Let’s Talk iPhone Liveblog

Seth Weintraub | Oct 4 2011 - 9:09 am PT

Image via GDGT

Find below coverage that we’ll be pulling in live from around the web. You can find a roundup of our predictions here as well as a few last minute whispers here. The Liveblog post is sticky at the top and newer posts are below.

Event is over, Archive is below

9PT: We’ve got an hour to go and the Store’s gone down. Not just for new iPhones but something that isn’t reported as much: iPod price drops. And other stuff hopefully.

9:15 : We’ve got Apple Store website images of the ‘iPhone 4S’.

9:25: Breakfast is being served…

9:30 Looks like the iPhone 4S has arrived in Japan a little early…with an October 14th release date and 30% price drop. Sounds familiar.

9:35: GDGT spotted Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T wireless. He’s probably there to announce a Sprint Exclusive iPhone 5.

9:40: Speaking of BGR, Radio Shack has some time sensitive materials. Probably batteries.

9:50 Everyone going in, sitting down…this is getting exciting… (More Stones, less Beatles and Dylan. Just sayin’).

10:00: Presentation starting soon, turn off your devices, usual PA announcements. Here we go!

10:02: Tim Cook is out!

“Good morning, this is my first product launch since being named CEO.”

(Technically)

Apple Town Hall is Where the iPod was announced 10 years ago.

(AND NOW IT IS TIME TO DIE) – kidding!

Reviewing Apple Stores in China (has issues with slides).

10:05: Shanghai store opened with 100K visitors in a weekend. That is a good month for the Los Angeles Store. Hong Kong store sold record amount of Macs on opening.

Shows retail video…Chinese patrons pumped for the Apple Stores.

Video over Stats: 357 total stores in 11 countries, MANY more are coming to “raise the bar at retail.”

10:10: “MacBooks and OSX Lion: 6m copies of Lion. 80% more than Snow Leopard.” – Honestly, that isn’t that surprising.

MacBook Air: Competitors are trying (and Failing) to copy it.

MacBook Pro and iMac are the #1 best selling notebook and desktop in the US! Mac outgrew PC almost 6X and has outpaced PCs for every quarter for 5 years.

1:15 Music!

“Only 10 years ago we launched iPod on this very stage. Since then 300m iPods have been around the world.” Last year 45 million. In context Sony sold 230M Walkman in 30 years.

iTunes!

8 years ago, we had 200k songs in our music library. We now have 100x that. 16B song downloads. #1 music store in the world. “Mind boggling”

1:20 iPhone! 4 times in a row JD Power rated it best smartphone.

Despite all of this momentum, we have 5% share of the overall market in handsets. More coming on the iPhone.

1:25 iPad – Schools adopting..

We think the iPad can change the way teachers teach and kids learn.

92% of the Fortune 500 companies are testing or deploying iPad.

3/4 tablets sold are ipads – is undisputed #1 tablet in the world (despite everyone trying to compete).

250Million iOS devices have been sold!

1:22 Forstall Up!

500,000 Apps in the app store, 140,000 specifically built for iPad.

Apple has already paid out $3B to developers (and kept a billion ;) for their trouble).

61% mobile browsing is iOS.

18B Apps downloaded and 1B more every month.

Forstall demonstrating a new Cards app where you can make a card on your iOS device and Apple will (with the help of some third party no doubt) send it for you.

In the US, Apple will even send a push notification when it arrives (Apple revolutionizes tracking of physical letters?!) $2.99 in the US.

Free download, Oct 12.

Awesome.

1:30 Goes over new features for iOS 5

Camera update: Edit photos right on your device. Panorama.

Game Center: 67m users signed up.

Safari, Reader, tabbed browsing (forstall’s fav – mine too).

October 12th launch date for iCloud

1:38: Eddie Cue (with Purple Shirt) to talk about iCloud. Explains how it works again. We know this. Yes, yes.

Photostream? Yep. Edit iWork docs in the cloud using native apps. OK.

Find My Friends! We broke this (also broke Photostream – and everything else too). Pretty much just like we described. Google Latitude, eat your heart out (OK it is similar).

Video demo of new iCloud stuff.

1:45 is SCHILLER TIME!

Talking about iPods…going over the old iPod nano…Fitness…Right out of the box, the new nano lets you track your runs. 16 new clock faces. Bigger icons (seem to take up whole screen).

It comes in 7 colors, now the iPod nano is 8GB for $129, and 16GB for $149. Available today.

Ugh, that was a pretty small update.

iPod touch – White $199. Sounds familiar. So far nothing we didn’t know (OK, Cards!).

iPhone 4S (s is for SHOCKER!)

A5, 7x Grafx, 1GB RAM.

Epic’s Mike Capp to show Unreal Engine, Infinity Blade “Like an Xbox in your pocket.”

Phil is back – increased battery life to 8 hours of talk time.

2:00 Talking antenna: 4S has 14.4 HSDPA. Android fans are laughing right now.

World Phone, both CDMA and GSM. Das nice.

Camera: Better than other phones, in fact better than some point and shoots 8 megapixel sensor 3264×2448. More pixels!

Backside illumination, 73% more light, Hybrid IR filter…”amazing lens system, five lens elements. It’s now a really wide f2.4. Compared to most point and shoots we can let in a lot of light.” Apple designed ISP, which enables stuff like face-detection and auto-white balance.

Shows time to first photo. Androids get smoked. Phil says you have time to get coffee between shots on a Bionic. Ouchy?

1080P video recording, real time image stabilization, noise reduction. Video of video.

HERE COMES ASSISTANT – Scott Forstall to present

“For decades technologists have teased us with this dream that we can talk to our technology. But it’s never come true! It’s such a let-down! What we really want to do is just talk to our device!”

Demoing Siri Assistant. Weather. Find restaurants.

Forstall: “I’ve been in the AI field a long time. This blows me away.”

Texts Phil Schiller about getting lunch from his voice.

Siri can read messages to you.

“This is blow-away. I just checked my calendar, scheduled a meeting, and got it all read back by Siri.”

It does calendars and reminders.

“Define mitosis.” Siri hits up Wolfram|Alpha and spits back a definition.

how long until Christmas. Siri: “82 days.”

Ask Siri ‘who are you’? “I am your humble personal assistant.”

“Compose and dictate email right to Siri. Set timers. Look up contacts, create notes, search the web, search Wikipedia. It’s absolutely blow-away.

OK, got it.

2:30 Phil back: Siri Does dictation – whenever you have a keyboard, you have Siri. English, French, and German.