We are here!

Good morning! Big day here at Cupertino – it’s iPhone time!

Are you all up to speed on the latest iPhone rumors?

http://www.slashgear.com/apple-iphone-4s5-pre-event-rumor-roundup-03184852/

Show starts at 10am PT, so there’s about 35 minutes to go

We’re getting ready to go in!

FYI, our badge

Apple Japan apparently leaks what we can expect today: the iPhone 4S!

http://www.slashgear.com/iphone-4s-confirmed-for-october-14-launch-04185173/

We’re in!

Quite a few people are asking if there’s a live video stream – not this time. Apple isn’t allowing video streaming from the keynote.

Less than ten minutes to go…

This is a smaller venue than Apple normally uses – does that mean low profile announcements?

Five minutes to go. If Apple “only” announces the iPhone 4S, will you still be buying?

It’s getting ready to start…

“Ladies and Gentlemen, the presentation will begin shortly”

We’ve been asked to turn our phones off

Rolling Stones on the PA – Jumpin’ Jack Flash

“It’s my first product launch since being named CEO” says Tim Cook. “I consider it a privelege of a lifetime to have worked here nearly 14 years, and am very excited about this new role”

“I want to welcome you to this campus, in particular to this room we call our town hall. It has quite a history – just ten years ago we launched the first iPod here”

“Today we’ll remind you of how unique the company is, with innovations to our mobile OS, to apps, services, hardware and most of all the integration of them all”

“It’s an extraordinary time to be at Apple, and nowhere is that more evident than in our Apple Stores”

There’s a picture of the largest store in Asia on the screen.

“It set a record by welcoming 100,000 visitors on the opening weekend”

They sold more Macs on the opening day of the store than they did in any store in the world. Showing a video about the store opening.

Video is lots of excited people at the big glass store in Hong Kong

“Our products are at the core of what we do, and they’re what’s responsible for the momentum we have” – now going over four different product groups, Lion is first up

“For the first time, we offered OS X as a digital download” – Apple has seen 6m downloads

“It took Windows 7 twenty weeks to reach what Lion took just two weeks”

Now talking about MacBook Air: “Customers love it, our competitors are busy trying to copy it”

“The MacBook Pro and iMac and the number one best-selling notebook and desktop in the US. The Mac outgrew PCs by almost 6x”

“Our products are at the core of what we do, and they’re what’s responsible for the momentum we have” – now going over four different product groups, Lion is first up

“The MacBook Pro and iMac and the number one best-selling notebook and desktop in the US. The Mac outgrew PCs by almost 6x”

Now talking about music: “Only 10 years ago the iPod launched, and it revolutionized the whole industry. It reminded use how much we all love music.”

“In context, it took Sony 30 years to sell 230,000 Walkman cassette players. We’ve sold 45m iPod in the last year, until June. Almost half are going to people buying their first. And you can’t talk about music without mentioning iTunes.”

20m songs in the store, over 16b downloads.

Now talking about iPhone. “The iPhone 4 has sold over half of our total iPhone sales. It’s the number one smartphone in the world, and that momentum is outpacing the industry by far. 93% of the Fortune 500 are either testing or deploying the iPhone”

“The iPhone is rated at number one in every customer satisfaction survey we can find”

In total, of all phones (not just smartphones) the iPhone has 5% share of the worldwide market

More on the iPhone “later”; now the iPad

People are thrilled with the iPad, Time says. 95% satisfaction rate. Every state in the US has at least one iPad pilot program, or is deploying one.

“They’re helping kids learn in amazing new ways”

Now talking about other users – pilots. Showing someone in the cockpit with an iPad

80% of the top hospitals in the US are testing/piloting the iPad

92% of Fortune 500 companies are testing or deploying the iPad. “It’s unheard of” says Tim

“iPad is the undisputed top-selling tablet in the world, and despite everybody trying to compete, 3 out of every 4 tablets sold are iPads”

Apple has passed the 250m iOS device sales mark, made up of iPhone, iPod and iPad, but “today we’re taking it to the next level.”

Scott Forstall on stage now

“Thanks Tim!”

“Thanks Tim!”

“As Tim said, we’ve already sold more than a quarter billion devices. It’s now the number one mobile OS, at 43-percent compared to Android’s 33-percent” That’s based on ComScore numbers from July 2011

There are 500,000 apps in the App Store, and more than 140,000 are for the iPad

“In a little more than three years, our customers have downloaded 18b apps, and it’s accelerating. They’re downloading them at more than 1bn per month, and Apple has paid devs more than $3b”

Now launching a new app, called Cards. “You can create and mail beautiful cards right from your iPhone or iPod touch”

Can choose between 21 designs, including embossing. Printed on 100% cotton paper and then mailed out by Apple.

You even get a push-notification to let you know it has arrived.

The app will be a free download on October 12, while cards will be $2.99 when mailed within the US

It’ll be $4.99 to send elsewhere.

Now talking iOS 5

“We’ve already seeded iOS 5 to more than 100k developers, adn they love it. We can’t wait to get it into everyone’s hands”

Recapping the top ten features

1. Notifications “We have a new notifications center. You can see them on the lock screen, and you can swipe them to go directly to that app.”

2. iMessage. “It’s a new messaging service between iOS users. You can send text, photos and video, and get read-receipts. Messages are sent to all your iOS devices, and over 3G and WiFi”

3. Reminders. “It allows you to create reminders, like pick up your dry-cleaning, and they can be location-based” Geo-fencing, according to Scottq

http://slashgear.smugmug.com/Electronics/Apple/Apple-iPhone-5-Event-1142011/i-GFCjht7/0/M/IMG0076-M.jpg

4. Twitter integration. Deep across the system. “We’ve integrated it into many of our built-in apps.”

5. Newsstand. “Makes it easier to read publications on your device”

6. Camera. Now gets a homescreen shortcut and support for HDR

Sorry, from the lock-screen. You can pinch-zoom and set the exposure and lock the autofocus

Also on-device image editing. Basically making the iPhone a better camera.

7. Game Center. “It’s only been out for a year, but it’s a huge hit with 67m users signed up. iOS 5 adds achievement points, friend recommendations, photos and more”

8. Safari. “We’ve added a number of things, including Reader: it takes the story on the page and then formats it to suit the device perfectly. It’s all loaded so you can just scroll through and read.”

There’s also tabbed browsing support.

9. Mail

10. PC-free. “A lot of customers want to use the iPhone or iPad as their only device”

iOS 5 will be released as a free update on October 12

Now Eddie Cue is on-stage to talk about iCloud

iCloud stores your content wirelessly, saves straight to the cloud – there’s no need for syncing, so it’s simple.

You can listen to music directly from the cloud, and go to iTunes and access tracks you bought previously but don’t have on your current device.

Apparently over a third of iTunes purchases are done on a device, and keeping them sync’d across all your devices is “frustrating”

Apparently over a third of iTunes purchases are done on a device, and keeping them sync’d across all your devices is “frustrating”

Now talking about Photo Stream.

This is everything that was discussed back in June – you can edit your documents stored in the cloud, and they sync across all your devices

This is everything that was discussed back in June – you can edit your documents stored in the cloud, and they sync across all your devices

Now onto backup. Backups are “easily restored from the cloud.”

Moving to contacts sync, calendar sync, mail sync.

Now onto backup. Backups are “easily restored from the cloud.”

Moving to contacts sync, calendar sync, mail sync.

Now onto backup. Backups are “easily restored from the cloud.”

Moving to contacts sync, calendar sync, mail sync.

Now onto backup. Backups are “easily restored from the cloud.”

Moving to contacts sync, calendar sync, mail sync.

Now onto backup. Backups are “easily restored from the cloud.”

Moving to contacts sync, calendar sync, mail sync.

Now onto backup. Backups are “easily restored from the cloud.”

Moving to contacts sync, calendar sync, mail sync.

New service called Find My Friends, basically allows you to locate your family geographically. You can set for how long you want to share your location – for instance until 7pm – and it auto shuts off after that. Privacy controls are “simple”.

All will be a free part of iCloud, which is available to iOS 5 and Lion users. You’ll be able to upgrade storage directly from the device. 5GB is free, 10GB is $20/year, 20GB, is $40/year, 50GB is $100/year.

Now talking iTunes Match. $24.99 per year, scans your library and uploads any remaining songs.

iCloud will ship October 12, while iTunes Match will arrive at the end of October in the US.

Now showing a video demo.

Now onto backup. Backups are “easily restored from the cloud.”

Moving to contacts sync, calendar sync, mail sync.

Now onto backup. Backups are “easily restored from the cloud.”

Moving to contacts sync, calendar sync, mail sync.

Phil Schiller on stage now.

Now onto backup. Backups are “easily restored from the cloud.”

Moving to contacts sync, calendar sync, mail sync.

“I’m pleased to talk about the iPod. We started iPod because we love music. We still love it, and we still make great iPods.” Two updates today

Phil Schiller on stage now.

Now onto backup. Backups are “easily restored from the cloud.”

Moving to contacts sync, calendar sync, mail sync.

“I’m pleased to talk about the iPod. We started iPod because we love music. We still love it, and we still make great iPods.” Two updates today

Now onto backup. Backups are “easily restored from the cloud.”

Moving to contacts sync, calendar sync, mail sync.

“We introduced a fun new version last year: we’ve added some updates to make it easier to use” The multitouch display has been made easier to use with bigger icons

Now onto backup. Backups are “easily restored from the cloud.”

Moving to contacts sync, calendar sync, mail sync.

“We’ve improved the fitness experience – right out of the box you can go on a walk or a run without adding sensors or devices”

Now onto backup. Backups are “easily restored from the cloud.”

Moving to contacts sync, calendar sync, mail sync.

They’ve added 16 new clock faces because people have shown interest in wearing it as a watch

Showing photos of some of the new designs, the nixie tube one looks great!
Plus there’s a Micky Mouse one, just like the original Disney watch

$129 for the 8GB, $149 for the 16GB. Both available today.

Next up is the iPod touch. “It’s our most popular iPod, and it’s incredible. It’s also the most popular portable game player in the world.”

They’ve added 16 new clock faces because people have shown interest in wearing it as a watch

Showing photos of some of the new designs, the nixie tube one looks great!
Plus there’s a Micky Mouse one, just like the original Disney watch

$129 for the 8GB, $149 for the 16GB. Both available today.

Next up is the iPod touch. “It’s our most popular iPod, and it’s incredible. It’s also the most popular portable game player in the world.”

iPod touch now available in black and white, will be $199 for the 8GB, $299 for the 32GB and $399 for the 64GB.

The iPod shuffle remains at $49 for 2GB. No sign of the iPod classic.

Next up, iPhone

“It’s a breathtaking device. How do you follow up a hit product like iPhone 4? With the iPhone 4S”

Looks basically exactly the same

The design is the same, but inside is all new. “It has a new chip inside, the Apple A5″. Same Retina Display up front.

Dual-core chip, twice as fast as the iPhone 4. Now has dual-core graphics as well, and is up to 7x faster than previous iPhone. “It screams in games” and here’s the president of Epic Games to demo it.

“A year ago, we showed Unreal Engine 3. Infinity Blade was a big hit. That’s why I’m excited to show you Infinity Blade 2″

“We’ll show you visuals that have never been seen before on a mobile device. They may look pre-rendered, but they’re not”

It looks good

There are fish swimming in the pond – that’s the degree of graphical detail

Demo is still ongoing. Sorry if you’re having issues seeing updates – we’re fighting big traffic here!

Infinity Blade 2 will be released December 1

Phil back on stage. “That’s just killer” he says.

Battery life has been increased: up to 8hrs talktime

14hrs of 2G talktime. 6hrs 3g browsing, 9hrs wifi browsing, 10hrs of video or 40hrs of music

Impressive stuff!

Next up is the wireless system. “Our teem has worked hard to advance what’s never been done in a phone before. The iPhone 4S can intelligently switch between the two antennas to make for better call quality. Plus data can download at 2x the speed. Almost 14.4Mbps downloads theoretically supported”

Used to be 7.2Mbps down, 5.8Mbps up

“This is what our competitors call 4G – it’s just as fast in real-world use.” Plus it’s a World Phone.

Now has both GSM and CDMA in one device. “That’s the new antenna system”

Next up, camera system. “You know first hand how great the iPhone’s pictures are”

Showing popularity of cameras from Flickr data – the iPhone has surpassed all regular cameras

We want to make the iPhone 4S better than point and shoot cameras, not just other phones

Starts with an 8-megapixel sensor – 3264 x 2448. 60% more pixels than in iPhone 4

Uses a backside illumination sensor for 73% more light than previous model. Sensor is faster, too

It’s in fact a third faster. Plus Apple has used a high-end infra-red filter for better accuracy and uniform colors

New lens system, with five lens elements – iPhone 4S is a “really wide” f2.4. Lets in a lot of light compared to point & shoots

Face detection is present, as well as auto white-balance. 30% more sharpness.

In comparison, DROID Bionic photos take 2-3x longer. Owners should “go get coffee” in-between frames.

iPhone 4S is faster than HTC Sensation and Galaxy S II, as well, according to Apple’s graph

Much reduced time between shots, too

It takes 1.1 seconds to take the first photo, then 0.5 seconds to move onto the next. Now macro photo support has been added.

Showing some photos that have apparently been unedited. They look good.

Upgraded video recording to Full HD 1080p

Also has real-time image stabilization, real-time noise reduction. Moving onto a video demo.

Demo still ongoing.

Now looking at AirPlay Mirroring – you’ll be able to watch video and gaming on your HDTV

Can be connected wired or wireless

Now recapping specs before one final feature – voice control

“We’ve been teased for decades with the dream we could talk to our tech. But its never come true, and is such a let-down. Now introducing Siri – the intelligent assistant to get things done, just by asking”

“We’ve been teased for decades with the dream we could talk to our tech. But its never come true, and is such a let-down. Now introducing Siri – the intelligent assistant to get things done, just by asking”

Showing a demo of Siri

Scott Forstall is back on stage. “What is the weather like today?” he asks. The iPhone 4S replies “Here is the forecast for today.” Lots of applause for that.

Scott: “Do I need a raincoat?”
Siri: “It sure looks like rain today!”

