AS APPLE CEO Steve Jobs confirmedin his live satellite broadcast fromCalifornia: Apple has the mostpopular MP3 player in the world in theiPod mini, so they’re going to stopmaking it.

Of course this was fordramatic effect as the reality isthey have shrunk it, improvedit and rebranded it as theiPod nano.

The emphasis at the launchwas on how tiny it is, which wasfair enough because it is.

Front-on,it’s not that much smallerthan the mini, but side-on it‘swafer thin.

“iPod nano is thebiggest revolution since theoriginal iPod,” said Steve Jobs,Apple’s CEO.

“iPod nano is a full featurediPod in an impossibly smallsize, and it’s going to change the rulesfor the entire portable music market.”

The other conspicuous new feature isa colour screen, now also standardissue on the iPod, meaning that the4GB version can hold 1,000 songs,25,000 photos or some combination ofthe two.

As well as the usual white, itwill also come in black. The4GB model will have a street price of£179 and the 2GB one will go for £139.

The nano launch somewhatovershadowed the other big Apple news,which was the launch of the MotorolaROKR iTunes mobile phone.

The ROKRcomes with iTunes preinstalled but thatis just to manage audio files; you stillhave to download from the website ontoyour computer first.

It remains to be seen, however, howpopular this concept will be, as theROKR can only hold 100 songs and,despite the presence of stereospeakers, will be a poor substitute fora dedicated MP3 player.