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“Only Apple could deliver this kind of innovation in such a beautiful, and integrated way. It’s what we love to do, what we stand for. And across the year you’re going to see a lot more of this kind of innovation”

“I hope you can see why we believe the iPad has enormous potential, and why it’s the poster child of the post-PC world”

“Everything is more brilliant: when a screen becomes this good, it’s you and the things you care about”

Tim back on-stage. “We’ve redefined the category that APple created just two years ago.” Showing a new advert

The new iPad seems to be called “The new iPad” somewhat strangely

Again, with 16GB.

There’ll be an iPad 2 WiFi + 3G version for $529

That’s $399 for the 16GB iPad 3 WiFi – “many more people can afford to get into this groundbreaking technology, it’s a really big deal”

iPad 2 sales will continue – reduced to $399

Phil back on-stage.

“We’ve taken an experience that millions of people love, and made it better”

Now talking about wireless connectivity options – WiFi, Bluetooth, 4G, 3G,

“It makes everything really fast and smooth”

Now onto the A5X with its quad-core graphics

SHowing a close-up of subpixels, RGB pixels that are lifted out above the circuits so as to reduce dot-pitch. Apple says it’s a “major breakthrough” and “the most advanced display you’ve ever seen”

Dock Connector still looks to be the current one, in the usual place.

Video is showing different people using the iPad in different settings. As far as we can see, the ports/controls are the same as before.

Now showing a demo video of iLife/iWork on the iPad

“We brought all of iLife to the iPad, don’t let anyone ever tell you you can’t create content on the iPad!” Phil says

It’ll be hitting the App Store today, priced at $4.99

You can then share via iCloud, Slideshow or iTunes. Big applause for iPhoto for iPad

Geotagging for maps you can add in too.

It pulls in the date of the photo from the camera’s EXIF data, and you can drop in Sticky Notes for more text. Also add a calendar, and archived weather data using the date the photo was taken!

Then can create a photo journal, with a title and UI style, and bring in all the photos. Looks neat, different sized pictures grouped together. Favorite shots are bigger. Can add captions too, and drag to rearrange.

Once you choose a particular effect, you can adjust it using a menu at the bottom. Can also pick from things like watercolor effect and fake tilt-shift

They fan up from the bottom allowing you to choose from artistic, vintage, aura, b&w, duotone and warm & cool. Each has multiple options.

Easy to flip back to the original image, it’s all non-destructive. Have added effects, too.

So you an adjust, say, skin tone separately from the rest of the image. Have tools for Red Eye reduction and Saturation. There’s a Lighten and Darken brush set, plus sharpen and soften.

Can highlight specific areas of the image by tapping, then touch/drag to adjust. Virtual loupe can be dropped on points of the frame.

Gesture arrows that let you slide your finger up or down to adjust shadows and left to right for contrast.

Crops with just a couple of taps and swipes.

Auto-enhance with automatic straightening of non-level photos. Can easy flick between edited and original to see changes. It’s working really smoothly, even though these are 12MP shots from a Nikon D300S. Incredible!

“You want to make photos look even better, and we have great tools for that.”
Then can share the ones you like the most via email, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Slideshow

Swiping down removes them from the cluster. Can open images up to 19MP

Randy tested the app by going to Antarctica! He’s showing all his photos of seals and snow. Uses AI to cluster all the similar-looking pics – you double tap one to pull the group out

Swiping from the left shows other images from the same album

Shelves of photo albums, and tapping one opens the editing UI. Can swipe from the edge of the screen to show thumbnails instead.

Apple’s Chief Architect for Photo and Video apps, Randy Ubillos, is out to give a demo.

There are new gestures and effects, you have multi-touch editing and brushes. You can use “Photo Beaming” to send images from device to device, and create Photo Journals.

New ways to browse through photos, and “truly groundbreaking ways” for you to edit them

“If you truly love photos, that’s what it’s for.”

Now, iPhoto for iPad “It’s amazing!” Phil says

$4.99 each, if you don’t have them, or free upgrades if you do. Both GarageBand and iMovie updated and released today.

It all looks very professional – smooth transitions, really easy to use. Great music, too.

Outline your shoot on the iPad, record 1080p video on the iPad, edit it on the iPad.

Now allows you to do more advanced planning, can do storyboards. New editing tools.

Supports the new Retina Display resolution, naturally

iMovie upgrade as well

Up to four iOS devices can take part in the realtime “Jam” sessions.

Showing a video of four people using four iPads to play together in the new Garage Band. It’s in the App Store today too.

“Jam Session” support

Garage Band has been updated, with Smart Strings and a Note editor. New sharing tools, plus iCloud support.

New versions of iWork released today, free upgrades if you already own, otherwise $9.99.

It’ll be “coming soon” to the new iPad

The new iPad has more memory and a higher screen resolution than PS3 or Xbox 360, he’s pointing out

This looks like it holds up well to a proper console title, very impressive!

It looks amazing!

