Seth Weintraub

Do you know what time it is? It is one hour before this iPhone event – and Apple is updating its Store. That means new toys obviously. You ready already?

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While Apple may not be streaming today’s event out to everyone, they will be streaming it to journalists in London who will convene at the Covent Garden Apple Store around 6pm GMT. The feed appears to be coming in via Satellite and not over IP.

It appears that there will be some demo units on hand as well.

We’ll of course be posting the announcements as they come out. Come back in a few!

From 9to5toys.com:

• Apple iPod nano 8GB for $129 (pictured, $20 drop)
• Apple iPod nano 16GB for $149 ($30 drop)
• Apple iPod touch 8GB for $199 ($30 drop)

Also notable is the release of the iPod touch in white; it’s available in 8GB, 32GB, and 64GB models for $199, $299, and $399, respectively, the same as the black version.

Apple announced price drops on its older iPhone models. With activation of a new 2-year contract, the iPhone 4 8GB is now $99, $100 off, while the iPhone 3GS is now free, a price drop of $99.

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[brightcove vid=1197914933001&exp3=635367679001&surl=http://c.brightcove.com/services&pubid=711930521&pk=AQ~~,AAAAACpvMpk~,rAvHhAS7JOpa4tlt0CXVebDvGzQCdYY2&w=650&h=400]

Specifically, he said:

“Steve Jobs actually gave it to me, a little bit early. Yeah, it was cool. I got it directly from him.”

Last time the two met publicly was at the “Silicon Valley Summit” in February where Jobs sat next to Obama (picture below). That was about a month before iPad 2 rolled out to the public.

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In case there was any question, we’ve heard directly from Apple PR that there won’t be a webcast of Apple’s iPhone launch event. Last Year’s September event was live streamed but for unspecified reasons, Apple has chosen to keep this one off the airwaves. They will provide a live closed feed to the UK for European journalists however.

We’ll still be covering the event as it unfolds so make sure to stop by at 10am PT, 1pm ET or your local varient.

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On Tuesday, Apple will change the way humans interact with electronic devices. All over again.

Perhaps the biggest announcement at Apple’s iPhone event on Tuesday will be Assistant, Apple’s evolution of the Siri Personal Assistant Software. Siri, you’ll remember, is the company Apple picked up for a rumored $200 million in April of last year for, in Steve Jobs’ words, its “Artificial Intelligence”, not search or speech recognition.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpjpVAB06O4]

During Siri’s brief two months on its own, it described itself as a ‘VPA’:

Virtual Personal Assistants (VPAs) represent the next generation interaction paradigm for the Internet. In today’s paradigm, we follow links on search results. With a VPA, we interact by having a conversation. We tell the assistant what we want to do, and it applies multiple services and information sources to help accomplish our task. Like a real assistant, a VPA is personal; it uses information about an individual’s preferences and interaction history to help solve specific tasks, and it gets better with experience.

Apple has long wanted to bring an Artificial Intelligence-based Personal Assistant to the masses. In the late 80’s, Apple made the Knowledge Navigator series of videos (example below) to showcase this ambition.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WdS4TscWH8&start=30]

In the video, the professor mentions that someone wrote an article 5 years ago trashing Jill’s research (watch from 1:25 min onwards, at 1:50 min he mentions more details) – The computer says the doctor’s name and says his article in 2006 – which means the professor is in 2011. Ha! Thanks PBHK!

The world has come a long way since then, but as you’ll see on Tuesday, Apple had remarkable foresight way back in 1987.

We had the chance to speak to Siri’s co-founder and board member, Norman Winarsky…

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Update: Photoshop Touch is now available for the iPad

I am hands on here at Adobe Max where they are demo-ing Photoshop touch.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_-2oFbt4e4]

They said the Android version was further along(!!).  Adobe Collage Touch and others below:
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Reader Drew sent along these images of an iCloud setup wizard that came up after the latest 10.7.2 installation on Mac OS Server.  We haven’t seen these before so we are posting:

It is notable that these appeared in Server rather than the client setup. This is likely what users who upgrade to 10.7.2 will see when they upgrade…as early as tomorrow. Two more wizard shots below:
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This is from a new source. The results aren’t surprising so we’re posting here. We’re thinking these are going to be available sooner rather than later after the announcement.
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Remember when we brought you news way back in June that AT&T would be increasing its premiums on iPhone insurance on October 4th?  This was the very first indication that Apple’s iPhone launch event would be on October 4th.

