• BusinessWeek, Wednesday, September 10, 2008 11:45 AM

Call it the burden of high expectations, but it was disappointment all around at Apple's "Let's Rock" event in San Francisco yesterday. CEO Steve Jobs didn't pull any rabbits out of his hat, and some critics described it as news Apple was saving for a rainy day. In fact, for many, the most encouraging sign was Jobs himself, who appeared in slightly better health and spirits than he had been during the iPhone 3G announcement in June.

As for the product announcements, Apple was releasing its holiday lineup of iPods, but BusinessWeek says there was little in the way of innovations or breakthroughs and that the changes were mostly cosmetic; prices for some existing items were also lowered. Both the iPod nano and iPod Touch are now thinner than ever and come in nine different colors. Apple also doubled the memory in the base model iPod nano but left the price at $150, while the price of the iPod Touch was significantly lowered to $229.

Nice changes -- certainly nice enough for Apple to maintain its 70% share in portable media devices -- but at the end of the day, investors sent Apple shares down 4% on the event's lack of punch.

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