“You guys are in for a visual feast.” Players have to craft “the ultimate weapon, the Infinity Blade”

“You guys are in for a visual feast.” Players have to craft “the ultimate weapon, the Infinity Blade”

Infinity Blade Dungeons announced

Epic Games up next, with president Mike Capps on-stage. Phil says it’s an “amazing new product”

Can create art in SketchBook Pro, import them to the iPad, then use a newly designed ink-engine “taking advantage of the incredible graphics power” of the A5X

It’ll be released in April, another iOS exclusive.

Resolution-independent, so you can zoom forever, and it supports 100MP image exports. “Retina Display is luscious” Chris says.

10m customers for Autodesk on the desktop, but tens of millions of new users on iOS. New “SketchBook Ink” app which “focuses on line art”

Chris Cheung, product line manager for Sketchbook

Boasting that it’s “console quality” – the game will be exclusive to iOS and be released later this month. Now Autodesk on-stage

Ha, you can shake the iPad to eject from your jet!

“The extra graphics performance means we can increase the level of detail, and none of the detail goes to waste” because of the Retina Display

New flight-sim from them: Sky Gamblers

Showing some early apps upgraded to suit Retina Display. Namco on-stage.

Existing third-party apps will scale up, while text will automatically be re-rendered in high-res. “But if a developer takes a little bit of time, they can do things that are mindblowing”

It’s Apple’s biggest same-day rollout ever. All of the stock apps have been upgraded to suit the Retina Display

Pre-orders start today in the US, UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, Canada,

The 4G versions are $629, $729 and $829 for 16GB/32GB/64GB, available on March 16

Starts at $499 and comes in black and white

It weighs 1.4 pounds and is 9.4mm thick

“You may be thinking, a lot of these technologies consume a lot of power, so how does it do on battery life”
10hrs still! 9hrs on 4G LTE!

“The new iPad has the most wireless bands that has ever shipped”

Support for personal hotspot functionality, if your carrier supports it.

When around the world, “they’ll roam on 3G”

“If you remember, when 3G showed up it had different bands. The same thing is happening with LTE. So, in the US, we’ll have two versions of LTE iPad, one for Verizon and one for AT&T”

Verizon, AT&T, Rogers, Bell and Telus are the LTE partners, and there other high-speed network partners around the world

Showing a vimeo video streaming. LTE can load it faster than you can watch it in real-time.

Both Verizon and AT&T 4G LTE has been shown, so there are you carriers guys!

Five photos downloaded over LTE before one arrived on 3G

“You’re going to love using it on these new, high-speed networks” Showing a demo of the sort of speeds you can expect

New iPad has 21Mbps HSPA+ as well as DC-HSPA for 42Mbps, together with LTE for 72Mbps

Now 4G LTE confirmed!

Key is just next to the spacebar, looks like the usual microphone icon. Supports US English, British, French, German, Japanese and Australian dictation

New microphone key on the keyboard. “Tap it, speak into your iPad, and it’ll dictate what you have to say”

Now next feature – voice dictation

Uses image stabilization for video clips. Looks pretty effective.

“Wherever you are, you’ve got a great camera with you”

“It’s just a blast to use” – showing auto-focus and auto-exposure, now seeing samples of the kind of pictures you can take. Shoots 1080p Full HD video

Hybrid IR filter, special Apple ISP

Brings the 5MP backside-illuminated sensor and various lenses from the iPhone 4S to the back of the iPad

iSight camera is confirmed

Claiming 4x the performance of NVIDIA’s Tegra 3

“Apple A5 was already twice as fast, this is a graphics powerhouse”

Apple A5X processor confirmed – the X stands for quad-core graphics

40% better color saturation. Four times the number of pixels from the iPad 2, “we need a lot of horsepower”

That’s because you’re expected to hold it at 15″ from your eyes, unlike the iPhone at 10″

264ppi is “enough to call it a Retina Display”

3.1m pixels! “the most, ever, in a mobile device” – the iPad has over a million more pixels than 1080p Full HD TVs

Graphics, text, icons “sharper than you can imagine” – “Photos look incredible” “Fonts look amazing” – it’s 2048 x 1536

“For the first time, an iPad has a larger resolution display than even the screen behind me”

Retina Display! “Until you see it, you can’t understand how amazing it is” Phil says. “To this day, no-one has matched that display tech”

“You want to know about the new ipad?”

Phil on-stage

“Today, we announce the new iPad, and it’s amazing. We’ve taken it to a new level and are redefining the category we created with the original”

This is why momentum on the iPad continues to build. “Everyone has been wondering who will come out with a better tablet than the iPad 2, well, stop wondering – we are!”

Moving onto the Yelp app – “Lots of white space, tiny text, it’s hard to read. Compare that to the iPad”

Now showing the iPad twitter app, which is “clearly designed to take advantage of the large iPad canvas”

Showing Samsung’s Galaxy Tab running a Twitter app. “It looks like a blown-up phone app, because that’s exactly what it is!”

