Apple: Death and "Rock" Greatly Exaggerated

Sam Gustin says: Steve Jobs opened Apple's "Let's Rock" event in San Fransisco with a message designed to quell concerns over his health.

"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated," read the on-screen text behind the Apple chief executive, who appeared "thin but jaunty," as the Associated Press put it. The classic Mark Twain quote was presumably a reference to Bloomberg News's accidental posting of his obituary on its newswire last month.

Aside from that, the actual product announcements were very much in line with expectations, leaving the event feeling anti-climactic. The top news appears to be a slick new iPod nano -- "the thinnest nano we've ever made" -- and the return of NBC television programming to iTunes after a year-long hiatus.

Also noteworthy is a new iTunes feature called Genius, which creates playlists based on similar music, à la Pandora, and a "shake to shuffle" feature on the nano, which, you guessed it, shuffles songs when you shake the device.

In addition, the company rolled out a new version of the iPod Touch -- "the funnest iPod we've ever created" -- new headphones, and a software upgrade designed to fix some of the service quality bugs afflicting the iPhone.

My first reaction is that there's nothing here that represented the real home-run that Apple needed to make a clean break from its troubles over the summer. There was a little to much self-congratulation -- on iTunes overtaking Wal-Mart in music sales, and the number of applications downloaded from the iPhone App Store -- and not enough of the new, innovative, blockbuster products we've come to associate with Apple.

Yes, expectations with Apple are high, but I can't imagine Steve Jobs would want it any other way.

The stock market seems to agree. Investors either weren't reassured by Jobs' cheeky reference to his health, or they weren't impressed by the actual product announcement -- or both.

But ten minutes into Jobs' presentation, Apple share price begun an hour-long plunge that has the stock down over three percent as of 2:20 p.m. ET.