Combination of spoken replies and bubble on-screen replies. Plus can call up weather forecasts.

Impressive stuff!

Now Scott is asking about a Greek restaurant nearby; Siri says it has pulled in 14 results, five in Palo Alto, and has organized them by rating

Scott says that, despite having been in the AI field for a while now, Siri has blown him away

Can set alarms by voice – just ask for an alarm at 6am, for instance.

“You can ask Siri to read your messages to you” – goes through the Notifications list, reading them out.

Siri has read out a message from Phil to Scott: “When can we have lunch?”
Scott says “I can do Friday” and Siri says “OK, I’ll send your message”

In-between, Scott asked “Do I have any appointments on Friday” and Siri checked the calendar and said “no”

“I just checked my calendar and scheduled a meeting, and got it all ready back to me by Siri”

It apparently recognizes context and can follow along with you. For instance, Scott says “remind me to call my wife when I leave from work” and it sets a reminder, automatically knowing who Scott’s wife is.

Can search for Wikipedia entries by voice too: Demo picked Neil Armstrong

Can also search through Wolfram Alpha. “Define mitosis” Scott asks, and Siri responds with the definition.

Asks Siri how many days it is until Christmas, and it says 82 days (or 2 months and 21 days, or 58 weekdays, or 0.22 years)

Scott says we should “Get shopping!” – presumably he’d like us to buy new iPods

Basic stuff is handled by the phone’s apps – meetings and emails, directions, stock results, weather, contacts search, notes, web searches, alarms, etc. Anything more complex gets sent off to Wolfram Alpha for a more in-depth response. You can search Wikipedia just by asking Siri to.

Scott: “Siri, who are you?”
Siri: “I am your humble personal assistant”

Phil is back on stage. Apparently wherever there’s a keyboard on the iPhone 4S, now there’ll be a microphone icon too.

All using natural language, and all processed using Apple’s cloud servers. It works over WiFi and 3G (but you need a data connection)

Supports English (US, UK, Australian), French and German. Learns from you and improves accuracy as it goes along.

Is in beta on the iPhone 4S. Now showing a Siri demo video

There’s lots of Apple news up on the SlashGear homepage

Video demo is covering everything we’ve been shown today. New A5 processor, new antenna system, new 8MP camera and redesigned optics, HD video recording, Siri voice control

The Siri stuff is looking very impressive, has to be said. If you instruct your iPhone 4S to set an appointment, and it knows you have a conflicting appointment, then it will warn you about that

Not only warn you, however, but give you the option to reschedule!

Design-wise, though, it’s the same iPhone style as from the iPhone 4. People who wanted the rumored “teardrop” casing will be disappointed.

Demo of the video stabilization – split screen, looks pretty good. It’s digital not optical, of course.

We still don’t know pricing yet, however…

Interesting that Tim Cook is yet to take part in the keynote all that much – has mostly been Phil and Scott. Maybe he’ll have a “One more thing at the end”

Pricing is the same as for the current iPhone 4. iPhone 4S in black and white.

16GB will be $199, 32GB for $299, and a new 64GB model for $399

First time we’ve seen a 64GB iPhone

iPhone 4 will be available in black or white for $99

iPhone 3GS will be available, in 8GB form, for free

The $199 iPhone 4, incidentally, is the 8GB model

Plus, for the first time, iPhone is available on Sprint

So that makes Verizon, AT&T and Sprint in the US – no T-Mobile

So that makes Verizon, AT&T and Sprint in the US – no T-Mobile

Pre-orders begin October 7, Released on October 14

Tim back on stage. “Pretty incredible, right?”

“Let’s review today”

iOS 5, iCloud, iPhone 4S, Siri

Lots of information on all of those on the SlashGear homepage

“When you look at each of them, they’re great: industry leading. What sets them apart is how they work together so well” Tim says

That’s what “puts Apple out in front”

“Only Apple could do it in such a powerful and integrated way. I am so proud of the team. Thank you for joining us”

Wow, no “One more thing”, no iPhone 5

Thanks for following along with us, and apologies again for the issues we had – seems like the liveblogging gods were against us today!

We’re off to get some hands-on time with the new iPhone 4S, so keep an eye out on SlashGear for all the coverage!

Livecast will start at 10AM PST time. In mean time, read our rumor round up.

We are here….

15 more minutes and the press conference will start. Apple store has went down.

Two minutes to go

Steve Jobs is on stage

Lots of applause!

“My partner in crime is here today, Steve Wozniak – stand up!”

Steve stands up and gets applause

“Thank you for coming, we’ve got some great stuff for you this morning. First, a recap on where we’re up to.”

Talking stores: first, Paris, a building near the Louvre they’ve restored over 18mo

Apple users in Paris are loving it

We’re also really excited about our second store in China which we opened in Shanghai. It’s a 40ft high glass cylinder, kind of a landmark in glass engineering

It’s a fantastic store – Steve is showing photos of opening day, packed full of people

“We think it’s going to do really well”

The third big store has been in London, we bought the whole building in Covent Garden, this is our second really large store in London. It’s right in the heart, it’s fantastic. Lot of restoration.

The old and the new together work beautifully

All three have been a great success so far. We now have 300 Apple stores – Covent Garden was the 300th

We’re in ten different countries, soon going to make it eleven and open our first store in Spain

Remember when MacWorld used to get 50,000 ppl every day? We’re now getting through 1m visitors a day on several days a month

We teach one-on-one classes, especially to people who are new to Mac. We teach 80k classes per week. Over half of the people are buying their first Mac

Now, iOS

It’s our OS for our mobile devices, and it’s been a revolution in touch and apps

Touch UIs were completely different pre-iPhone, and mobile apps were too

It’s made the iPhone, the iPod touch and the iPad possible

We’ve shipped 120m iOS devices since we launched the iPhone a few years ago

People are throwing around a lot of numbers as to how many versions of their OSes they’re activating per day. We’re activating over 230,000 per day.

We think some people are counting upgrades, but we’re not. We think we’re ahead of everybody

Over 6.5bn apps d/l from the app store. 200 apps d/l every second

Over 250,000 apps in the App Store; 25,000 are iPad apps

Today introducing iOS 4.1. It’s got some really cool stuff

Lots of bug fixes: proximity sensor, bluetooth, iPhone 3g

Added in HDR photos (High Dynamic Range photos)

Can now upload HD video to YouTube and other siteds

TV show rentals

Game Center is making its debut for users

First talking about HDR photos. When we take a photo it’s often washed out. When you turn on HDR – by tapping a button – it actually takes 3 photos in rapid succession. One normal exposure, one under-exposed, one over-exposed.

It combines the three, to make an HDR photo. We keep both photos in the Photos app, so you can compare them and keep the one you like

Showing some examples – HDR has “pulled out the sky” of a desert scene

Makes visibility in shadows better.

For some photos it’s pretty great, and it’s in iOS 4.1

Another thing is Game Center. Both APIs for devs and an app on the phone.

It’s all about multi-player games, you can challenge your friends and – if you don’t have friends – it will match you to people

You can compare scores and discover games your friends are playing

Showing a demo – user called Thor, has 37 friends

You can look at leaderboards and achievements, track records

Game Center automatically matches players of roughly equal ability, or you can invite specific people

There’s a new game that will come out later this year, from Epic games, that’s really remarkable. Mike Capps from Epic coming on stage

“I’m thrilled to be here to show our first game for Apple, it’s powered by our award-winning Unreal engine”

Showing the 3D world running on the iPhone

Dozens of unique achievements,

It’s a 3D world you can move through – get an invite which pops up on screen

Great thing about Game Center is that all the interaction stuff is done for you

The game uses two different interfaces – one for basic gamers and one for advanced gamers. You can drag different moves onto the screen, for instance, or have more control by swiping

Unlocking achievements then show them in Game Center

They’re playing the game on-stage

We’re really thrilled about this game and we’re more excited to take this tech and put them into hands of devs

Project Sword will be out in the holiday season, for iPhone/iPod touch/iPad

Steve Jobs back on stage

That’s a peak into Game Center

iOS 4.1 will be available next week, for iPhone and iPod touch, and will be a free download

Now a surprise, a sneak peak at iOS 4.2 which will come later this year. It’s all about iPad

Brings everything of iOS 4.1 – Game Center, HDR, etc

But adds wireless printing, AirPlay (which will talk later about)

First demo is wireless printing. New menu option in Tools menu of Pages. Choose your printer, which pages, hit print

Can have multiple printers registered

Print Center pops up in the multitasking bar at the bottom of the display; can go in and cancel jobs

What is AirPlay? Well, AirTunes is streaming music over WiFi and we’re now changing the name to AirPlay, as we’re adding in photo and video support

Now a brief demo of iOS 4.2 on an iPad. Steve has an iPad.

Launching Pandora, he has some Jack Johnson music to play. Brings up multitasking bar

Moves to Mail and music keeps playing. Multi-threaded mail is supported; tap a link and that moves to the web with the music still playing

Multitasking bar has media controls for Pandora

Now looking at folders. Making a folder for news apps – drag icons on top of each other just as before

Works just as on the iPhone

iOS 4.2 for iPad is coming out in November, and will be a free update

Also coming out for iPhone and iPod touch (though select models, says the small print)

We couldn’t be happier about the development of iOS – Steve is running through the figures again

Now, I’d like to get on to the entree today: iPods

This is our music event, when we unveil our cool products for the holidays

Sold 275m iPods so far

One of the secrets to the iPods’ success, is that even though it has a high market share we don’t rest on our laurels – every year we try to improve them for our users

This year we’ve gone wild – we have a new design for every single model of iPod. Biggest iPod line-up change ever

First the iPod shuffle – we originally based it on the idea that we could make an affordable, easy player that shuffled your songs

Running through the first 4 generations

People missed the buttons but they liked VoiceOver

New iPod shuffle – smaller than 2nd gen, has buttons and a clip on the back as usual

Also supports VoiceOver. Basically looks like a 2nd gen shuffle with a black button ring. Supports playlists

Also supports genius mixes and VoiceOver to tell you song, artist, battery status, etc. 15hrs of music battery life.

Showing the “really cute” packaging; Shuffle comes in 5 colors and sells from $49 for the 2GB

We’re just getting started…

Now, the iPod nano. Looking at the first-gen nano, the progression through the five generations

What can we do to make it better? We’d like to make it smaller and better – the only way to reduce size is to get rid of the click-wheel, and so we have to put in a touchscreen with multitouch

New iPod nano – looks like a 2nd-gen shuffle with a color touchscreen

Also has a clip on the back, like the shuffle

Display shows four icons. 46% smaller, 42% lighter than previous model

Physical volume buttons, VoiceOver, FM radio, pedometer and Nike+, 24hr battery life for audio

Screens are split into four panes, can access music by songs, albums, genres; has voice memos

Also has photos at the bottom

“One of our board of directors is going to clip it onto his wrist and wear it as a watch”

Steve is demonstrating the nano now. Goes right into music, hits artist. Scrolling through pops up letters according to the list. When playing, screen shows album art. Controls pop up on top when you tap.

Supports Genius, shuffle, repeat

Can swipe right to go through pages, or hold down and get right back to the homescreen

Can hold an icon down and move them around, like on other iOS devices

New nano comes in same four colors as the new shuffle, plus graphite and red

It’s amazing to hold so much music in such a small thing

$149 for 8GB; $179 for 16GB

New shuffle, new nano, that leaves iPod touch

It’s been a remarkable product for us – has become the most popular iPod

A lot of ppl call it an iphone without the phone – and without the contract!

It’s become the number one portable game player in the world, too

Lots of applause!

iPod touch outsells Nintendo and Sony’s portable game players combined

Has over 50% portable game share in US and worldwide

Over 1.5bn games & entertainment titles have been downloaded to the iPod touch alone

What are we going to do? We’re going to make it better

It’s even thinner!

It’s even more beautiful

Top still has sleep/wake button; speaker, headphone and dock connector on bottom

Now has Retina Display, as on the iPhone 4 – 4x the number of pixels, you can’t discern them

The best display in the world

Apple A4 processor is in the new iPod touch, plus a 3-axis gyro

Runs iOS 4.1 with game center, plus has a front-facing camera with FaceTime over WiFi support

Also a rear camera with HD video recording

40hrs of music playback

Showing both cameras; you can edit video on the iPod touch itself. You can buy iMovie from the App Store

FaceTime works with iPod touch and iPhone 4 owners

“We’re very excited!”

Three models: 8GB for $229; 32GB for $299; 64GB for $399

All new line-up for this holiday – they’re available next week, you can preorder them today

Lots of applause!

“It wouldn’t be Apple without some new Ads”

Now showing the adverts

More applause!

Jobs back on stage

So, the strongest lineup of new iPods we’ve ever had – we’re really excited

Now, as you know, iPods are part of a great duet with iTunes, and iTunes is also pretty remarkable

11.7bn songs downloaded; just about to cross 12bn threshold

450m TV episodes, 100m movies, 35m books

160m accounts with registered credit cards. It’s the number one online media store in the world

Today launching iTunes 10

Logo is changing – since iTunes is on track to exceed CD sales. Now a musical note in a blue circle

What’s new?

It’s even more elegant and simple, it looks even better. In list view, in the album column, if you have a lot of songs there’s a new hybrid view – if you have more than 5 songs from the album it shows album art instead

Also have Cover Flow and the iTunes store

One of the biggest things we focus on is discovery. With over 12m songs how do you find new stuff?

People are asking what their friends are listening to, what are their favorite artists doing, what concerts are friends going to, etc?

So, in iTunes 10, introducing Ping – a social network for music, sort of like Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes

Jobs being v.specific that it’s not a new Facebook or Twitter

Built into iTunes, under the iTunes Store option

Click it and you see all the recent activity – friends news, artist news. Can type in someone’s name and find them and follow them. Custom top ten chart of songs and albums of what the people you follow are downloading

Showing an artist page – Lady Gaga – with recent posts, favorite songs, concert details. If you want to follow her, you click “follow” and it’s automatically slotted into your feed

Now looking at a friend page – see recent posts, favorite songs, concerts that friend is going to

Can also see the people your friends follow

Ping is a social music discovery service, can follow people and be followed. Most artists will say “anybody can follow me”. You can hold your hand up and say the same, or you can say “people can follow me, but I have to approve every one”

You can set up a circle of friends, agreeing to follow each other but nobody else – whenever you hear a great song, the other friends will know about it

Can be as private or as public as you want, and the privacy is super-simple to set up

Custom song & album charts. Over 17k concert listings and 160m iTunes users in 23 countries

Starting with a very large base of iTunes users, and they can sign up immediately. Demo time!