“Some estimates say over 100 competitive tablets cam to the market just last year, and you won’t find that great iPad experience on them”

“These apps are gorgeous and groundbreaking, they can help you create, or learn, or do anything”

“This is incredible” – part of the reason, Tim says, is the “incredible bundled apps” and the 200k+ custom apps for iPad

“We asked iPad users who had an iPad, notebook and a phone what their favorite email device was, and they said the iPad. It’s the same for books and, for those with games consoles, for playing games”

“We asked users, they told us they browse the web and check email”

When we set out to create the iPad, we set out to create a new category, not just a new product. “It had to be the best device for the things you do most often – now, this is a tall order.”

More iPads sold than any PC manufacturer sold PCs

“Momentum has been incredible” 15.4m sold in last quarter. Showing a graph of other “personal computer unit” sales – HP sold 15.1m, Lenovo 13m, dell 11.9m

Now iPad – “it’s the poster-child of the post-PC world, and it’s surprised virtually everyone”

“I would encourage you to do that” he says about ordering today

Tim back on stage. New Apple TV is still $99 and goes on sale next week. Can order from today

All very quick and easy

Can access the movies you’ve already purchased, from iTuns in the Cloud, and it will recommend movies using Genius depending on those you’ve already seen, like Netflix does. You can pick up watching midway through, with minimal buffering time.

UI looks more like iOS, but it’s different from iPhone/iPad. Square buttons, easier access to third-party services like Netflix

Photos pushed from Photo Stream in the cloud – automatically show up without having to do anything

Eddie Cue on-stage to show off new Apple TV. Looks exactly the same physically, but UI now has big billboard images for thumbnails. TV shows added the day after they air, and there’s iTunes Match support.

New Apple TV, supporting 1080p. “streamlined user interface” Showing a demo now

Movies and TV shows now support up to 1080p Full HD, and you can re-download movies purchased on any device.

Now iTunes in the Cloud supports movies

Moving on to iCloud: “it keeps your content synced across all devices, it’s simple, it’s elegant, it’s automatic and it just works” 100m users using iCloud

“It’s a mind-boggling number”

25bn apps downloaded, the 25-billionth was downloaded in China

“Great apps mean more downloads, which leads to more great apps, leading to more downloads”

“You can’t talk about a post-PC world without talking about the App Store”

“You can’t talk about a post-PC world without talking about the App Store”

Will be part of iOS 5.1, available today, and rolling out over the next few weeks

Siri speaking in multiple languages and accents – Australian, French, German. Now bringing Siri to Japan from today.

“Siri is your best friend, your intelligent personal assistant, getting things done just by asking. We thought it might be fun to let you listen to Siri from other parts of the world.”

“One of our favorite new features in iOS is Siri”

Apple has sold 315m iOS devices through last year, 62m in Q4 alone

Tim’s back on stage, “pretty cool, isn’t it!”

Big crowds now, using the devices, lots of happy looking people using Apple tech

Tour of the empty store, all the Apple product displays

“We were so excited about its opening, we prepared a video” – showing footage about the Grand Central Store opening

The turnout for the Grand Central store last year was “off the charts”

Apple has 362 retail stores and saw 110m visitors in Q4 2011 alone

Apple has 362 retail stores and saw 110m visitors in Q4 2011 alone

e.g. places where people can go to experience devices

“Part of the reason is that those things that make a great post-PC company are the things Apple has been about for years, like retail stores”

“Apple’s feet are firmly planted in the post-PC future – it plays to our strengths, and it’s what we love to do”

76% of Apple’s revenue – 172m devices – were sold last year

“In many ways, iPad is reinventing portable computing, outstripping the wildest predictions. Any company would be thrilled to have just one of these devices, but at Apple we’re fortunate enough to have all three”

“It’s a world where the PC is no longer the center of your digital world, but just another device. Those devices you use are more portable and more personal, and dramatically easier to use, than a PC has ever been. We have three post-PC products: iPod, iPhone and iPad”

“I’d like to get started talking about the post-PC revolution, at which Apple is at the forefront, leading this revolution”

“Good morning – thank you for joining us, we have a great morning planned and I’m very excited to be here”

Tim Cook on-stage

Tim Cook on-stage

Lights dimming!

Three minutes to go…

Looks like there is some hardware on the podium, but we’re too far away to see it properly

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We are seated right at the center of stage

Ten minutes to go… anyone excited?

We’re in our seats, great direct view of the stage

We’re in!

We’re getting ready to go in

Thirty minutes to go! We’re still in line…

Don’t forget to hop on SlashGear Apple Hub for all Apple coverage including today’s press event.

We’ve got a full round-up of the latest speculation here: http://www.slashgear.com/ipad-hd-for-the-detail-obsessed-06217062/ (opens in a new tab)

45 minutes to go – are you up to speed with the latest rumors?

We are lining up

We’re waiting in line outside – less than 90 minutes before the event starts!