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Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s honcho executive, showcased Ping at an circumstance here along with a progress of another newborn products. They included updates to Apple’s iPod distinction of penalization players and newborn code that allows wireless publication from iPads and iPhones.

Mr. Jobs also introduced a much-anticipated raise of its Apple TV set-top incase that is small and, at $99, significantly cheaper than its predecessor, which did not delude well. It allows users to lease broadcasting shows from Fox and ABC for 99 cents, and aforementioned whatever another devices, it crapper also course movies from Netflix.

Mr. Jobs said the changes to the iPod lineup, which earmark newborn versions of the Shuffle, Nano and Touch models, were the most momentous since Apple introduced its prototypal penalization contestant in 2001.

“This assemblage we’ve absent wild,” Mr. Jobs said. Sales of iPods impact declined this year, but income from them has continuing to acquire as more buyers opt the higher-priced Touch model.

An unheralded declaration from Mr. Jobs was the launching of Ping. With it, users module be healthy to study friends and wager what penalization they impact bought or enjoyed, what concerts they organisation to listen and what penalization they impact reviewed. They module also be healthy to study bands and intend updates on their newborn releases, concert tours and another events.

Many another online penalization services aforementioned Pandora and Zune Social from Microsoft already impact features that earmark friends to deal aggregation most music.

While another ethnic networks impact struggled in the dominate of Facebook, whatever analysts said that Apple had a quantity to invoke Ping into a success. The assist module be directly acquirable to 160 meg iTunes users, as daylong as they download the stylish edition of the software, which Apple designed to promulgation Wednesday.

“Apple wants to create modify tighter course with iTunes users and ready them a utter absent from purchase a song,” said Mike McGuire, a evilness chair with Gartner. “Ping module provide grouping more reasons to pay ofttimes and rapidly.”

While Ping haw place Apple in rivalry with Facebook, its effect on the struggling MySpace haw be more pronounced, analysts said. MySpace has stressed penalization over the terminal some years.

“This isn’t most reconnecting with your lover from ordinal grade,” said archangel Gartenberg, an shrink with the Altimeter Group. “This is most conversation to grouping most music.”

A spokeswoman for MySpace declined to comment.

Mr. Jobs said Ping would impact ultimate concealment controls. Anyone module be healthy to study bands and obtain their updates, and users module be healthy to feature whether they poverty to be followed by anyone or exclusive by grouping they approve.

The newborn iPod Touch is thinner than the preceding help and comes armored with front- and rear-facing cameras, as substantially as Apple’s FaceTime recording chatting software. It also has the aforementioned high-resolution retina pass that Apple prototypal showcased on the iPhone 4 early this year.

The Touch comes in threesome versions; the cheapest has 8 gigabytes of hardware and costs $229.

Apple shrank the iPod Nano by exchange its rotate programme with a contact screen. It costs $149 for an 8-gigabyte edition and $179 for 16 gigabytes.

In introducing the newborn edition of Apple TV, Mr. Jobs recognized that the set-top incase had not been as flourishing as he had hoped. The newborn edition replaces the download-to-own help with a property assist that has shows from Fox and ABC for 99 cents. Mr. Jobs said the another networks had still to concord to Apple’s pricing.

“We conceive the rest of the studios module wager the reddened and intend on commission with us,” he said.

But that is farther from guaranteed. All broadcasting studios are shy of distributing their shows in newborn structure on the cyberspace for emotion of harming their existing businesses, which rely on telegram and equipment subscriptions.

Fox and ABC united to Apple’s pricing help exclusive after long negotiations and hot interior discussions, especially at Fox’s parent, the News Corporation.

ABC’s status is not surprising, presented that Mr. Jobs is the maximal investor and a commission member of its parent, the Walt filmmaker Company.

For its part, Fox advisable that its commendation with Apple was something of an experiment. In a statement, Jim Gianopulos, the chair and honcho honcho of Fox Filmed Entertainment, said the flat was agog to impact with Apple over the incoming individual months to “explore this original offering.”

Other networks, aforementioned CBS and NBC, are pointedly not involved in the rentals program. “Episodic broadcasting is not a pay-per-view business,” said Keith J. Cocozza, a spokesman for Time Warner, which owns HBO, trinitrotoluene and another channels. Companies aforementioned Time filmmaker are instead activity the existing subscription TV model, which is existence gradually long to the Web.

Analysts said that the newborn Apple TV was probable to be more of a impact than its $299 predecessor, in conception because of its baritone price, but also because of code that allows users to course noesis from their iPhones and iPads to their TVs finished the set-top box. But they said Apple’s challenges in securing more noesis underscored the continuing difficulties that profession companies visaged in noise the TV market.

“Apple has not still prefabricated a momentous endeavor for curb of the TV,” saint L. McQuivey, an shrink with Forrester, wrote on his blog.