Live Coverage of Apple September Event (Sep 1, 2010)

Last week I mentioned some of the rumors swirling around today’s event.

We are now just minutes away from it and I will be covering it live, along with many others. If you’d like to follow along, you can find the official Apple live stream here. Only certain browsers are support.

You’ll need to manually refresh this page every few minutes – I don’t have anything fancy installed to auto-refresh. Newest stuff at the bottom.

It’s started:

– Steve Wozniak is in the crowd and Steve Jobs pointed him out.

Jobs is pointing out stats
– 6.5 billion apps download.
– 250,000 apps available
– 25, 000 dedicated iPad apps

iOS 4.1 introduced

Bugs fixed: Proximity, Bluetooth, iPhone

Additions:
High Dynamic Range Photos
HD Video upoad
TV show rentals
Game Center

10:12 am Pacific:
– Jobs is introducing head of Epic Games (Unreal Tournament and Gears of War) to cover some huge game for Apple’s mobile devices, based on the Unreal engine: It’s code-named “Project Sword” which is an RPG. It’s impressive – everything is done in real-time and looks very cinematic.

12:16 am Pacific
– iOS 4.1 is out next week for iPhone and iPod touch

iOS 4.2 is being discussed, and it’s focused on iPad
– Multitasking, folders, HDR, game center
– Wireless printing

– AirTunes is now called AirPlay, adding video streaming in addition to music streaming.

iOS 4.2 comes out in November.

iPods are being discussed. 275 million have been sold.

New designs for every model!!

New iPod shuffle 2010
– Small and wearable
– Easy to use – buttons
– Playlists
– Genius mixes
– VoiceOver , even indicates battery level.
– 15 hours battery life
– 5 colors, $49

New iPod nano 2010
– Has a clip/wearable
– Multi-touch user interface, no buttons
– 46% smaller, 42% lighter
– Hard Volume buttons
– FM radio, Nike+, pedomoeter
– 29 languages
– 24 hours of battery
– Can rotate orientation with fingers
– Has a lot of interesting photo support, including faces.
– 7 colors
– $149 for 8GB, $179 for 16GB

New iPod touch 2010
– Most popular iPod
– “#1 portable game player” according to Jobs
– Outsells Sony and Nintendo portable game players combined.
– 1.5 billion game and entertainment titles download to iPod touch.
– Thinner, new design
– Retina display – 4x pixels, 326 ppi, 24-bit color, LED, same as iPhone 4
– Apple A4 chip
– 3-axis Gyro
– iOS 4.1 with Game Center
– Facetime with front camera
– Rear-facing camera capable of HD video
– 40 hours of music playback
– 8 GB – $229, 32 GB – $299, 64 GB – $399
All iPods available next week, available for pre-order now.

10:37 am Pacific
New ads showcasing the new iPods are being shown.

iTunes is being discussed
– 11.7 billion songs downloaded
– 450 million TV episodes
– 100 million movies
– 35 million books
– 160 million accounts with credit cards and 1-click shopping in 23 countries

iTunes 10 being launched.
– Next spring it may pass physical CD sales
– New logo design
– Updated list views, with new hybrid view that shows album artwork for album in main listings
– iTunes Store showing – Katy Perry is being shown in the Store
– “Discovery” being discussed.

Ping
– “Ping” introduced – social network, “Facebook and twitter meet iTunes”
– Allows people to comment and communicate with each other, along with artists.
– People can follow one another
– “Social music discovery”
– “Follow and be followed”
– “Circle of Friends” where only certain people are allowed to follow you or your friends with customized charts showing only what the “circle of friends” is doing.
– 17,000 concert listings
– Custom song and album charts
– 160 million iTunes users in 20+ countries can access it.

10:49 am Pacific
– Steve just finished demonstrating Ping.
– Ping available on iPhone and iPod touch, showing up right in the iTunes store.

iTunes 10 available today.

10:51 am Pacific:
New Apple TV! (MC572LL/A)
– Acknowledged that it hadn’t been the success they wanted
– Discussing owners wanting Hollywood movies & TV shows, HD content, and lower prices, and don’t want a computer on the TV.
– Claiming people don’t want to manage storage or sync to a computer.
– Want the Apple TV to be “silent, cool, and small”

Holy $%#$%#, the new Apple TV is 25% the size of the current one.
– Ports – HDMI, Power, 5.1 audio, Ethernet (but there is Wifi)
– Rental only, no purchases
– No storage issues since it’s all rental
– Can stream straight from computer – TV, photo slideshows, etc.
– $4.99 to rent first-run HD movies, same day as DVD releases
– $0.99 to rent HD TV shows, commercial free
– ABC and Fox are on board.
– Stream straight from Netflix
– YouTube (HD) and flickr support + mobileme
– Stream content from Mac or PC – music, photos, and video

11:00 am Pacific
– Jobs has been showing off the new Apple TV

11:07 am Pacific
– Using iPad as a remote for Apple TV and changing where the video is streaming from in mid-stream.
– Can stream from an iPhone – photos for instance.
– Price from Apple TV dropped from $229 to $99

Summary – Steve wrapping it up
– Believes iPod lineup is the strongest ever.

11:10 am Pacific
That’s a wrap, musical artist is performing.

I’ll be posting images a little later in the afternoon, although they should be up on Apple’s website soon, in which case ignore this.