Launches in hybrid view; doesn’t take any extra space to show the album art

Going into Ping – can see Steve’s feed

Jack Johnson has added photos, can browse through them within iTunes

Can comment on people’s posts or photos

Everyone who follows you can see your comments

If someone has posted a song, you can preview it by clicking on it – and there’s a buy button in the Ping feed

Can also see all the songs from the album that track is from, preview them and buy them

Can click through into peoples’ profiles – photos, bio info, favorite songs

Can click through into their favorite music and preview/buy it

Now looking at videos in Lady Gaga’s profile

Can look at concerts

Can send messages to other people going to the same concerts

Here’s another post – from YoYo Mar – and you can see his latest updates

In my profile, it shows activity – what has been purchased, what concerts going to, what comments have been made

“It’s that simple – a social network all about music”

So, iTunes 10 – it’s even further refined, new things like Hybrid view, it’s got Ping. Now, Ping is not just available on your computer, it’s available on iPhone and iPod touch

Ping will be in the App Store

Sorry, no, in the iTunes store

iTunes 10 is available today

Free download at apple.com

“That is what we’re doing with iTunes, we think it’s going to be pretty hot”

We’ve got one more thing…

Actually, one more hobby! Lots of laughter

Apple TV

Now, we introduced Apple TV four years ago, and sold a lot of them but it’s never been a huge hit – and nor has any competitor in the living room

We talk to users and they love Apple TV and use them a lot. What have we learned in the last four years?

Biggest thing they want is Hollywood movies and TV shows whenever they want them

Don’t want amateur hour, want professional content. They want everything in HD

Want to pay less for content

Don’t want a computer on their TV

They go to their TV for entertainment, not because they want another computer

They don’t want to manage storage – when you buy a bunch of shows you don’t want to have to manage storage. What do you do when your HDD fills up?

They don’t want to sync to a computer – most of them haven’t even figured out what that is!

They want it to be silent, cool and small

This is what we’ve learned, and it’s different from what a lot of other companies think

So, we’ve made something new… the second gen Apple TV

It’s 1/4 of the size of the original – can hold it in the palm of your hand

Tiny black box.

On the back has power (no power brick), HDMI, Optical Audio and ethernet

Also has WiFi 802.11n built in

You plug in two cables, it’s on your WiFi network, and that’s all you have to think about. Comes with an aluminum remote

All HD when the content is available. No purchases – rent everything

Prices are more affordable, and there’s no local storage

Rental prices are inexpensive – cheaper even to watch something a few times and still be less than purchasing

Can stream content from your computer, music and video, and “stunning” photo slideshows. Silent, cool and tiny

$4.99 for first-run HD movies

Available as soon as they come out on DVD

They get cheaper as time goes on.

HD TV shows are $0.99 to rent

(Down from $2.99 each to buy)

ABC and Fox are onboard; Apple thinks the rest of the studios will see how successful it is and get involved

In addition to renting movies and TV shows, you can stream Netflix content

You can watch YouTube including HD videos. Can look at Flickr and videos/photos from MobileMe, together with streaming from Mac/PC

Showing new UI

Everything shown by coverart – single click to rent something

Shows details on content, including synopsis, rating, tomato rating, actors. Scroll down to see more detail, including Rotten Tomato reviews, other films actors have been in

Now TV shows – click a button and you’re watching in seconds

On the internet, you have Netflix, YouTube, Podcasts, MobileMe, Flickr and internet radio

Can listen to all the usual internet radio content you’d hear on your computer

All from a tiny little box!

Now demo time for Apple TV

Showing a photo slideshow, different images flipping around

Movies, TV shows, more

Literally ready to start watching in seconds – you can watch a preview first – then choose to watch it now or later

Can skip through chapters with no pause or lag

Demonstrating with Iron Man 2

The quality is “pretty sensational”

Now looking at TV shows. Favorites are gathered into one place, with indicators to show how many episodes are left. Can rearrange show order in favorites.

Playing a Glee episode

So that’s TV shows… on the internet, you’ve got all these great things, and if you’re a Netflix subscriber you can get it for free

Can see anything on your Netflix Instant Queue

This is “by far” the best implementation of Netflix, too

Under Computer, automatically finds your computer and shows what content can be streamed

Can show photo slideshows complete with background music

Playing a slideshow with various random transitions

So that gives you an overview of Apple TV

Now, let me show you something else that’s really cool. We talked about AirPlay, coming in November with iOS 4.2. With it, we can stream content from an iOS 4.2 device to an Apple TV

Demonstrating with an iPad – playing a film on the iPad, new button next to the volume controls to pull up a streaming menu. Can choose which destination to send it to – say, living room Apple TV. Starts playing in a few seconds.

Can be watching a movie, push a button and be watching it on your Apple TV

Can do the same with photo slideshows

Now, we have content on iTunes in 6 countries – US, Canada, UK, France, Germany & Australia. More coming later in the year

Users asked for Apple TV to be cheaper than original $299

So, we lowered the price to $99

Huge applause

New Apple TV available in about four weeks, can preorder today

So, here we are on September 1st. Let’s review. The strongest lineup of iPods ever – shuffle, nano and touch

iPod nano, now so small and compact that it’s wearable without an armband

iPod touch, including FaceTime

And, a new iTunes, with iTunes Ping – a social network for music. We think this is going to be very popular very fast, because 160m ppl can turn it on starting today

And it’s on your iPhone and iPod touch. We think iTunes 10 will be a real winner

iOS 4.2 with HDR photos, Game Center and more

And Apple TV, a phenomenal way to watch hollywood films and TV shows whenever you want

Those are the products we have to launch today, we hope you’re as excited as we are

Now, we started doing this music stuff for a really simple reason, which is that we love music

Even though we’re more successful now than when we started, that hasn’t changed one bit. When we have these events we like to remind ourselves when we do this. No better way than to ask a favorite artist to perform.

We did that, and he accepted. Someone we love. This group has had four albums out and have sold over 50m albums. Showing Coldplay albums on the big screen

7 grammy awards to date, process of creating their next album

We asked Chris Martin if he had time to perform, and he accepted. Chris Martin coming on stage

Chris Martin sitting at a piano, saying he’s very pleased to be here

“I’ll just play one song, then if you feel like it another, then keep going until you feel like lunch”

Music is playing. Thanks for joining us for the SlashGear Apple liveblog!

Chris Martin is still on stage, talking about Coldplay’s “most successful song” with the help of Apple’s adverts. “Proves that your marketing people can sell anything!”

Lots of applause for Chris Martin

Steve has shouted out from the side of the stage “Keep going!”

Playing a new song, now

“It’s called Coldplay 2.6, it has a lot of features – 7 different types of chord, including a new one even our closest rivals have no idea about, which Jonathan Ive designed, it’s the chord of iMinor. It’s called Wedding Bells, it might not come out so this might be the only time it appears”

Thank you for watching our livecast

Thanks for joining SlashGear for the Apple iPhone press conference liveblog! We’ll be bringing you all the news from Apple headquarters this morning.

Among the rumors surrounding today are free iPhone 4 bumpers for all owners, a new internal hardware fix, and even a full hardware recall. We’d love to hear what you think, so please take part in the live conversation while you keep track of the news. Creative Strategies analyst and SlashGear columnist Ben Bajarin will be joining in the discussion too.

We’re here, badge in hand! Just waiting for the doors to open. Quite a crowd here today, considering the very short notice.

Vince got his badge

Five minutes to go until the press conference is due to start. It’s certainly a more low-key event than the last time Apple got us all together.

We’re inside and sat down. Not a full room from the look of it – in fact it’s an extremely small group today compared to previous Apple events

It’s 10.01AM by my watch but we’re not starting yet.

Still no sign of the event starting

Apple are playing the iPhone 4 antenna song on the big screen!

If you’ve not seen it, it says “There’s an awful lot of hoopla about the iPhone antenna”

“If you don’t want an iphone 4, don’t buy it – if you bought one and don’t like it, bring it back”

Steve Jobs on-stage

“We saw that on YouTube and wanted to share it. I have a 15 minute presentation first” Then Jobs will take questions

“We’re not perfect, phones aren’t perfect, we know that and you know that.”

“We want to make all of our users happy, and we’re going to talk about how we’re going to do that”

3,000,000 iPhone 4 handsets have been sold already

“The iPhone 4 is perhaps the best product Apple has ever made. It’s been judged the number one smartphone by a variety of people. Users love it”

That’s over 3m sales in just over 3 weeks!

“However we also started getting reports about issues with the antenna system. People see a large drop in bars, and this has been dubbed ‘Antennagate’”

“That was 22 days ago. We’re an engineering driven company – the way we work, we want to find the real problem before we work out the solution.”

“Let’s go to the data”

“One of the first things we learned is that it’s not unique to the iPhone 4″

“Motorola, Nokia and other phones have the same issue. We didn’t trust just YouTube videos so we did our own testing”

Starting to show a video of the BlackBerry Bold 9700 – bars dropping as it’s held around its antenna

Now showing the same thing on the HTC DROID Eris – bars go down. They’re counting off the different smartphone platforms.

“It’s pretty much identical to the videos of the iPhone 4″

“The time it takes to change depends on the signal strength algorithm” – showing the Samsung Omnia II and it’s taking a while to go down

Looks like Apple are setting out their case for damage control here

Steve points out that signal strength meters aren’t standardized – they often go up faster than they go down

“This is life when it comes to smartphones, they’re not perfect”

“We could have gone on with the demonstrations”

“The whole industry faces this challenge: Phones aren’t perfect. Every phone has weak spots”

“Now, we’re not perfect – we made it very visible with some help from our friends at certain sites”

“X marks the spot – you know exactly where to hold it!”

Also talking about the meter algorithm, and how they “screwed up” on that

“We haven’t figured a way around the laws of physics as yet”

The new iPhone OS 4.0.1 update uses the new algorithm – Steve says it’s less generous than that used by other firms

Showing photos of the test facility.

“We have an extremely sophisticated antenna lab. 17 anechoic chambers – we invested over $100m over the last 5yrs”

“We have 18 PhD scientists and engineers working on antenna design. We knew that you could make the signal drop by holding it in a certain way – it’s a fact”

“We hope to make some contributions to antenna design in coming years”

Still, Steve says users are reporting better reception with the iPhone 4 antenna than they’ve ever seen on other handsets

Only one half of one percent of iPhone 4 owners has called AppleCare to complain

“If you read all the articles you’d think half the phones had problems!”

“For us this is not a large number, it doesn’t fit with what you’ve read about the problem”

Now talking about return rates.

They’re comparing AT&T’s return rates for the iPhone 4 with the iPhone 3GS under the so-called “remorse clause”

Steve describes the 3GS as “the gold standard”

3GS saw return rates of 6% whereas iPhone 4 return rates are 1.7%

“Less than a third of the 3GS returns”

“You’d think at least half the people would be returning their phones given what you’ve been reading online”

Now looking at AT&T’s call drop stats

“AT&T has given us the early call drop rate figures – they log dropped calls to help them improve their network”

“They won’t release the absolute call drop figures for competition reasons, but we’ll give you the delta”

“Being completely honest, the data says the iPhone 4 drops more calls than the 3GS”

“But how many more calls per hundred has it been dropping?”

“It drops less than one call per 100 more than the 3GS. Less than one”

“Listening to “Antennagate” you’d think it must be dropping many more than that!”

“My theory is that, when the 3GS was released, people already had cases that fit it – there was a healthy market for cases – but 80% of iPhone 4 handsets leave the store without a case”

That’s Steve’s “pet” theory, and he admits Apple hasn’t proof of it

“We can’t make the bumpers fast enough”

“We’re going to figure this out” – Steve is running through the points he’s made so far

Smartphones have weakspots
AppleCare data = 0.055%
ATT return rates = 1/3 of 3GS
Drop calls = < 1 more per 100

“When the engineers look at the data it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that there’s a problem, but it’s one that affects very few people”

“I’ve got over 5,000 emails from people saying their iPhone works fine”

“But we care about every user, and we wont’ stop until every one is happy”

“It’s fun to have a story, but it’s less fun to be on the other end. We think the issue has been blown out of proportion”

“First we pushed out the iOS update”

“Secondly we’ll give everyone a free case”

“One free case for every iPhone 4, and if you bought one we’ll give you a refund”

“This will keep going until September 30th”

It won’t necessarily be a bumper, though – Steve says they’ll offer a choice of cases as they can’t make the bumpers fast enough

iPhone 4 owners can pick which one they’d like from the range that will go up on the Apple site starting late next week

“If you’re still not happy, even with the case, you can bring your iPhone 4 back – undamaged – for a full refund”

“We want everyone to be happy, and if we can’t make sure of that then we’ll give them a refund”

There’ll be no restocking fee involved – you get all your money back

Now moving onto some other reported problems

“We’ve seen some issues with the proximity sensor, but we’ll deal with that in the next update”

The white iPhone 4 will start shipping – “in limited quantities” – at the end of July

17 more countries getting the iPhone 4 on July 30th – the same as announced previously

Aside from South Korea, apparently

“I’d like to give you a feel of what Apple cares about, how we make decisions and operate. We love our users”

“We try to surprise them and delight them, and we have a blast doing it. We make some pretty great products”

Slide is showing Macs, iPods, iPhones, iPads, Apple TV, App Store

“We connect them with great developers and great content in iTunes”

“We love them so much we built 300 stores for them, and put in Genius Bars to give them advice”

“Over 60m people came through Apple retail stores last quarter”

“When we fall short, we pick ourselves up, figure out what went wrong and try harder”

“Users reward us when we get it right by staying with us”

“When people criticize us, we take it personally. We don’t have a wall of PR people to insulate us, and when users have a problem, so do we”

“We’ve been working hard over the last 22 days to find the real problem, and we think that’s that smartphones have weak spots. Some people took advantage of that, and it’s easy to demonstrate, but to those customers who have problems we’re giving them free cases or offering a full refund”

“Still, the data supports that the iPhone 4 is the best smartphone in the world, there’s no “Antennagate” but in fact a problem affecting all the industry. We love our customers and plan on taking care of them.”