Deductible: A tiered deductible per the terms of your Mobile Insurance Coverage Certificate, will apply as follows:

Now that is out in the open.  Prices for iPhones will increase from $4.99 to $6.99.  Such an arbitrary date may signal that the new iPhones may be ready sooner rather than later after the announcement.  Perhaps as early as October 7th.  See new screenie below
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Reddit user TheReverndZ shows the text he just got from AT&T.  He was over 11GB (!!) today for the month which is pretty hefty to say the least.  Next month, he’s probably going to get throttled as per the news we broke in June.

Starting October 1, smartphone customers with unlimited data plans may experience reduced speeds once their usage in a billing cycle reaches the level that puts them among the top 5 percent of heaviest data users.  These customers can still use unlimited data and their speeds will be restored with the start of the next billing cycle.  Before you are affected, we will provide multiple notices, including a grace period.

Don’t laugh Verizon users.  Yours is coming too.  Sprint, for the record, says it won’t throttle guys like Skelatwork, if they get the iphone

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What’s most interesting about these fake iPhones is that they were made from real iPhone parts.  The assumption is that the companies that made supplies for Apple would make additional parts and sell them to third parties who would somehow assemble a Frankenstein of iPhone and non-iPhone parts together and sell them at double the cost.

The cost to make one fake iPhone, which used some genuine parts, was around 2,000 yuan ($313). It was sold on unauthorized markets and on the Internet for around 4,000 yuan, only a few hundred yuan cheaper than the real iPhone, the newspaper said.

The fake iPhones had the same functions as the genuine ones but had a shorter battery life, it quoted the police as saying.

It would be interesting and surprising if they got iOS working on these.  I’m guessing a flavor of Android with a iOS-like skin was used. Apple would have a big problem on their hands if iOS was being pirated.

Updated with video of one of these fakes:

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Happy 10th anniversary iPod! Now die!!!

In a story that mirrors the ‘Killing of the iPod’ speculation post we did a few weeks ago, TUAW posts that the iPod shuffle and classic are heading out to pasture as Apple focuses on the iPod touch and iPod nano.

If you want to buy an iPod shuffle or iPod classic from Apple, you should do it sooner rather than later. We’ve heard those two iPods are getting the axe this year.

The idea is that Apple wants to focus on touch screen devices that have some innovation left in them. Saving some serious time and effort, here is what we wrote two weeks ago:

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Fortune just released a new Kindle eBook entitled All about Steve: The Story of Steve Jobs and Apple from the Pages of Fortune…

Steve Jobs’ legacy is clear: The most innovative business leader of our time, the man FORTUNE named CEO of the Decade in 2009. Now from the pages of FORTUNE comes an anthology of 17 classic stories spanning the years 1983 to 2011 about the cultural icon who revolutionized computing, telephones, movies, music, retailing, and product design. The stories lay out in unparalleled detail the career of a man with relentless drive and a single underlying passion—to carry out his vision of how all of us would use technology. Writes managing editor Andy Serwer in the book’s foreward: “In the end he was proved right a billion times over, and his company Apple became one of the most successful enterprises on the planet.” All these stories are the product of deep reporting. In many cases FORTUNE’s writers spent hours interviewing Jobs and delving into his mind. The result is a singular journalistic collection, which will leave you with a comprehensive picture of Steve Jobs and Apple, a picture that is complex in the making yet simple in its triumph.

The report includes Adam Lashinsky’s recent investigative piece, Inside Apple, which gives a behind-the scenes look at how the company really works. Lashinsky is also writing a standalone book on Apple due later.

Full Press Release and blown up ‘book cover’ follows:

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Q4 FY11 Earnings Release

As noted by MacStories, Apple today refreshed its investor relations page with news on its Q4 2011 Earnings call.

Apple plans to conduct a conference call to discuss financial results of its fourth fiscal quarter on Tuesday, October 18, 2011 at 2:00 p.m. PT.

Notable this quarter was the release of the MacBook Airs which have been doing very well, by most accounts.

