iPhone 4 is in the iPod Touch and it costs a little more, $229 for the 8 Gb

iTunes 10, supposedly downloading today (not yet), has added something called Ping social networking. You will be able to share with your friends the music you listen to, trade gossip with bands, follow your favourite artists. Sounds like a new form of Facebook to me since people are already doing that on Facebook.

Apple TV has shrunk it’s set top box and is now selling for $99. It will offer 720p HD streaming rental of TV shows and movies. An episode will cost $0.99 and a movie rental $4.99.

Amazon.com also announced streaming TV and movies although their program is a purchase – you get to keep the video for watching over and over.

Apple TV will also support Netflix, the most popular video rental system.

Apple iOS is getting an upgrade to fix bugs and allow multi-tasking on the iPad.