Chief executive wants to provoke wider discussion on restrictive distribution agreements; says more iPads on the way.

HITS
* Steve!
* New iTunes LP concept
* iPod Nano, from $NZ259 (above) gets FM radio, video camera
* iPod Classic lives, and gets hard drive upgrade to 160GB.
* iPod Touch now ranges up to 64GB
* iTunes 9 introduces Genius Mixes, lets content be shared among 5 home PCs; works with iPhone OS 3.1 to let you organise iPhone apps in iTunes
* Playlists can now be shared via Facebook or Twitter

Following rival Apple’s lead, Dell is working on a new handheld mobile internet device that will be slightly larger than an iPod Touch and lack cellular connectivity.

Dell plans to sell the device from later this year – if it doesn’t can the ‘risky’ project first reports ComputerWorld.com.

Investors in the smartphone pioneer look for comeback powered by Palm Pre, exec poached from Apple.

Palm’s shares (NAS: PALM) rose more than 13% after hours today to a 52-week hight.

The original inventor of the PDA, with its Palm Pilot, then smartphone with its Palm Treo, managed to lose $US91.5 million for its quarter ending May 31. The loss outweighed revenue, which plunged 71% to $US86.8 million.

Palm has just announced that Jon Rubenstein, who previously worked at Apple as head of the Mac and (then nascent) iPod divisions, is its new CEO and chairman as of today.

After 16 years at the helm CEO Ed Colligan is moving to major Palm investor Elevation Partners (who own 25%), joining founding partner Roger McNamee and U2 frontman Bono.

There’s no recession in Apple land. The company's surging super phone, and ever-expanding iPod sales, helped offset a modest decline in Macs in quarterly results announced this morning.

iPhone sales double
The company announced a 15% lift in net income and 8.7% rise in revenue, driven by iPhone sales that doubled to 3.79 million during the period - making it the best non-holiday quarter in Apple's history.