Now the Q&A is starting. Tim Cook and Bob Mansfield join Jobs on stage

Q. How’s your health Steve?
A. I’m fine, was doing better earlier this week when I was on vacation in Hawaii! This was important enough to come back for

Q. Will there be changes to future iPhone antenna designs?
A. We’re still happy with the design and we’re getting lots of positive reports from users compared to the 3GS. We don’t think we have a problem.

Q. My Bold won’t drop right now, can you show me how to make it?
A. You may not see it happen in certain areas

Q. Can you explain the difference between the iPhone 4 losing signal with a single touch, and other phones losing signal when you cover them with your whole hand?
A. [Bob] When you make contact with the phone it attenuates the signal. If you grip it with your whole hand you can affect it even more.

Q. Were you warned about this?
A. [Steve] I assume you mean the Bloomberg article? It’s a crock, and we challenged them to prove it. What they say never came to me, we would’ve looked at it if it had

Q. Will you make an apology to Apple investors, like they seem to want?
A. [Steve] We are deeply sorry to customers who have been affected, and we’ll give them a case or a full refund. We want Apple investors to be in it for the long haul. If the stock went down by $5 I won’t apologize. It’s a bump in the road.

Q. Is there a choice between form and function that customers have to make?
A. No, we try to do both. The phone is smaller, the Retina Display blows away other displays. The external antenna means more space for the battery inside. We try to have our cake and eat it too, with great design and great performance. That’s what we deliver with our products

Q. Will AT&T give refunds on contracts?
A. [Steve] I believe they will, yes

Q. Could you have lowered expectations in the iPhone 4 launch keynote?
A. [Steve] We didn’t understand there were problems at that point. Maybe we would have set an expectation that all smartphones have weak spots. If you grip them in a certain way the signal strength goes down. As a leader in the smartphone world we needed data to educate people. We’re sharing that now

“We are not perfect and we’re working our asses off”

Steve has described rival smartphones as like “Hummers”

Q. The free case offer, you said up until September 30th – will people be expected to buy a case after that?
A. [Steve] We’ll reevaluate the situation in September, we don’t know what solutions we might find

Q. Will people who bought third-party cases get a refund?
A. No. We didn’t share the iPhone 4 design with many manufacturers, so there aren’t many third-party cases out there. If we give out designs to case makers, they have a history of showing them off online. They don’t help us keep the designs under wraps

Q. Do you carry your iPhone 4 with the bumper on?
All three are showing their iPhones, and none have a bumper on.

Steve says he’s been using the iPhone 4 in his home and seen reception where before there wasn’t any. “It doesn’t mean other people haven’t had problems, but that’s my experience.” He claims to be holding it in the “death grip” manner we’ve seen so much about

Q. What has Apple learned from all this?
A. First, how much we love our customers and how much we want to take care of them. We were upset and embarrassed by the Consumer Reports review. We didn’t have the data at the time to say anything – a week and a half ago we didn’t have half the data we have now. We think like engineers, and that’s the best way to solve real problems.

Apple staff have apparently been sleeping at the office overnight looking into the problem. Steve says “We’ve all been living here”

“It’s human nature – when someone gets successful you want to tear them down. It’s happening with Google, they’re a great company, look at all they’ve created.”

“Would you prefer us to be a Korean company, do you not like that we’re an American company leading the world? We’re human, of course we make mistakes. But I feel that in searching for eyeballs for websites, people don’t care what they leave behind them”

“I think wow, we’ve been around 30 years. Haven’t we earned the credibility and the trust of the press? We have from users, but some of the press blew this so far out of proportion. We weren’t just innocents, I’m not saying we didn’t make a mistake, but this has been so overblown”

“It will take time to see how we could do this all better”

Q. Could a hardware redesign address the issue?
A. There are Nokia phones with stickers saying “don’t touch here”. The problem hasn’t been solved. Most of our customers aren’t seeing the problem, those that are we’ll get them a case, and then a refund if that doesn’t address it. We’ll keep working on antennas. But this is the state of the industry at the moment.

“Certain customers hold it in a way that exposes the iPhone 4′s weakness”

Q. Was a recall considered?
A. [Steve] Nothing is beyond consideration, but we wanted to go from the data. We sent engineers to people, we looked at logs.
[Bob] We told them we were coming, though!
[Steve] And we didn’t break down any doors!

Q. How about Apple Store return rates?
A. [Tim] They were extremely small, lower than AT&T’s returns

Q. The NYTimes say there may be a software fix that could deal with this?
A. [Steve] We’ve spent an hour going through the dropped call stats. You need to talk to the NYTimes, they’re just making it up

Scott Farstall has come on stage to add something. “Their statement is false, we continue to tunr the way the baseband interacts with the network all the time, but that statement is untrue”

Steve says “many statements fall into that category”, another dig at the press and blogs

Q. What will be the financial impact of this?
A. [Tim] We’ll hold the finances until we have our Q2 financial results call, next week

Q. I’ve used the iPhone 4 on a heavily congested cell in San Francisco. Does it have any role in congestion management? Does the stack play no role in congestion?
A. [Steve] When AT&T want to add a cell tower in Texas it may take only three weeks, but in San Francisco it takes three years. Nobody wants it in their back yard. AT&T are investing, and we’re constantly asking them about it, but it takes them a long time.

Q. There was a software fix to address reception a couple of years ago, how does that square with this?
A. Apple had an insight about eight years ago, we didn’t want to get into a business that we didn’t own and control the primary technology. Otherwise you have to build on top of others. We didn’t have to make processors, but software is the most important component

[Steve] We did it with the iPod first, and then we brought that software model to the phone business. Updating your phone software is an order of magnitude easier than it used to be. It’s frictionless distribution. People are copying us now, but we did it first.

[Steve] Our formular for the signal bars was off from the beginning, but we’ve fixed that now

Q. You said you’d fixed the bug two years ago, but now you’re saying there has always been a problem
A. [Steve] They’re probably unrelated, I don’t remember the issue before.

Q. You’ve been emailing with customers a lot recently
A. [Steve] My email address is out there, but I can’t reply to all of them. I have a day job! Some people post them online, and some people make them up. Don’t believe all you read!

Q. Will people outside the US get the free bumper?
A. Yes.

Closing up now. Steve says “Thanks for coming” and asks “Has this helped?”

“I wish we could have done it earlier, but then you wouldn’t have had so much to write about”

Check out our summary article for all the details: http://www.slashgear.com/apple-antenna-problem-is-real-offers-free-cases-1694202/

Plus details on the white iPhone 4 availability: http://www.slashgear.com/iphone-4-in-white-launching-at-the-end-of-july-1694229/

Remember, you can apply for your free iPhone 4 bumper from late next week, via Apple’s site

Thanks for following the SlashGear liveblog!

A view from across Moscone West where WWDC 2010 will take place

Livecast will starts in 2 hours….

Vincent just picked up his badge

We’re headed in now. Around 30 minutes before the keynote is due to begin.

Everyone are waiting to get into the keynote hall – 30 more minutes…

There was a big rush for seats today – huge hall and lots of excited people! We’re down at the front.

15 minutes to go and jazz on the PA. There are still developers coming into the hall, though press and analysts are seated.

Today we’re expecting the iPhone HD, but there’s also been leaks about a new version of Safari, v5, that would have improved HTML5 support among other things. Earlier today images of an external MacBook-style trackpad leaked: http://www.slashgear.com/apple-set-to-unveil-magic-trackpad-for-desktops-0788621/. Could that be Steve’s “One More Thing”?

Five minutes until the keynote is due to start. SlashGear columnist and Creative Strategies director Ben Bajarin is joining us in the liveblog, so look out for his comments

People here are excited, that’s for sure – crazy cheers for no reason other than WWDC 2010 enthusiasm!

“Welcome to the WWDC 2010 keynote. Please turn off all cellphones and PDAs”

Looking around, but I can’t see any PDAs being taken out and turned off.

But there’s a huge number of iPads in the room, people are using them to show messages to each other across the crowds

Only a minute to go by my watch

Now playing “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong VERY loudly

Steve Jobs on-stage – huge applause and standing ovation

No surprise as to what he’s wearing today – the usual jeans and turtleneck. “It’s great to be here, thank you”. People are shouting out “I love you Steve” and he says “Thanks, I think”

“We sold out WWDC in 8 days” Over 5,200 ppl here with over 120 sessions and 1,000 ppl from Apple for the labs.

Steve’s apologizing to those folks who couldn’t make it – this is the biggest place they could find to hold it! Kicking off with the usual stats

“I’d like to start with the iPad, an incredible success” – the crowd love that

“It is magical” “Changing the way we experience the web… email, photos, maps, you name it – it’s a new way to interact”

Apparently Steve got an email from an iPad owner saying pulling out his iPad in a cafe got a girl interested. “Now that’s what I call a magical device”

Sold over 2m iPads – selling one ever 3 seconds. They’re showing international press reel footage from the recent international launch

News agencies from across the world all talking about the iPad

Showing clips of people in queues for their iPad outside Apple stores

Video is done, lots of applause

There are now 8,500 native iPad apps

And the iPad will be on sale in 19 countries total by the end of July 2010. Steve “thanks everyone for their patience, we’re making them as fast as we can”. 17 apps downloaded per iPad, 35m downloads altogether. “That’s a great number”.

Summarizing some of the apps on offer: eBay, Pulse, Iron Man, games, etc.

There has been “tremendous interest” from publishers, showing digital newspapers

The guy who created The Elements earned more on sales for iPad “in the first day than from the past 5 years of Google ads on periodictable.com”

Now onto iBooks – in the 65 days its been out, over 5m books have been downloaded

That works out to about 2.5 books per iPad, “which is terrific”

Five of the six biggest US publishers say the share of iBooks is up to about 22%. iBooks is being updated today. Will get in-line notes that look like Post-Its

Also new bookmarking control in the upper-right hand corner

In the table of contents of each book you’ll see a list of all the notes, highlights and bookmarks you’ve made. You can also read PDFs inside iBooks now. That got BIG applause

There’s a new bookshelf for PDFs – you choose the new control on the top left hand side and then pick from there. Navigation is just as it is for a regular eBook

Steve says PDFs “just look gorgeous”

Those iBooks enhancements will be out later in June

Now talking about the App Store “something near and dear to all of us.”

“I want to make something really clear” – Apple supports two platforms, HTML5 (which is “a fully open, uncontrolled platform forged and defined by standards bodies. Apple’s browsers are in the lead supporting it, and anyone can write HTML5 apps and have them run on all Apple products

And the second platform they support is the App Store, which Steve describes as “curated”. There are over 225k apps on there currently, 15k submitted every week. “It’s a vibrant community – nowhere else can you find this many apps”

95% of app submissions are approved within 7 days. Now going to cover the top three reasons for rejections

First, if it doesn’t work or doesn’t do what the developer claims it does. Second, it uses private APIs. Apple doesn’t allow that as they’re “not guaranteed” and if iPhone OS is updated then they could break. “we won’t have a happy customer”. Third, because they crash.

“If you were in our shoes you’d be rejecting apps for the exact same reasons. Sometimes, when you read articles about this, you might think something else is going on”

Looking at some of the highlights in the app store. eBay – released last year, 10m downloads and $600m in volume. They reckon $1.5 to $2bn this year. Steve says “wow, should we all be this successful”

Now Reed Hastings from Netflix is on-stage. “Two months ago we launched Netflix for iPad.” It’s in the top 10 most-downloaded iPad apps. Netflix for iPhone is coming this summer. Showing a demo now.

It will be a free download for the iPhone. You can play a film on any device, stop it, then resume on another. Access instant queue and your recommendations, basically everything you could do on the Netflix site.

Hastings is demonstrating search on the iPhone Netflix app

If you’re watching content “on the go” then the Netflix app uses adaptive bitrate tech to switch seamlessly between networks.

Now Zynga is up, with CEO Mark Pincus on stage

He’s talking about “Farming for the iPhone”

“Today we’re introducing farming for the iPhone. Farmville is our most popular game, and we’re excited to bring it to the most popular gaming platform on the planet.”

Over 70m monthly active users play Farmville – more people play Zynga games than watched the season finales of 24 and Lost

“Every day more than 35m people play our games.” Now running through the iPhone Farmville app

It synchronizes with your Facebook version, from the look of things, and lets you make in-app purchases

Uses push notifications for when your crops are withering. Looks pretty nice, if you like Farmville!

Audience is laughing as Pincus says he thinks more people should take up farming.

Since it syncs with Facebook you can access your Facebook friends from the iPhone Farmville app. Has same social networking functionality. Due out at end of June – Farmvilles’s 1yr anniversary

Now Activision on-stage. Senior VP Karthik Bala will be talking about Guitar Hero.

Describing it as “a pop culture phenomenon”

The new version has “a brand new experience” for the iPhone. New and old artists included, plus 3D rockstars which players can customize. You play in a similar way to the classic Guitar Hero

Graphics look really good on this. Uses multitouch so the gameplay is “perfect”. Can tap and strum the screen.

Demonstrating it now.

People are cheering. It’ll be out today for $2.99.

Steve Jobs back on stage. “He was playing that in real-time, that was cool!”

Now talking App Store stats. Passed 5bn total downloads last week.

Steve’s favorite stat is that Apple has paid a billion dollars to developers. “It’s one of the greatest things we get to do”

Unsurprisingly huge developer applause right now!

“It’s the most vibrant app community on the planet. We’re thrilled with it” Now talking about the iPhone

“There have been lots of stats floating around about market research, market share, and some are okay but some are questionable. I’d like to give you two pieces of data so you can make your own judgement”

In Q1 2010 the iPhone has 28% of the US market share, Nielson says, while Android has 9%. RIM still number one with 35%

iPhone market share is over three times that of Android

Now US mobile browser usage: 52.8% is iPhone browsing. Almost 2.5x Android devices. “May help you put things in perspective”

“In 2007 iPhone reinvented what we think of as the phone… it’s hard to imagine what life was like before it!”