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[vodpod id=Video.15459463&w=425&h=350&fv=]

We’re listening to T-Mobile’s CMO Cole Brodman talk about the future of the network and its possible merger with AT&T.  On the possibility of getting the iPhone, he reiterated his earlier comments, that T-Mobile would not be getting the iPhone, though he seems to have clarified that it is not coming in any shape or form on T-Mobile (unless you count the roughly 1 million iPhones bought elsewhere currently running on the network).  Previously, he said iPhone 5 wasn’t coming.

He did seem to be pandering to Apple saying that they are waiting by the phone for ‘that call’.

That leaves Android, which now accounts for 90% of the smartphones that T-Mobile sells on its network.  
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AllThingsD, which seems to have a bead on Apple’s Fall Event, says the event will be held on Apple’s campus.

Sources close to the company say the demonstration — currently scheduled for Tuesday October 4 — will be held at Apple’s campus in Cupertino, California. Why? That’s not entirely clear. Perhaps the release date was too much of a moving target to risk booking a large space like Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), which has hosted a number of big product unveils in the past.

OracleWorld is happening in the Moscone/Yerba Buena area during the October 4th announcement so that could be a reason for the move. Though Yerba Buena, the usual venue for such announcements, isn’t marked as booked.

Also, Apple has much more control over the wireless access at its campus auditorium, something that had caused some issues during the iPhone 4 announcement. With all of the wireless devices in the audience, Steve Jobs had trouble demonstrating things like FaceTime and the improved speed of the iPhone 4.

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Here’s the story (via Daring Fireball). The short of it is that Verizon asks the court not to issue Apple’s requested injunction against Samsung products because an injunction “is not in the public interest… It significantly limits consumer options and crippling the free flow of goods to Verizon and its customers”.

The obvious response is what injunction wouldn’t?

The question is: why would Verizon throw its weight behind Samsung in this battle now that it has the iPhone?

Perhaps Verizon isn’t as happy with the iPhone and as they were in early 2011.

Notice the love start to peel away in the video below. Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam was expecting to have an iPhone 5 this summer and counts that as a reason for missing targets in the third quarter. Revenues overall are flat and Verizon isn’t seeing the LTE money they were hoping for. Samsung obviously sells a bunch of LTE phones and Tablets that Verizon wants to capitalize on (and has a lot invested in) including the Galaxy Tab 10.1, Droid Charge, and the Droid Nexus Prime due out later this year…

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Google Plus (iTunes) iOS users will see a big update in their App Store today with lots of new features and improvements that were detailed earlier this week. Most notable is the ability to start and join video hangouts from a mobile device. In brief testing on both an iPhone 4 and an Android device on Wi-Fi, the Video conferencing worked great. It should work over 3 or 4G but the results obviously won’t be as good. Also, this version changes Huddles to Messenger and you can now send picture files through the messenger application.

Full list of improvements below:

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MacRumors points to a new service by Comcast which appears to mirror the functionality of a Slingbox or EyeTV, allowing a cable box to ‘Sling’ the video to an iPod around the house.

Currently, Xfinity customers can use the Xfinity TV app to watch On Demand programming, search TV listings, and schedule DVR recordings.

There is no indication of release dates or availability, but AnyPlay will be available in limited markets at first, and spreading to all Comcast customers eventually.

This is in contrast to their current app which streams on-Demand video over the internet to iPads which are on Comcast IP addresses with adjacent cable service.  Other US cable companies like Time Warner and Optimum offer Apps which stream many channels.

Check the red area above right for why this isn’t going to be very fantastic.

If you want this kind of functionality right now, but not tied to a cable company and their stipulations (and the ability to stream to devices outside your home without an extra cost), look into Slingboxes or El Gato’s EyeTV.

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If all of the rumors are true, Amazon has a 7-inch “media tablet” that runs a forked version of Android and will connect to all of Amazon’s services, including its Appstore, Movies, TV, Music and of course eBooks. It won’t be true multi-touch but the rumored price is half of the iPad’s (just like the screen) at $250.  Who is making this for Amazon?  Foxconn of course.

Yes, it sounds just like a Nook (which is getting an interesting update soon) with a better backend store.

via Verge
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