Apple Fights to Keep Calling the Tune(s)

After this summer's frenzy over the unveiling of the iPhone, today's Steve Jobs event in San Francisco, featuring upgrades to the iPod line, was bound to be somewhat less revelatory. The new iPod Touch will borrow fingers-friendly technology from the IPhone, and with a full Internet browser, can grab songs wirelessly from a beefed-up ITunes music store.
Add in a slightly more compact new Nano (battery life and song capacity are also a bit reduced), the newly introduced products should help Apple keep beating up on Microsoft's Zune, which recently cut its price by $50 to $199.
The larger question is where does this put the company in a highly mutable bazaar of gadget technology? Looking at it personally, this correspondent had been hoping for a truly affordable video-capable iPod with a screen to match the iTouch and iPhone's 3.5-incher. But even the eight-gig Nano, at $199, is only 2".
With Sony's Howard Stringer finally having gotten most of his sprawling Sony empire on the same page (the product research and marketing sides have never been known for their warm and fuzzy relations), a renewed threat may come from the Japanese company, as they bring out a Walkman that can play music videos and film trailers.
Meanwhile, Sony's aiming to upgrade their underselling video players in hopes of turning them into download devices and integrating them with robust home theater set-ups--all in time for the coming high-resolution wave in consumer's living rooms. (Apple's set-top Apple TV device, aimed to exploit iTunes music and video libraries, has had less-than-expected impact.)
Still, as of today, Apple leads in video downloads. But another warning bell came with last week's severing of the Apple-NBC Universal tie that had given Apple ready access to NBC television and film fare.
Amazon.com was quick to step up and fill the void. But grabbing downloads from their site is no piece of cake (Mac users, especially, face complications), and the very same tiered pricing plans that NBC and other content companies want to keep complex are a big strike against the user-friendly experience Apple established with their simple price points for downloads of songs and video.
Said music industry gadfly Bob Lefsetz in his newsletter:

NBC/Universal is way out of its depth here. It thinks this is an inside job, akin to a battle between studios and agents. But, it's not. It's a battle between producers and viewers, and the studio DOESN'T EVEN KNOW IT! You've got to make your product available cheaply, in a usable form.
Hell, look at history. Littered with the laserdisc, and soon the DVD. Tell me how selling low quality video today, playable on a tiny screen, is going to hurt sales tomorrow. Did people not buy DVDs because they'd already built a laser disc collection?
Please.

Opinions may be flung, but the consumers will ultimately decide. What will play out now is a balance of economic threats, because just as the major studios and networks could put Apple out of the download business with a concerted walk-out, if they complicate life for the end-users, they take a very great risk of not being able to flog not only present but future content in readily available form. The next few months are likely to be tumultuous ones in this highly mutable marketplace.

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