“In 2008 added 3G networking and the App Store”

2009 iPhone 3GS – twice as fast

2010: iPhone 4!

“the biggest leap since the original iPhone”

“This is really hot” Well over 100 new features, which he won’t cover all today

All new design which “a lot of you have already seen, but believe me you ain’t seen it”

“Beyond a doubt the most precise thing, the most beautiful thing we’ve ever made”

Glass front and back; stainless steel edging. “Closest kin is an old Leica camera” “This is the iPhone 4″

It’s 9.3mm thick – that’s 24% thinner than the iPhone 3GS and the thinnest smartphone on the planet

External controls include volume up/down, mute, there’s a front facing camera, micro-SIM, camera with LED flash, microphone on the bottom with the 30-pin Dock Connector and speaker. On top is the headphone jack and a second microphone for noise cancellation, plus the power button

People have been asking “what’s this?” about the lines on the side, the black seams. “These don’t seem like Apple”

There are three altogether, and they are “part of the structure of the phone” – work as the antennas for the Bluetooth, WiFi and GPS (on the left) and UMTS/GSM (on the right)

“Integrated antennas in the structure of the phone – it’s never been done before and it’s really cool engineering. Glass front and back, stainless steel for strength. There’s no another consumer product like this”

New display technology called “Retina Display”

They’re putting in 4x the pixel density in the same amount of space as previous pixels took

“This is a biggie” Steve says

It means you get really, really sharp text. 326ppi – showing a comparison of a jagged-edged character next to a slick character

“Never been a display like this on a phone”

They use some gray pixels to smooth the edges. Text looks like “a fine printed book”

“There’s a limit around 300ppi that the human eye can’t differentiate between pixels” and this exceeds it

“Once you use a Retina Display, you can’t go back” – showing two screens on the display, in photo app

It works on text, images and video. “Pretty amazing”

Showing a demo of the iPhone 3GS versus the iPhone 4. “We had to get special projectors” as normal ones wouldn’t show the difference sufficiently

It looks great!

Icons are crisp in comparison to 3GS jagged edges

Now moving to the NYTimes, which is loading up v.slowly. Steve wants us to get off the WiFi in here so that it’ll speed up!

Still waiting…
They’re switching to their backups now

There are a lot of error messages on the screen! “Could not connect to network” etc.

Steve has given up on the NYTimes and has gone back to the photos instead. We’ll need to get up-close with the iPhone 4 to see just how big a difference Retina Display makes

Someone has just shouted out that Steve should try Verizon!

Demo is over, that was a disappointment. iPhone 4 has 3.5-inch display running at 960 x 640 like we heard before

The contrast ratio is 800:1 – 4x that of 3GS – and it uses the same IPS tech as the iPad. That means “superb color and wide viewing angles”.”You can’t make an OLED display with this resolution, we think it’s quite superior”

It has 78% of the pixels of an iPad!

iPhone 4 automatically rescales existing apps to take advantage of Retina Display, devs don’t have to do a thing. Auto-renders text and graphics. Games look “stunning”

Steve says this should set the standard in mobile displays, “and nobody is going to come close”

Now moving onto third new feature of iPhone 4 – it uses the Apple A4 processor

As we know from the iPad it was designed in-house. “it’s wonderful to have in the iPhone”

The biggest part of the iPhone 4 is the battery. They switched to microSIM because they needed the space. Showing a back-off photo of the iPhone 4

The bigger battery, added to the A4′s power management, means battery life is up. 7hrs 3G talktime, 6hrs 3G browsing, 10hrs WiFi browsing, 10hrs video, 40hrs music or 300 hrs standby

Now talking about environmental report – gets ticks in every box

Has 32GB of flash storage and quadband HSPA – 7.2mbps downlink, 5.8mbps uplink on carriers that offer it

Dual microphones, 802.11n support

Fourth feature is a 3-axis gyroscope

That got some big shouts from the audience. It will measure pitch, yaw and roll. Paired with the accelerometer means you get 6-axis motion sensing, with new CoreMotion APIs

Better photos of the specs

“It’s perfect for gaming, and one of the reasons is that it’s built into every iPhone 4, so you’ll know it’s there”. Showing a demo

It’s a brick-stacking game like Jenga. Move the phone and the blocks move accordingly. Looks very precise.

Crowd are very impressed!

Apparently Steve practiced the blocks game… but the tower has still fallen over. He gets applause all the same

Other sensors include accelerometer, compass, proximity and light.

Now Feature 5, a new camera system

“We asked the question, how do we make better pictures” rather than concentrate on chasing megapixels

iPhone 4 has a 5MP camera with a back-illuminated sensor

The backside illuminated sensor helps with low-light photography

The sensor has 1.75-micron sized pixels. There’s also a 5x zoom, tap-to-focus and of course the LED flash

Apple kept the pixel sensors the same size just increased their number, rather than doing what others do and reducing their size

“These pictures are marvelous” – they do look pretty good. Shown on the big screen and taken straight off the iPhone 4

“But that’s not all”

HD video recording!

That got big applause. 720p HD at 30fps.

You can use the same tap-to-focus as for stills, and there’s built-in editing and one-tap sharing

You can use the LED flash as a video light while you’re recording. “Record and edit HD video right on your phone, it’s remarkable”

iMovie for iPhone!

They wrote iMovie for iPhone themselves

Bringing Randy Ubillos, the chief architect of video apps at Apple onto the stage to talk about it

15 years ago, Randy was working on Final Cut Pro. “This is one of the most exciting things I’ve ever worked on! Record HD video and edit with transitions and titles, all on a device you carry every day”

Demonstrating iMovie for iPhone now. Looks a lot like iMovie on the Mac

Big preview screen up top and a timeline underneath. You can pinch to change the timeline scale, and either record directly in the iMovie app or import video and photos stored on the iPhone 4

Photos you import automatically get Ken Burns applied. Titles and transitions are just like you’d do on the desktop version.

It’s incredibly slick. You can toggle audio on and off, apply themes. And since the iPhone 4 has GPS you can add geolocation tags to video.

Several different music files preloaded, but you can use any track in your iPod library

It’s incredible, Randy has just fully edited a movie clip in minutes. Five themes to choose from, some of which are linked into maps using the GPS data embedded

Then can export the edited clip at 360p, 520p or 720p HD

Showing the finished product now, and it looks incredible! Low light clips in there, as well as crisp macro footage. Lots of applause for this!

Steve is back on stage. iMovie for iPhone will be $4.99 from the App Store “If we approve it!”

Lots of laughs at that

Now feature six

Apparently there are 570 WiFi base stations in the room. “All you bloggers need to turn off your base stations, put your notebooks down”

If we want to see the demos then we have to put our laptops down!

Crisis over!

Now iPhone OS 4 – is being renamed! Now iOS4

“We’re giving it some metal. Our most ambitious release to date, with over 1,500 dev APIs, over 100 new user features, biggest being multitasking”

“Some said you weren’t first with multitasking, and the same was true with cut, copy and paste, but we took the time to do it right”

If you don’t do it right, you exhaust the battery

Demonstrating multitasking – flipping between Pandora and Mail, and the music still plays. “I’m going to find out if we did turn off our WiFi devices.” Page loads and gets big applause.

Works just as we saw a few months back at the iOS4 debut

Can swipe to the right in Mail and audio controls are visible. Meanwhile Mail gets unified inbox and threaded conversations

Messages have number counts next to them, showing how many replies are in the conversations

Now showing Folders, auto-naming them and changing the names manually, and you can have folders on the desktop or pinned to the dock

Summary list of the new stuff in iPhone 4 and iOS4 – multitasking, folders, retina display integration, unified inbox, conversations, enhanced camera, deeper enterprise support.

Also adding a third search option, Microsoft’s Bing. Google is the default still, but you can pick between. “Each takes a unique approach to how they search and format their results”

Gold Master of iOS4 will be available to developers today

This month will see the 100 millionth iOS device sold – including iPhones, iPod touches, iPads. “There is definitely a market out there for your apps!”

Feature seven: iBooks coming to iPhone in iOS4

Has same PDF integration as we saw in the iPad version. PDFs attached to emails automatically get included on the PDF shelf in iBooks. iBookstore is also available on-device, and it’ll come to the iPod touch too

Same highlighting, bookmarking features. If you buy a book on one device you can download it to the other devices – iPad, iPod touch, iPhone – at no extra charge

That’s what Kindle and nook allow you to do, too

Also, iBooks will wirelessly sync bookmarks, reading location and notes across all versions, just like Amazon Whispernet

Again, no extra charge for any of that. Steve is now demoing iBooks on the iPhone 4′s Retina Display

Can highlight sections of text, then look them up in the dictionary, add a note or search for them. Choose different colors of highlighter. Looks just like we’re used to from the iPad.

Now going to the PDF bookshelf and loading a document. It’s just as smooth and slick as a regular eBook

“It’s pretty cool, huh?”

“This is all pretty true to the iPad version”

There are now three stores on the iPhone – iTunes, iBooks and the App Store – and Apple has over 150m accounts that have credit cards associated

“We think it’s the biggest on the web, we’re number one”

Feature eight: Moving onto iAds. “Why are we doing it? To help developers make money so they can continue to create free and low-cost apps”

Showing another demo of an iAd on the iPhone. “It combines the motion of video with interactivity of the web”

It’s the same stuff that we saw at the iPhone OS 4 event – the iAd content loads up in-app, and you can browse it without getting kicked out of what you were doing before.

Developers should be able to add iAds into their software in an afternoon, they just need to point out where they want them to be in the app.

Revenue is paid via iTunes Connect, as with App Store revenue, and developers get 60%

Apple has been selling adverts for the past eight weeks, and Steve wants to show some of the brands that will be onboard in the second half of 2010

Nissan, Citi, Unileve, AT&T, Chanel, GE, Liberty Mutual, State Farm, Geico, Cambells, Sears, JC Penny, Target, Best Buy, Direct TV, TBS and Disney all onboard!

Steve is showing an ad for the new Nissan electric car, it works just as we’ve seen before

“We’re so excited” at the brands they’ve got onboard

Steve had to convince Nissan to show the electric car ad – “they were hesitant, but I really wanted to show you”

The ad is new but the system is as we’ve already seen. You can exit the ad at any time by clicking the cross in the top left-hand corner, and you’re back in the app you were using before, in the same place

All very slick

Steve is walking through the Nissan Leaf advert. He registered with his own email address! Nissan plan to give a Leaf away, and you can only take part through the iPhone iAd, apparently.

iAds will be enabled from July 1st 2010

Apparently they’ve $60m committed for iAds from advertisers in the second half of the year

We’ll have a video demo of all this very soon!

Apple are expecting to take 48% of the whole mobile advertising market. “We’re off to a pretty great start!” Wants developers to try it out

So, that’s the list of eight things Steve wanted to talk about on iPhone 4 – lots of applause. But One More Thing…

“It’s best if I just show you”

He wants WiFi off again, and the lights are coming up along the side of the stage

FaceTime – video calling on the iPhone 4!

Steve is calling Jony Ive on the iPhone 4

Jony is basically taking up the majority of the screen, with Steve in a little window in the bottom left hand corner. It’s a bit jerky and Steve reckons people haven’t turned off their WiFi

Mute, end-call and flip-camera buttons at the bottom of the screen, last one presumably switches to rear camera and back again

They’re comparing it to the Jetsons and Star Trek. This is obviously all working over WiFi, we don’t know if it’ll work over 3G too

It’s iPhone 4 to iPhone 4, over WiFi, and you can tap into a video call from a regular voice call

Also supports portrait and landscape modes

It’ll be WiFi-only in 2010 – they “need to work a little bit” with carriers

Showing a video of the different ways people can use FaceTime

This is the Sam Mendes commercial. Grandparents are remotely watching a graduation, people are talking using sign language, teenagers are showing each other what outfits they’re wearing

Lots of applause for this@

Steve says this is a moment that “reminds us of why we do what we do”

“Amazing video and audio quality”

FaceTime will be an “open industry standard”

“We think it’s the biggest leap since the original iPhone”

Two colors: white and black

$199 for 16GB and $299 for 32GB

Both with two-year agreement

AT&T are making an “incredibly generous” offer to those who want to upgrade

If your contract is set to expire in 2010, you’re immediately eligible for an iPhone 4 at the same subsidized prices – obviously you have to top up your contract by another 2yrs

On sale June 24th 2010

iPhone 3G is retired, iPhone 3GS is now $99

That’s for an 8GB iPhone 3GS

Preorders kick off on June 15th – a week from tomorrow

Starting in five countries: US, France, Germany, UK, Japan

iPhone 4 will be in 88 countries by the end of September 2010

Now talking about accessories. There’s a new iPhone 4 Dock and a new “Bumper” case

The Dock is $29, the Case is $29 too. Case just covers the outside edges of the phone, like a rubber bumper on a car

Will be available in multiple colors

As for iOS4 upgrades, they’ll be hitting iPhone 3GS, 3G (though without the full feature list) on June 21st for free

iPod touch also gets upgrade apart from first gen, again not all features supported. Gets it free too

Showing a video summary of all the features of the iPhone 4

It’s full of Apple’s executives talking about the different features announced today

Apparently the FaceTime video calling will “change the way we communicate forever”

There’s nothing new in this video that we haven’t seen already earlier in the keynote, this is just a summary

Showing some of the manufacturing processes involved

Video still showing

Now talking about the Apple A4 processor

It’s almost more interesting seeing how they make the iPhone 4 than it will be using it!

Talking about battery life now

Steve is back on stage

He’s showing the crossroads sign – with “technology” and “liberal arts” on it – again, and talking about the Apple values of hardware and software interaction

“It’s the front-facing camera and 18 months of work to create software you don’t even notice when you make a video call”

“It’s the complete solution so that all of us don’t have to be system integrators”

He’s thanking all the teams involved with making the iPhone 4. Listing the key people as the audience applaud.

Going through design, processor, software, operations teams. “All of this wouldn’t make any difference if we couldn’t build a ton of them”

“This is our new baby, I hope you love it as much as we do”

Steve Jobs leaves the stage

Massive applause, music is back and everyone is starting to stand up

That’s it everyone! Thanks for joining us for the SlashGear keynote – over 4m of you!

