Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduces a
new version of Apple TV at an event
in San Francisco.

Chatter about Google's social networking ambitions has been ubiquitous for months, but without warning a different Silicon Valley giant has pitched into competition with Facebook: Apple.

At an event Wednesday in San Francisco, Steve Jobs introduced Ping, which he described as "a social network for music."

"It's Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes," he explained--a line that might not impress if it came from a college dropout pitching a startup idea. Coming from Jobs it's a little more striking.

Some 120 million iTunes users can opt into the service. It lets people create a profile, based on their music choices, and get updates on their friends' purchases or reviews of music sold via iTunes. It's a social network that could be the same size as MySpace at launch, and it easily could pay for itself: Ping users are a click away from spending money at all times. Updates on friends' purchases on your news feed page feature a "buy" button. Artists also get profile pages and can be followed--a feature with the potential to take away MySpace's most loyal and valuable user base.

Jobs didn't take one potentially huge step -- to open iTunes up for streaming music. Even so, as is traditional he had "one more thing" to wrap his presentation. Or as he put it, "actually, it's one more hobby," raising chuckles from the crowd. That was a reference to a much-mocked past remark about Apple TV, the company's largely unsuccessful attempt to sell a system that can funnel video content to TVs.

Part of the problem, said Jobs, was that people found synchronizing and configuring the first-generation Apple TV box too much like setting up a computer. "This is a hard one for people in the computer industry to understand, but it's easy for consumer to understand," he said, in a none-too-subtle dig at Google TV devices that are set to appear this fall.

Apple's second attempt will cost $99 whereas the original cost $229. It is also fully a quarter of the size of the first generation and does away with storing TV and movies altogether. Everything is rented and the prices are low: just 99 cents for a TV show. Apple's most significant achievement might be that it has persuaded some big Hollywood content owners--ABC and Fox--to provide their TV shows such as "Glee" and "Bones" at this price in HD.

As I noted when Google announced its TV ambitions, persuading the owners of top-tier content to play along is the biggest challenge for a computer firm attempting to disrupt entertainment. Jobs acknowledged as much on stage: "This is a big step for the studios to make and not all of them wanted to take this step with us. We think the rest of the studios will see the light and get on board this with us."

If Apple TV 2.0 is a hit, it seems likely those studios will feel under pressure to do just that. The device will also stream movies from Netflix, another reason cable TV providers will be watching with interest.

The last word went to Coldplay's Chris Martin, wheeled out to play a few tunes on the piano. "Your marketing people can sell anything," he remarked, in reference to the way Apple helped the Coldplay song Viva La Vida become a hit (by making it available exclusively through iTunes initially, and then using it in an TV ad) after the band's label thought the track would be a dud. His point applies to Ping and the new Apple TV; whatever the technical merits or failings of the products, we know they will receive some of the slickest promotion on Earth.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs previewed the next operating system for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad today in Cupertino, CA.

Last night, Amazon launched for free a Kindle application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. While it's not the first e-reader for the iPhone, it's the only one with access to Amazon's 240,000-book catalog, which could make it appealing to people who have an iPhone but have held off on purchasing a Kindle. The launch comes just a couple of weeks after the company unwrapped the new version of its reading device.

The iPhone Kindle app lacks much of the functionality of the e-paper-based Kindle. For instance, users of the app can't search for words, highlight text, look words up in a dictionary, or enter notes. It also doesn't support the text-to-speech capabilities of the newest version of the Kindle. Perhaps most frustrating, however, is the cumbersome process required to download new books to an iPhone or iPod Touch. There's no direct button that gives access to Amazon's Kindle store via the phone itself. Instead, users must go through Safari, Apple's Web browser, where they need to zoom in and pan around on the site. And right now, the store only offers books, not periodicals.

Even with all these limitations, however, the reading experience on the iPhone is pleasant. The iPhone's screen is color, so book covers come through as they were designed, instead of black-and-white, as on the Kindle (due to the limitations of e-paper). Users can choose between five font sizes and jump to the table of contents, or to a particular page (denoted by page numbers that correspond to screen views of the text). It's possible to mark pages with a virtual dog-ear; the application even saves your dog-ear so you can jump to the marked page later.

One of the most useful features of the iPhone and iPod Touch app, however, will be evident only to those who already use a Kindle. The app lets users sync their iPhones and iPods with their Kindle wirelessly. So, if you've read 30 pages on your commute using your iPhone, your Kindle at home will turn on to your most recently read page.

Kindle on the iPhone. Credit: Apple