Live from San Francisco, it’s Marketing Land’s live blog of the big Apple press event, where the new iPhone 5 will almost certainly be announced, along with new iPods, iTunes 11 and more.
How can we say that so confidently? Well, 9to5 Mac spotted pages within Apple.com’s own search results. While you can’t get to the actual pages, they pretty much speak to these product coming out. The tech blogs have gone wild, though these were largely expected.
What remains a mystery is whether we’ll get the rumored iPad Mini. Another rumor is that this will be announced later this year.
Stay tuned. The event starts at 10am, inside the Yerba Buena Center For The Arts.
I’ll be constantly updating this page (as wifi allows). It’s not a fancy setup that auto-refreshes, to yeah, you’ll have to reload. But I’ll let you know when it’s done. We’ll also have formal coverage after the event here on Marketing Land and on our sister-site, Search Engine Land.
===
Tim Cook has come out, welcome, “have some amazing” things to share.
But starting with Apple retail and showing a store in Barcelona. Now a video of the opening.
On to the Mac. Busy summer
7 million copies of Mountain Lion sold, fastest selling of any OS X 10 release.
Last three months, Mac notebooks have ranked number one in the US. Over last year, Mac has signficanlty outgrown the PC, in fact past 6 years.
“We’re really happy with how we’re doing with the MacIntosh.” On to iPad, great reviews. 17 million sold last quarter, a new record. Sold more iPads than any PC maker sold of entire PC line. “Yes, we are in a post PC world.” Total 84 million units. “Aboslutlye shocking when you think this is a product category that didn’t exist”
Competitors have taken note launched hudnreeds of products. Year ago, iPad had 62% share. Now up to 68%. As for traffic.
“I don’t know what these other tablets are doing,” in that iPad has 91% of web traffic. Jokes must be on shelves.
Recently crossed 700,000 apps in store, 250,000 just for iPad. “There’s somehting in theapp store for everyone.”
90% of apps are downloaded each and every month and average customer uses more than 100 apps (wow, really? each month? each day?)
Just sold 400 millionth iPhone device. And now Phil Schiller invited up to tell us more about iPhone.
Today we’re going to introduce iPhone 5. Now it rises up on stage.
“most beautiful product ever” they’d made, all glass and aluminum.
7.6mm thin, world’s thinnest. 112 grams, 1/5th lighter than iphone 4s. 1136X640 4″ screen, same retina.
Why this size? Should fit perfectly into your hand. And shows more of what you’re working on, browsing, email, etc. New apps from Apple being designed to take advantage of the extra space.
But apps work good either way. Open Table before and after:
And after:
LTE support added in a single chip. (which is cool, because it should mean you can go from AT&T or Verizon in single phone) AT&T, Sprint, Verizon will all support it in US. Huge lists now going around the world.
802.11n 2.4 and 5GHz for wireless now working.
New Apple A6 chip, 2X faster in CPU and graphics.
Rob Murray from EA Studio now out to show a racing game. There’s time shifted multiplayer, one person can race, the next day someone else can race against them.
Phil is back. Matched and exceeded batter life of 4GS, 8 hours of LTE browing, 225 hours standby.
On to the camera. 8MP and lot of specs, see slide below:
Also dynamic low light mode. Faster photo capture. Noise reduction, smart filter to prevent noise reduction when not needed.
“The ocean just looks bluer on the iPhone 5. Kids look happier. And the world is a more beautiful place,” he jokes as he shows some pictures:
Shared photo streams and (finally) a panorama mode to stitch. You can even include the same person if you figure it out in different areas:
Three microphones now, front back and bottom. Improved speakers.
Now for the connector. Original one launched in 2003 “but so much has changed” so much done over the wire is now done wirelessly he says.
It’s time for our connector to evolved. Called Lightning. So now we have Thunderbolt & Lightning. Working with partners on connectivity into new products.
There’s also an adapter to change old to new:
Scott Forstall now out showing the new maps with local search:
Turn-by-turn navigation:
And flyover views:
Browsing has iCloud tabs that let you keep track of where you left off browsing on other devices, if I heard correctly.
Mail gets flagging ability of messages (I though it had this).
Passbook to store store cards (most of this stuff we’ve all know was coming). Integration to lockscreen so what you need is ready to go on the right day.
Shared photo streams let you share pictures with others, and they can subscribe to them.
Siri has learned about sports scores and movie recommendations. You can launch apps by speaking. You can post to Facebook with Siri:
Note Siri joking about movie recommendations here:
Facebook posting with Siri:
But this might be tied to apps themselves posting. Will have to check on this more later.
Now video. Now prices $199 for 16GB, $299 for 32, $$399 for 64GB. When can get them? Pre-order Sept. 14. Ship Sept. 21 to many countries including US. Shifts prices around for other phones as shown:
iOS rolls out next week to wide range of devices as shown below for free on Sept. 19:
On to iTunes, now in 63 countries, 435 million account, new design for iPad:
200 million use iCloud, and that’s integrated into new version of iTunes for desktop:
You can now see what’s in a playlist and your library at the same time:
Improvements to search, like you can do it within the mini player.
Watch a movie on one device, iCloud remembers and picks up in iTunes. Now Avengers scene where Hulk smacks down Loki. Love that scene.
New iTunes in late October.
Now iPod. The Nano. How to recreate it? Bigger display. Easy controls. Thin, light. Lightning connector. Here it is, actually bigger than Fred:
Play/Pause/Forward/Backward buttons on the side with multtouch display. FM Tuner with live pause. Video back in it. Bluetooth part of it. I wish wifi was (doesn’t sound like it, unless I missed that).
iPod Touch (wish they’d call it the iTouch). 6.1mm thick/thin. 88 grams in weight:
7X faster graphics. And now developer up to show us the Clumsy Ninja game. It’s cute. Touch also getting a 5MP iSight camera. Panorama will also come to it.
iPod Touch Loop is a small button at the bottom that really is meant to allow you to add a wrist strap.
Siri will now be supported. And can pick colors.
New EarPods headphones.
These ship today. Overall iPod family pricing (it’s $299 for the part he covers):
Cook back, wrapping up. “Only Apple could create such amazing hardware, software and services … and bring them all together.” That’s a strength. “Apple has never been stronger.” Apple employees are doing “the best work of their lives.”
And now the Foo Fighters are on stage singing:
I’m not going to live blog them singings. I’m just going to listen, OK? Two songs so far.
That’s it. Please see our more formal follow-up coverage:
Comments