We’re off to grab some hands-on time with the new iPhone 4, keep watching the SlashGear frontpage for all the details!

We are here…and early!

Vincent just picked up his badge

9.30am here at Apple HQ and we’re waiting to go in for this morning’s event. Thanks for joining SlashGear for our liveblog today – remember, you don’t need to hit refresh, the liveblog page will automatically update whenever there is anything new!

While you wait, have you checked out the SlashGear iPad Review? Everything you want to know: http://www.slashgear.com/apple-ipad-review-0380199/

Still waiting to be let in for the event. 15 minutes to go.

Looks like the crowd is moving

Headed in now, looks like there are about 100 people here today

In our seats waiting for everyone to settle down. Still a couple of minutes until it’s due to start.

It’s 10am by our watch, but there are still people milling around looking for seats. Looks like it’s going to start a few minutes late.

Everyone is being asked to turn their devices to silent mode, looks like we’re not far off starting.

Steve Jobs is on-stage

“We’ve got something to share that we’re excited about, iPhone OS 4″

Starting off with some talk of the iPad first; “We got some really great reviews. Walt is a tough critic”

Several quotes from different reviews coming up on the screen and Steve is reading them off

“As of today we’ve sold about 450,000 iPads” Best Buy is apparently out of stock and they can’t keep them on shelves. “We’re making them as fast as we can, but we’re going to have to try harder”

Now going over download stats. 600,000 iBooks downloads up until today (they had 250k at the weekend)

Over 3.5 million iPad apps downloaded to today

Now showing off some photos of people’s reactions to the iPad – young girl opening the box and hugging it

“People are just loving the product”

Steve had butterflies in his stomach before the launch, he wasn’t sure if people would love the iPad

Now talking about the App Store in general, which now has over 185,000 apps and over 4 billion downloads. They have 3,500 iPad apps already, and growth is accelerating

Now showing some screenshots of the different apps available, games like Scrabble

“ABC turned out a phenomenal iPad app – you can watch shows in incredible resolution. Fantastic”

Covering MLB, ESPN, Marvel and IMDB among others.

Talking about the Netflix app

Finishing up on an accordion app, which got a laugh. “Let’s get to the iPhone”

Apple recently won a JD Power award for customer satisfaction, in fact it’s their third win in a row. iPhone browser has 64-percent market share, ahead of Android with 19-percent and BB with 9-percent

Over 50m iPhones have been sold so far, and if you add in iPod touch sales there have been 85m sold altogether. “If you’re a dev, that’s a plum market”

“Today we’re giving a developer preview of iPhone OS 4, the next major release. We’ve been working on it for a while, it’s pretty great. We’re going to ship it this Summer and release the dev preview today”

Over 1,500 new APIs for devs, including calendar, photo library, still and video camera data, Image I/O, in-app SMS, carrier informaiton, more

One new API is Accelerate, made up of over 1,000 math-related accelerometer APIs

Bluetooth Keyboard support, wake-on-wireless, homescreen wallpaper, tap-to-focus video, a birthday calendar, CalDAV invitations, more

Let’s start with the biggest, multitasking

First of seven new features they’re talking about today

“We weren’t the first to this party but we’re going to be the best”

“Like cut and paste, it’s better than other implementations. It’s easy to add multitasking in a way that drains battery life and in a way that reduces foreground app performance and makes your phone feel sluggish”

“We’ve figured out how to avoid those things, that’s what took us longer, and I think we’ve nailed it” Now going to show a demo of the new UI

Mail app launches, and a message is opened; click on a link in the message and that opens the browser. But you can double-click the home button and you see which apps are currently running – in this demo shows Photos, Messages, Settings and Facebook

“I want to go to eBay, I go right to where I left off in the apps. I want to play a game, Tap Tap Revenge, it keeps me where I was. Again, the game stops, let’s me go back and look at Mail”

This is certainly impressive app switching, you don’t have to go back to the homescreen every time

Can double-click the home button from the homescreen to see which recent apps you’ve used

Now bringing up Scott Forstall, SVP of iPhone software, to talk about how it works. Hopefully he’ll cover background processes like Pandora, IM and Twitter apps

Scott is on stage

“We looked at tens of thousands of apps in the App Store and distilled the services they need to run in the background. We’re providing those services as APIs to devs so they can add multitasking and preserve battery life. First is background audio streaming – Pandora is great but until now if you left it the music would stop”

Demonstrating how you can leave music running in the background and check other apps

Tim Westergren from Pandora is on-stage, talking about how the iPhone has “changed the future” of the app

When they launched on the iPhone they saw almost double the growth rate, and today they’re adding 30,000 listeners a day on the iPhone

It took them one day to add support for the new background audio API

You can play music while the phone is locked, too, using the controls on the lockscreen to manage playback

Showing how Safari doesn’t slow down while the background music is playing, either

Now talking about VoIP

Demonstrating it using Skype

Skype is running in the background, and when a call comes in there’s a pop-up alert and you can swipe to answer it.

If you leave Skype running, you get a “double height status bar” – shows AT&T as usual on the first line, then Skype on the second

Can receive VoIP calls even if the phone is locked.

David Ponsford, head of Skype iPhone development is demonstrating it

It’s the same principle as Pandora – currently if you leave the app it will stop working, but now you can navigate away and it will still be functional

While you’re on a VoIP call, you can go into other applications and pull up data in them as normal – in the demo, David is on a call discussing dinner arrangements, and is using OpenTable to find somewhere to eat

Next new API is background location. “There are two classes of app that want to use your location in the background: one is turn by turn directions, like TomTom. Problem is, until now if you left TomTom the directions would stop”

Showing a demo of TomTom

“GPS uses a fair bit of power, but that’s okay for something like this. There’s another class of app that also wants to use your location, social networking apps like Loopt, and for that we use cell towers”

Basically, this is A-GPS which is less power-hungry than GPS

“Our baseband is always connected to cell towers so it knows when you move”

If you switch between a cell tower, the API automatically tells the app – like Loopt – that you’ve moved

“We take privacy very, very seriously, and we’re taking it several steps further in iPhone OS 4.0. We’re adding an indicator to the status bar which shows if someone is tracking your location, and we’re adding settings so you can control location per app”

It also lists any queries for your location from the past 24hr

Now moving on to push notifications. They’ve sent over 10 billion push notifications in the past nine months

They’re building on that in OS 4.0 with local notifications: like push, but done on the phone itself

“It doesn’t need to use our servers”

Moving on, the next API is Task Completion. Used for apps that are busy in the background but that you then want to close. Example is Flickr, uploading a big photo – you want it to stay open in the background while you do something else.

Background audio, VoIP, Background location, Push notifications, Local notifications, Task completion and Fast app switching – “these are very deep, and they add a lot of power to developers”. Scott leaving the stage and Steve is back

Steve is talking about the next “tent pole” – Folders. “As people download more and more apps you have to flick from page to page to find them. People want a better way to organize them”

“I want to show you, it’s beautiful”. Basically a single icon-sized block which you can fill with other app shortcuts – one on-screen is a Games folder, tap on it and a pop-up tray of different games icons is shown

You can drag & drop apps onto each other to automatically create a new folder of them. Name is automatically created, and you can choose to rename it

You can drag them around and rearrange them as usual, you can have as many folders as you want, and you can even put a folder on the dock

Looks really slick, it’ll be particularly good on the iPad

Next up, wallpaper: you can change the iPhone homescreen wallpaper.

As on iPad, can have two images: one for lock screen and one for wallpaper

It’s basically just like on the iPad, but smaller

“Let’s look at tent-pole three, an enhanced Mail. We’ve added a lot of features”

First up: “unified inbox – customers really wanted this. And we’ve made it so you can have more than one Exchange account. If you want to focus on one account, we’ve added fast inbox switching”

You can also organize by threaded conversation

You can open attachments within the messages, using an app from the App Store

Again, just like on the iPad

“We’re adding iBooks” – not much of a surprise given the iPad launch

It basically looks like a mini version of the iPad bookshelf. Reading looks just the same, again only smaller.

“Since rolling it out on the iPad we’ve had many requests to bring this to the iPhone, and of course we were already doing that” Will work on iPhone and iPod touch

You can access the iBookstore from the iPhone app, sync the same book across multiple iBooks apps (e.g. your iPhone and your iPad), plus sync page and bookmarks. They’re also throwing in a free copy of Winnie the Pooh.

Scott is on-stage again. “Fifth tent-pole is some great enterprise features”

Improving email encryption – making APIs that allow devs to encrypt data within apps, too

Also new mobile device management support. Apparently over 80% of Fortune 100 companies use the iPhone

Also the facility for enterprise wireless app distribution

Rather than employees having to plug their phone into iTunes, they can receive a new app wirelessly from the company

Support for SSL VPN too.

Now, the sixth tent-pole. “Game Center: this is a dev preview in iPhone OS 4″. Going over how popular iPhone gaming has become; there are over 50,700 titles and it blows dedicated gaming devices like the PSP and DS “out of the water”

So now they’re adding a social gaming network. It can automatically match players of similar ability and then tracks in-game achievements. Think of it like PSN on your phone

Also can invite specific friends.

Steve is back on-stage

Seventh tent-pole is iAd, for mobile advertising. “We’ve got a lot of free apps, we like that and users like that, but the devs have to make some money and we’d like to help them”

“We think most of this kind of advertising sucks”

“We want to help developers make money with ads so their free apps are kept free”

People are spending more time in apps on their phone rather than in general search – apps are what people use to get data very specifically

Average user spends over 30 minutes using their iPhone’s apps. “If we said we were going to show an ad every three minutes that would be ten per device per day, about the same as a TV show. That’s a billion ad opportunities a day on 100m devices”

“We want to change the quality of the advertising. Interactive ads on the web are not capable of delivering emotion”

Showing a graph plotting Interaction against Emotion, with Alice in Wonderland and Nike as examples of extremes.

“We want to get some of that interactivity from video. Ads keep you in the app… because iAd is in the OS, we’ve worked out how to do interactive and video content without taking you out of the application. The user can go back to the app at any time, and there’s no penalty for clicking.”
Apple will host and deliver the ads, and 60% of the revenue goes to the dev

Now showing some demos. “We’ve taken some brands we love and made ads for them” just as examples of what they can do with iAd.

Showing a Toy Story 3 ad at the bottom of a media app, it’s all made in HTML5. Tap on it and you go into a new menu to see character details, videos, a game, posters, theater info and downloads. Big close X in the top left corner to go back to the original app

Clicking on the X takes you exactly back to where you were before.

It’s basically like nested applications – the ad is an app of its own, with various video, game and other media content.

“They even included a game. Well, we included the game” – still in Toy Story 3, there’s a mini game you can play with the movie characters. Also in-ad purchasing ability.

Can tap on the images and set them as wallpaper, and it ties into the Maps API to show you nearby theaters where the movie is showing

Now showing a Nike ad they’ve created to demo iAd

Starts off with a high-resolution full screen video (again, with big X in top left corner to close it)

You can browse through different Nike products and buy them directly in the ad itself

Can shake the iPhone to move between a history of different Dunks

You can even download an app from within the ad to your iPhone. In this demo can create your own pair of custom Dunks

It’s also linked in with the Maps API, so you can see whereabouts the nearest store is

Now moving on to a Target ad they’ve mocked up. “I’m going to build my dorm room” – can decorate with different Target items and see a price list, get a coupon, all from within the ad

“That’s an example of three ads that are very easy to make. Ad agencies can make these things, and there are hundreds of thousands of iPhone app developers who can make them. They keep you in the app: you’re more likely to click and explore them”

That’s the seven for today, Steve is recapping. “Just some of over 100 user features and over 1,500 new APIs in iPhone OS 4.0″

iPhone and iPod touch owners will get it this Summer, as long as they have the 3GS or the iPod touch 3rd gen. iPhone 3G owners and iPod touch 2nd gen won’t get certain features, biggest being multitasking

Apparently the hardware won’t support multitasking

The developer preview is out today at developer.apple.com

That’s it for the main event – there’s a Q&A with Steve for the press in about 5 minutes

No mention of the first-gen iPhone, looks like that won’t be getting iPhone OS 4.0. 2nd-gen iPod touch owners and iPhone 3G owners might be tempted to upgrade to the latest model if they really want multitasking. We don’t know what other features won’t be available to them, either.

Three stools are up on stage, presumably for Steve and Scott plus another.

Phil has joined them on-stage.

That’s Phil Schiller btw.

Looks like the Q&A is starting sooner than they suggested

Steve “Okay, we’d love to answer questions you have”

Question: Multitasking will increase data use, how will AT&T handle that?

Steve: I’m not sure that’s a correct assumption

We’re not multiplying the number of minutes of use, there’s nothing to suggest more will be used.

Question: What about Pandora?

Steve: Pandora doesn’t use that much data

Question: Will wireless app distribution (for enterprise users) allow for distributing non App Store software?

Scott: No, enterprises can sign their apps, but it doesn’t open additional apps

Question: Will the international iPad launch be impacted by its sales success in the US?

Steve: No, we’re launching internationally later in April

Question: Will iPhone OS 4.0′s social gaming network replace all the other networks available, and what will you be doing differently?

The issue is that there are lots of different networks out there. We built it into the platform so that developers could build it into their games and everyone could be on the same one.

Question: Will there be Xbox Live style achievement points?

“We’re still looking at options for points”

Question: What will the approvals process for ads be like? Will it be similar to the App Store system?

Steve: “There will be some boundaries. You can’t run just any ad on ABD” Advertisers are paying run ads, “there won’t be anything other than a light touch”

Question: Has there been any change in your position on Flash or Java?

Steve: No.

Question: What about iPad support?

iPhone OS 4.0 will reach the iPad this fall

Steve is talking about the negotiations and discussions they’ve had with ad agencies re iAd. Everything coded in HTML5, no new dev platform. Agencies are apparently excited about bringing technical support on board to pump out ads like these.

Video Demo of iAd

Still talking about iAd

Question: Why can’t you keep track of a timeline in Twitter or IM in the background?

Steve: We think push notifications work better, as it’s implemented now. It’s better than what it is today.

Question: Apple pioneered widgets, why have you veered away from them, and glanceable information, on the iPad? Isn’t it possible?

Steve: We just shipped it on Saturday, and we rested on Sunday. Anything is possible.

The Q&A has moved back onto talking about iAd, and there are questions about why it’s different to what has been offered before

Steve is enthusiastic about how iPhone OS 4.0 ads are significantly better than standard desktop ads

However they “do not have plans to be a worldwide ad agency”. Tried to buy AdMob “but Google snatched them up” so they picked up Quattro. They’re learning all about how ads work now.

Asked about the decision to limit multitasking to only the newest (current) iPhone/iPod touch hardware. Steve says it wasn’t a decision but a limitation of the hardware.

It’s up to developers to base their features on what hardware supports what functionality. Apple “want to make everything simple” and would prefer apps to run on as many devices as possible

Question: What is Apple doing to make phones safer, so that people won’t use them while driving

Steve: Apple does more than most do, enabling you to connect your iPhone into your car’s control system. There are controls on the steering wheel for hands-free calling. We’ve probably done more than any rival because of the iPod momentum.

Question: Will Apple allow unsigned apps, like are available on Android and webOS?

Steve: There’s a porn store for Android, anyone can download them: you, your kids can. It’s not a place we want to go, we’re not going to go there.

Steve is talking about the iPad, and the “butterflies in your stomach” that he felt in the run up to release. Feedback has been “off the charts” and Apple think the iPad is a “profound game changer”. iPad will be seen as a “major event in personal computing devices”

People have been emailing Steve to say how much they think the iPad will change their life

Steve: “If our competitors every introduce a competitor to the iPad, they’ll hope they can get 3,500 apps in the first year. We got that in the first week.” Pointing out that the iPad was helped by people already knowing how to use an iPhone or iPod touch

iPad “Stands on the shoulders of 85 million people who already know how to use it”

Question: How will iPhone OS 4 affect the App Store? Will it change the way apps are organized and discovered?

Steve: The App Store is a service, not a part of iPhone OS 4. It’s mostly handled server-side, and we constantly improve it. But, we have to be careful to avoid downtime too. We added Genius to help discoverability, but there’s also an infrastructure of recommendations outside the iPhone helping people find titles.

Scott: Game Center will help spread the word about gaming apps, as your friends can challenge you to a title you might not have. Plus you can gift apps to others.

Question: Are there concerns about the older customer base being left behind?

Steve: A lot of products out there are our most recent. Older devices will get iPhone OS 4.0 but they’ll miss some functionality. If they then choose to upgrade, that’s terrific!

Question: How is app closing handled in multitasking?

Steve: You don’t. As we said on the iPad, if you see a stylus, they blew it. In multitasking, if you see a task manager, they blew it. Users shouldn’t have to think about that stuff.

That’s it for the Q&A, event is over.

Don’t forget we’re running a StealthArmor Giveaway for the iPad over at EverythingiPad.com – you can win one of several custom skins for your iPad! All the details here: http://url.ag/eehmyb

Thanks for joining SlashGear for our iPhone OS 4.0 liveblog, check the SlashGear frontpage for all the details of what was announced today!

It’s almost 3pm here in Barcelona, and we’re waiting for Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 event to begin. Thanks for following the SlashGear liveblog!

It’s past 3pm here, the scheduled start time, and aside from some upbeat music there’s nothing to report

The wired internet connections Microsoft have provided here are proving really unreliable.

Steve is only taking a brief moment on stage, he’s brought Joe Belfiore – in charge of design – to the stage to introduce Windows Phone 7

Joe describes Windows Phone 7 as an opportunity for Microsoft to change. More and more devices were arriving on the market, more complexity and more developers pushing out apps, and they didn’t see phone UI’s keeping up with the functionality.

A phone is not a PC – it’s a smaller, more intimate device. Microsoft wanted to go back and revisit design and find something that’s new. Move beyond the PC metaphor to something a bit different

“How can we build a phone focussing on the end-user and the things that matter to them – that reflect your unique personality & needs?”

How can we suit a device to the user themselves? Now showing a video demo of Windows Phone 7. The UI is more like a Zune HD, pared down with large, clear text and big buttons.

More details here: http://www.slashgear.com/windows-phone-7-series-hands-on-1573973/

“We want a smart design that puts the user at the center of their experience and moves beyond different apps; second, we want to design integrated experiences which cater to your different tasks, like Pictures, Music, etc.”

“Those are the fundamental ideas behind the Windows Phone 7 platform”
“We want to really get into deep thinking of the user experience, with h/w and s/w that work in unison with how you want”

“Every Windows Phone 7 will have three buttons on the front: Home, Search and Back”

“As you navigate from one experience to another you want a simple, intuitive way to navigate. All devices will be capacitive touch enabled with big, beautiful screens”

“We wanted the software experience to know the people you care about, to be relevant and know what’s going on in your life”

“We wanted the phone to be delightful and fun – a phone isn’t just a tool, it’s an extension of your life and we want you to smile when you use it. I’m going to show you a demo of some prototype hardware” – it’s a simple black device with a large touchscreen and a row of three buttons along the bottom – back, Home and search

On the homescreen there are tiles with various panes which you can organize yourself. The People tile pulls in photos of your contents and cycles through them. The Calendar tile shows what meetings are upcoming. The Pictures tile shows recent pictures taken or sync’d, and there’s an Xbox tile with an avatar

Can pin individuals as shortcuts to the homescreen – pulls in their Facebook photo to represent them, and as they update it changes automatically

Pressing and holding on the tile pulls up a broken heart icon, and you can tap it to remove a tile. You can then drag other live tiles around to take their places. You can promote applications – which will also pull in dynamic information – or playlists for music.

Moving on to the calendar, there’s a day view and an agenda view, items in red are personal meetings from Windows Live Calendar, and those in blue are from Windows Exchange Server. Day view shows a timeline with different slots.

At the bottom of the screen there’s a row of contextual icons, but you can tap next to them to pull up more options. You can zoom into the day view to see more details.

When you tap on a meeting you see large, clear text telling you the full details. The phone automatically detects phone numbers and addresses system-wide – i.e. in calendar, in the browser – and converts them into smartlinks; tapping an address opens up Bing Maps

As you zoom into Bing Maps more and more information is pulled in; it automatically flips from regular map view to satellite photography as you zoom in, so it’s easier to find places. Multitouch pinch-zoom is supported.

Multitouch is consistent throughout the Windows Phone 7 experience, and it’s also consistent with the way multitouch is supported on Windows 7 PCs

Bing Maps can show traffic and manually turn satellite view on/off.

Joe is a fan of sushi, apparently, and he’s hungry, so he’s pushed the search button to call up the Bing navigation page. It’s a picture with a tiny Bing search bar at the top of the page. Tapping in sushi calls up not just regular results but geographically nearby restaurants complete with a map

The list is automatically sorted by distance, and if you tap on one of them it pulls up a dynamically created data page for each result. Will be filled out with various information, like phone number, address, reviews. You can swipe across – they’re calling it “Pivot” – to see each pane of information

You can swipe across the Bing results page from local results to web results and news. You can pull up results straight into the browser. The browser supports pinch-zooming, and is “much more advanced than any we’ve shipped in a phone before”. Based on desktop browser code.

Can double-tap to zoom into a picture or column – it doesn’t look like the text is reflowing, though. Zoomed in very close the text is very clear and crisp – “this is a step beyond cleartype – it’s called sub-pixel imaging and it makes websites super-legible”. Makes browser pages on a small device feel really really big.

At the bottom of the browser screen is the app bar – can easily add to favorites or switch to different tabs. Pull up to see other options – can pin a page to the homescreen as a tile.

Back at the Start experience, and looking at communication. There’s a tile with Outlook that links into work Exchange email. Very clear looking UI, fits a large sender name, subject line in yellow and then first line of the body of the email. Works on a local cache of data so if you lose connection you can still access data. Can pivot between Urgent or All or Unread or Flagged.

Tapping to the left of a message ticks it, but it also opens up a column of check-boxes to select multiple messages so you can delete them all.

Now talking about Integrated Experiences – Microsoft wanted to bring the common tasks people complete together into one place. Microsoft call them Hubs – the idea is to organize data on the web and data on your phone into one place that’s “fast and fun”. “The combination of the whole is greater than the sum of the parts – works well in moments in your life when you only have a little time available”

Starting first with People, which is primarily about communication and connecting people. Taking the PC as an example, there are lots of ways to manage lists of people – Outlook contacts, Facebook friends, webmail services – and on the PC it’s easy to switch between them separately as you have a big screen. But the phone is not a PC

Rather than looking at things separately there’s a People Hub which pulls together all the people you talk to – the recent updates come to the top. Pulls in from Facebook, Exchange, webmail, more; in the middle there’s a “Me” tab

People is a panorama, first shows what’s recent but you can pan to the right to see a full list, then pan again and see the “What’s New” feed which pulls together Windows Live, Facebook, etc into a single list.

Tapping on a letter brings up the full alphabet on-screen – you can jump through the person list

Tapping on an individual shows an amalgam of all of their status updates – you can read and comment directly from there, no matter which service they’ve used to post their update. Can then pin that person to the front of the People hub

Next up is Pictures. Joe is apparently a photo enthusiast and takes photos of his twin girls. On the PC, he uses Windows Live Photo app to organize his photos, shares them on Facebook and other sites. On the PC it’s straightforward, but it’s harder on the small screen of a phone.

As with People, Pictures is set up as a panorama, starting with the Gallery – with options for albums, all or favourites – then pan to the right and it shows the most recent pictures, either taken with the phone camera or sync’d from the PC. Then pan again to see new photos from friends.

Once you’re looking at a picture you can pull up a menu from the bottom and one-touch upload that image to Facebook. Albums, meanwhile, are either organized on the phone or sync’d from online. The online albums are marked with the service that they reside on, e.g. Facebook or Windows Live. Can view them just as if they were local.

Next up, Productivity. “It wouldn’t be a Microsoft event if we didn’t talk about it – it’s good for business people as well as consumers”. Office is good for taking notes, especially with OneNote, and it also provides services like SharePoint. We’ve tried to take that experience and bring it together onto the phone. Hence, the Office Hub.

Office Hub starts with OneNote tile, with an option to create a new note with text, voice or picture and tiles underneath of existing notes. Swipe to right and there are documents (can create a new one) and then across to SharePoint to see shared documents. It’s all sync’d with your PC and it’s all compatible with upcoming Office 2010.

Next Hub is for when you want “fun and delight” – Music + Video is first. On the PC you can use the Zune client to manage a music collection, but that’s not the only service people use. For instance, can use Pandora to stream music. However, while that experience works on a PC it doesn’t on a phone. Every Windows Phone 7 device will work as a Zune.

Can integrate in other services, however, so you can consume media from the device. First see different media types – music, video, etc – then History (with album art as wallpaper) and then pan across to third-party plugins like Pandora

You don’t have to have a PC, but if you do have one you get an extra benefit. Plug in via USB and the phone is recognized and the Zune software auto-loads. The software is basically a desktop client that manages content on a device. Zune supports video/pictures/music. Have a Device tab with details on the phone, space left, when last connected, and you can browse the content that’s stored on the phone itself. Can delete content directly from the phone via the Zune software.

There’s an option called QuickPlay which creates smart DJ playlists. Consistent UI between Zune software and Windows Phone 7.

Now looking at the Games Hub. Gaming is the most popular category for mobile applications. People play games on their phones, their PCs and on their Xbox consoles as a member of Xbox Live. Wanted to bring those features together: Xbox Live service and games are being added to Windows Phone 7 devices

Games tile takes you into the Hub, first shows Spotlight which has announcements about the service and new games. Pan right for recent gamer scores and avatar, then pan again to Requests (people nudging you to join a new game, or to take your turn), then right again to game titles available to download onto the phone and play, sync’ing your achievements with your Xbox Live account on the Xbox 360. Games look to include puzzle types and card games, nothing graphically too demanding.

“We’re trying to take this rich capability into a design that’s smart and suited to each individual user. We wanted to create integrated experiences around the most common tasks. Altogether this is a great phone for busy people who want to make the most of every moment”. Going to play a quick video then go back to Steve Ballmer.

Video says every phone has become a slight version of the one before it. And apps have been a case of each app working independently. Showing an iPhone-style UI with people going “in and out” of apps. Windows Phone 7, however, brings everything in motion, allows you to move smoothly between experiences rather than dipping in and out.

Still no talk of multitasking, or of specific hardware specifications.

Steve Ballmer is back on stage. Tagline behind him is “A different kind of phone designed for Life in Motion”. Steve says “the phone market is highly competitive, highly dynamic and super-exciting”. He’s bellowing.

Microsoft wanted to do something highly different to what’s going on in the market and what they did before. “We’ve started a whole new generation with the arrival of Windows Phone 7 Series”

We thought of several things when we considered the redesign. We really wanted to lead and take more complete accountability than we had in earlier versions of the Windows Phone for the end-user experience. We looked at what the minimum hardware definition was required for great experiences. How can we make sure we have consistent, great experiences across the device? How do we take the next step to integrate the user into the phone?

So the user experience we showed you is a baseline, and on top of which you’ll see innovation from manufacturers, carriers and other partners. But the consistent design experience for the end-user was a fundamental item for the Windows Phone 7 experience.

Second, developers are absolutely fundamental. We really raised the platform on which people can build and the set of integrated services which people can extend. We’ll talk more about those tools at the MIX conference next month. Software devs can assume certain things are inherent to the platform, and don’t need to code them from scratch, such as social network integration.

Third, but as significantly, we wanted to take a step forward in approach to working with partners: hardware vendors and operators who add value and bring these things to market and deliver a key service. With the h/w vendors we want to raise the bar and have more consistency with hardware and software experience. We want to see different diversity in form-factors. We think you’ll see greater consistency “and almost more innovation in terms of form, feel and industrial design”

With mobile operators, we needed a model that raised the bar and gives the operator the ability to show their unique service offerings but with a consistent UI experience. For instance, billing integrated with the mobile bill. The “conundrum” is trying to raise user experience and integrate more, at the same time as drive the dev community and include the operator’s services. All of those communities must be supported, but in a coherent way.

Steve is going to describe some of Microsoft’s motivations in where they were coming from. They “recast and reformed” strategy/design approach 2 years ago, and are on track for something “really exciting”.

Now bringing on-stage Andy Lees, to talk about mobile partnerships existing and new.

They took this opportunity to change a lot of things, but kept constant their belief in the partner model. 3 reasons partners are vital: they add experience and expertise, they bring knowledge and insights; they add scale – more than 1bn phones are sold every year, with smartphones gaining share. Microsoft need partners who can support them at this scale. Thirdly, partners can give customers choice: one size doesn’t fit all. Some people want a keyboard, some don’t, some want large, some small.

What has changed is how Microsoft work with their partners. “Striving for synergy”. Andy reckons Windows Phone 7 is a “new way” for the experience to come together.

Working with Qualcomm, LG, Samsung, Garmin-ASUS, HP, HTC, Dell, Sony Ericsson and Toshiba for hardware. Result is better performance and better quality across the experience – better graphics, smoother experience.

Put together a “core hardware specification” common across all Windows Phone 7 devices: screen resolution, 4-point multitouch, accelerometers and compasses. Also the software: Microsoft have come up with all of the UI interfaces and drivers. Microsoft “love the innovation OEMs will provide”; OEMs will provide a range of devices, but we won’t find out about them until closer to launch date (in time for Holiday 2010 period).

Developers want to know that their applications and games will fully exploit the hardware capabilities, together with services in the cloud. Still no details on this until MIX in March 2010, though.

Microsoft have worked with T-Mobile, Telefonica, Sprint, Vodafone, AT&T, Orange, SFR, Verizon Wireless, Telecom Italia. But carriers aren’t just “dumb pipes” – Microsoft have enabled them to offer their own services on Windows Phone 7 devices.

Microsoft will be working particularly closely with AT&T and Orange. Working side-by-side so they can provide specific differentiation on their networks. Talking about AT&T first: “valued partner” since first Windows Mobile smartphones in US in 2003. Bringing on stage David Christopher – responsible for choosing handsets and strategy for AT&T

“It’s great to be here today” says David, “We’re thrilled to be premier partner for Windows 7 Phones in the US. They will be a significant part of our strategy. Expect to ship double the number of smartphones in 2010 as they did in 2008. A huge driver will be Windows Phone, as it brings all the elements users are demanding – applications, consistency, gaming, media”

Next up is Orange, who launched the first ever Windows Mobile phone in 2002. Olaf Swanteeis SVP for Personal Business, runs worldwide business representing 130m customers in 34 countries.

“We are proud with the partnership with Microsoft, and we’re proud to have beat AT&T to the market in 2002. We’re proud to be a key partner in offering and supporting Windows Phone 7 devices; especially because only 25-percent of customers today only properly access the mobile internet today. With Windows Mobile 7 we can democratize the smartphone and get it to a much broader footprint. It’s important to say that this partnership is more than pure devices – we have degreed to work on distribution and on the services/support model to make sure at launch customers will get technical support with the Orange Care product portfolio.”

Andy’s back – “We’ve redefined how we’ve presented the mobile phone ecosystem – experiences customers can’t resist – the whole really is greater than the sum of the parts”. Back to Steve.

“I hope across the board we’ve given you a sense of the direction we’re taking. We’re taking a big step – it was really exciting to share this with you. Building on the concepts of Bing, Zune, Xbox, Windows, IE; we have an opportunity, if we appreciate the differences between the phone and the PC metaphors, I’m enthusiastic about the direction we’re heading. We have the best talent inside Microsoft and we get the chance to work with the best talent in carriers and other companies”

“We talk about a strategy that says three screens and a cloud, and the phone is definitely one of those screens. We hope 7 is our lucky number, and that Windows Phone 7 will be lucky for us. Exciting things are happening in the TV sphere, and we’re looking forward to bringing the flexibility to consumers”

They’re aiming phone at broader markets – young people, older people. When will we have Windows Phone 7 devices? “Our plan is to have them in the market in time for holiday season 2010″

Didn’t want things to drip out – wanted to set a milestone today. Wrapping up now, will be taking a few questions but we’ve heard that there won’t be general demo booths for people to try out Windows Phone 7. Check out our initial hands-on report from earlier today – http://www.slashgear.com/windows-phone-7-series-hands-on-1573973/ – and we’ve been promised some more hands-on experience after this event. We’ll be getting photos and video there, too, so stay tuned for that.

First question – will Microsoft ever rethink their selling Windows Mobile licenses?
A. No, our purpose is to sell software, other people make hardware. If something is free then you should look more closely to see where the hidden cost is.

Q. With Windows Phone 7 there’ll be UI consistency; how will you allow partners to differentiate?
A. The UI is extensible rather than replaceable. If you replace the UI then what does the developer design for? The original or the replacement? Having consistency provides a better user experience, but each element is extensible – you can do a lot of different things, add value, onto the basic platform. Extensibility without the chaos of people trying to change the same thing.
Steve says he remembers arguments about the same thing when they switched from DOS to Windows – but in the end it created more diversity, and he reckons the same will happen in a few years time with Windows Phone 7.

Last Q. What about Adobe Flash support?
A. Not out of the gate.
Steve says: We have no OBJECTION (shouted!) to Flash!

That’s it folks, thanks for following along! We’re off for hands-on…

Vincent is heading to get his badge. We will start taking photos shortly.

Line to get Badges. Press starting to line up.

Entrance to the press event.

The long line is forming quickly.

Vince has received his badge and waiting to get into the press hall.

We want to Thank Eye-Fi (& Gina) for helping us with our Eye-Fi card problem.

Not good, just saw an AT&T vb bossman… could be partnered w/att for apple tablet?

Very very crowded now. Waiting to enter the hall.

Waiting to get in (Video)

We are inside the press hall! Less than 15 minutes until it starts

Interesting setup on-stage today, with a chair and a table. Don’t remember seeing that before at previous Apple events we’ve covered.

There’s still a lot of people trying to find places to sit. Event is due to start in just under ten minutes.

Music today is Bob Dylan, there have been several tracks by him so far.

Apple are asking people with MacBooks to hold them up for photos – so they can see the logos better

They’re asking us to silence cellphones – the program will begin shortly

Four minutes until the event is due to begin

WiFi in this venue is, as expected, pretty bad. We’ve brought along a MiFi for our connectivity today.

Al Gore is here; pics in a minute

Two minutes to go…

Music so far has been all Dylan, one of his live concert recordings

Al Gore in the house

Lights are going down…

Steve Jobs is coming on-stage

Standing ovation from parts of the room, huge amounts of applause

Starting talking about iPhone – “a few weeks we’d sold 250m iPhones”

Sorry, that should have been iPods, not iPhones

284m retail stores

Next update: the App Store “an incredible phenomenon” – over 140k applications

“Just ended our holiday quarter: $50.6bn of revenue”

“Where does Apple get its revenue – iPods, iPhones and of course Macs”

iPods, iPhones and most Macs are all mobile devices – Apple is the largest mobile device company in the world, now. Larger than Sony’s mobile device company, bigger than Samsung’s, in terms of revenue it’s bigger than Nokia

Now let’s get to the main event… starting by going backward to 1981

Now let’s get to the main event… starting by going backward to 1981

We started with the laptop, then the iPhone, and now we’re asking if there’s something in the middle

Something better than a laptop for watching video, browsing photos, enjoying your music, reading ebooks, playing games. If there’s going to be a third category it has to do better at these tasks than your laptop or smartphone.

Some people have said this is netbooks, but they’re not better at anything – they’re just cheap laptops. But we think we’ve got something that is better, and we’d like to show you it today. We call it the iPad

It’s the best browsing experience you’ve ever had, way better than a laptop and way better than a smartphone
You can turn iPad any way you want, it automatically adjusts. To see a full webpage is phenomenal – to hold a full webpage in your hand is a phenomenal experience

It’s the best browsing experience you’ve ever had, way better than a laptop and way better than a smartphone
You can turn iPad any way you want, it automatically adjusts. To see a full webpage is phenomenal – to hold a full webpage in your hand is a phenomenal experience

iTunes store is build in, YouTube with high-def, and it’s awesome to watch TV shows and movies on

OS is from the iPhone, rather than OS X, all very smooth. Web browsing demo switches from portrait to landscape

Email demo now, list of messages on the left and full text on the right; the on-screen keyboard is almost fill-sized

Moving onto photos, and the gestures look pretty much as you’d expect from the iPhone, flicking and swiping to change between slides.

The iPad will work with both Windows and Macs, but if you have iPhoto on a Mac it will pull in photo data such as GPS position and location using Places.

The UI looks like a cross between what you’d have on the iPhone and what you’d see on OS X

There are photo transitions and effects, too; Steve is sat in the chair we mentioned earlier, resting the iPad on his crossed leg and tapping it with one hand

Moving onto looking at iTunes, and the interface is much fuller than you’d get on an iPhone. Choosing to play more Bob Dylan

You can buy sample and buy songs directly on the iPad. Pop-up information that shows song and album details

Moving onto the Calendar app, whole thing looks like a traditional diary planner

Pages are animated, with transitions – it’s quite like the Microsoft Courier demo video we saw leaked last year, in fact

Now moving onto Google Maps with Street View

It’s pulling down location – via GPS we’re assuming. He’s looking at a full-screen Street View shot of a restaurant

Moving onto media playback, with a Star Trek demo video

Not good, just saw an AT&T vb bossman… could be partnered w/att for apple tablet?

You can access chapters and flip the iPad into landscape mode to watch wide-screen, though there are black bars top and bottom since the display isn’t 16:9

Now covering specifications: 9.7-inch display and it’s just 0.5-inches thick. It has between 16GB and 64GB of flash memory onboard.only 10 hrs of battery life. Apple developed their own chip, the 1GHz Apple A4 chip, and is has WiFi 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.1

There’s also an accelerometer, digital compass, speaker and a microphone, together with a 30-pin dock connector. The battery lasts for 10hrs runtime or over a month of standby time.

Jobs is stressing the environmental credentials now, too. The iPad is arsenic free, BFR free, mercury free and PVC free. He’s mentioned WiFi but no 3G – so far no word on cellular connectivity.

Scott Forstall is onstage now to talk about apps for the iPad

Applications downloaded from the App Store – regular iPhone apps – will run unmodified on the iPad

He’s showing the Facebook app – the standard one you can run on your iPhone today – and it’s in the center of the screen, but with a tap of the button it doubles in size to fill the display.

Note on unmodified apps – If unmodified, apps can run in a small window in the middle of the display, basically 1:1 pixel, or you can double the pixels and have full-screen but lower resolution

Scott’s demonstrating Snocross from ESPN; he’s steering by tilting the iPad, using the accelerometer. Apple have added iPad support to the iPhone SDK.

The updated SDK is available to download today, and it includes an iPad simulator to test apps.

“We think it’s going to be a gold rush for developers” – the App Store is loaded on the iPad

And Apple will feature iPad apps at the front of the App Store, prioritized over iPhone apps (though you can still access the latter)

Now inviting developers on-stage to talk about coding for the iPad, starting with Gameloft

It’s the usual thing – what can they come up with in just a few weeks. Gameloft have brought along Nova, the iPad version. One of the benefits is having more screen space for expansive controls.

There’s an on-screen D-Pad which you can slide around, holding the iPad in both hands like an iPhone. But there are new ways to control it too, like three-finger gestures.

Also showing drawing a box around targets to select them, so as to fire at multiple targets at once

Now NYT are on-stage, with Martin Nisenholtz talking about the paper’s app

They’ve built a customized app for the iPad, just as they did for the iPhone, with NYT content. It looks just like the regular paper, or at least a lot more than the iPhone version does

Can flip between landscape and portrait orientations just by flipping the iPad, together with resizing text using pinch-zooming. Tapping zooms into a column, and there’s a live-updates setting which pulls breaking news into all the different sections

You can also play videos that have been embedded into the NYT app

Next on stage is an art app, Brushes

Steve Sprang from Brushes is on-stage to talk about the app

Apparently it doesn’t matter what your skill level is, anyone can paint with their fingertips

Brushes is doing a great job of showing off the new UI for the iPad, pop-up menus

Electronics Arts’ Travis Boatman says their primary interest was “the device’s performance” They’ve brought along the iPad version of Need For Speed

Boatman describes playing on the iPad as “like holding a huge, HDTV screen just inches from your face”

Brushes is doing a great job of showing off the new UI for the iPad, pop-up menus

Graphics on Need For Speed look incredible. Boatman says they had room to add a gear-shifter which you tap to change, and you can also tap the mirror to get a rear-view

Next on stage is MBL.com

Chad Evans is demonstrating the baseball app. “We had to create a new experience to suit this display”

Can browse back through previous game information, step through games and watch the pitcher. It’ll show the trajectory of the ball from the player’s perspective. And because of the extra screen space they can fit that and live video on at the same time. Video with home or away announcers is available.

That’s MLB.com done with

Scott Forstall back on-stage. He’s “incredibly excited” about the potential, but “while we wait for apps” all of the existing iPhone apps will run

Now Steve Jobs is back on stage, and he’s going to talk about ebooks. Showing a Kindle on-screen

Amazon “has done a great job pioneering” ebooks, but Apple are “going to stand on their shoulders” and take it further. Launching an app called iBooks

Menus look like bookshelves, literally – wooden effect, with the titles on the shelves

It’s integrated with an iBook store from which you can purchase and d/l books direct to the iPad. They’ve partnered with Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, MacMillan and Hachett Book Group

(A lot of these names you might remember from December 2009, complaining about ebooks and saying they were going to delay releasing them!)

Different ways to browse, including top 10 lists, the NYT list, bestsellers, etc. You can tap a book to get more information on it and see reviews, as well as download samples as you would on the Kindle. When you buy it, it turns up on your virtual bookshelf: a tap opens it up.

It’s basically iTunes for ebooks

Reading the books, meanwhile, is all animated with page-turns; you can tap or drag to flip through. It’s up to publishers whether they want B&W or color content, and they can embed video too.

Readers can change the font and the size of the font

There’s a contents page and you can easily flip through to the chapter you want

iBooks will offer fiction and textbooks.

Now moving on to iWork

iBooks uses ePUB format btw