Live Coverage: Apple’s New Product Announcement
Join us as we cover Apple’s new product announcement, live from California.
Starting at 10 a.m. PT (1:00 p.m. ET) we’ll be at the Apple Event in California at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, where we expect to find out all the details on Apple’s product announcement (widely expected to be a tablet or slate computer).
Keep refreshing this page once the event starts as we’ll be updating it every few minutes with the latest info from the various presentations.
* Hey gang, its t minus 15. Here in my seat at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Event is starting soon. People are cramming into their seats and everyone is buzzing about the impending announcement. The energy in the air is amazing. I’m five rows from the stage.
* Jobs gets standing ovation. Looks thin but healthy. Some updates before the big announcement: He says 2 weeks ago sold 250th million iPod. Apple now has 284 Apple stores, had 50 million people visit last year. Has more than 140,000 applications on APp Store. 3 billion apps have been download in 18 months.
* Jobs says Apple is world’s largest mobile devices company between iPhones, iPods and MacBooks — bigger than Sony, Samsung and Nokia.
* called iPad! Looks like a big iPhone
* It has a built in accelerometer…”holding the internet in your hands is an incredible experience.” It has browser, email, built-in calendar, address book, Google maps, zoom in on anything to make bigger…”iPad is an awesome way to enjoy your music collection and of course we have the iTunes store built right into the iPad so you can discover music, podcasts, iTunes U, movies, TV shows, YouTube in HD.”
* Can customize the homepage with many built-in designs to choose from (to start)
* Jobs shows websites like New York Times, National Geographic, touches photos, zooms in on text…very graceful!
* Jobs then demo’d the email. Looked at photos and PDF maps inside of message (such as a subway map)…
* Jobs flew through photos with fingertip, portrait and landscape device…can manipulate photos with fingers…showed various photo collections..opens up to all thumbails…looks awesome…can see all photos based on someone’s face (recogniton) or place (geotagged), can see Google Maps (where photo was taken), various slideshows..plays music and cool transition effects…
* Showed music next. Can see album artwork. Tapped to start song. Nice interface along left-hand side with names of tracks. Played some Bob Dylan. Also showed how to preview songs in iTunes on iPad
* Jobs is now showing calendar, finger causes a bubble over a calendar entry, contacts, looks great on tablet. Can hold it sideways or upright. Great maps app, shows satellite imagery of Paris’ Eiffel Tower. Then typed in “Sushi” on a map of San Francisco…all the local restaurants popped up. Google Street View popped up
* ”Video is wonderful” says Jobs. Shows a HD video from YouTube. Looks great. Talked about music video shows, TV shows, movies. Showed Star Trek, selected a chapter and then played HD video. Played a clip from Pixar’s Up (where Jobs used to work, of course). * Video looks smooth and colourful
* iPad weighs just 1.5 pounds. Gorgeous 9.7-inch IPS display (great angled view, too). Multitouch screen. Powered by own “custom silicon,” 1Ghz Apple A4 chip. 16GB, 32GB or 64GB SSD storage (Flash). Has WiFi 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.0. Speaker, microphone. Battery life? 10 hours. Over a month of standby.
* Scott Forstall, SVP of iPhone Software. “App Store has been huge success.” More than 140,000 apps now available, more than 3 billion downloads in 18 months. iPad can run these apps in one of two ways: can see the original size in middle of iPad and with black around it or the iPad can double the pixels to run it full screen. Showed demo of Facebook. Looks great. Showed a game: ESPN’s X Games Snowcross. Used accelerometer to control snowmobile. Looks great full-screen. All the apps you own will work on iPad. Connect device to your iTunes PC and it will copy over. Developers can also enhance games to support iPad development. Announced it would release the Software Development Kit (SDK) today an “get going” to make new apps for iPad.
* Scott invited up Gameloft to show what they can do on iPad. The company has more than 60 games on App Store that have been downloaded 55 million times. Gameloft’s Mark Hickey demo’d N.O.V.A., a sci-fi first-person shooter
* Showing New York Times on the iPod, text and images look clear and crisp, navigation looks smooth. Can resize font. Flick through photos, launch videos. Then, Scott showed the Brushes painting app for iPad. Brought up developer Steve Sprang to demo the app for iPad. Showed how to paint on iPad’s screen usin your fingertip. Can record your painting progress on this digital canvas.
* Electronic Arts also called up. They have more than 40 iPhone and iPod touch titles already. Travis Boatman came up to show Need For Speed Shift. Looked stunning, 3D cars screaming down the track. Rich colours. Rock soundtrack.
* MLB.com also showed on iPad. Says it’s one of the most popular sports app at App Store. Showed new iPad app for baseball lovers. Looking at live game info, scoreboards, on the field shows you animated trajectory, read info and stats, tap on player to call up their baseball card, show video highlights, etc.
* No word on ebooks yet…coming soon I’m sure…!
* Jobs back on stage. Said Amazon has done a great job with its Kindle readers, and we’re going to stand on their shoulders.” New app is called iBooks. Has bookshelf. If want to read one, just tap on it. Hold it landscape for two pages. Created iBook Store to discover, purchase books right on your iPad. Best-sellers, five of the largest publishers in the world support this and going to open the floodgates, starting this afternoon.” He is starting to demo the iBook store. Books you buy downloads right to your virtual bookshelf. Font looks great. Pages can flip virtually like a book. Look at tablet of contents. Pick a chapter, add a bookmark. Can have photos or videos in book, “whatever the author wants” says Jobs. Can change font or font size. We think the iPad is going to make a terrific book reader, and teextbooks as well.
* iWork app shown, too. A suite of applications to create word processing documents, presentations, spreadsheets. Team has been at this for more than a year to bring it to a multitouch tablet. Introducing the iPad version of iWork.
*Jobs: “We want to put this in the hands of lots of people I am thrilled to announce starts at $499″ (huge applause)!! This is for the base model (16BGB with WiFi)…available is 60 days worldwide..including Canada…but 3G options will be available in the summer…no carrier or price given…
[...] If you’re anxious to know what Apple is announcing today, join us as we cover the event live, starting at 1 p.m. ET [...]
I’m beyond excited to see the release and will be tuned into this site!
So am I!!.
If it is phone, ereader, etc why not get a notebook and load ereader apps?
O.K., but as a reader for books? That isn’t highlighted or is an afterthought?
The tech specs aren’t that impressive. Also, I don’t see anything that would make me want to give up my Sony Reader. If I am looking for a netbook perhaps I would consider an iPad but the small memory would point me elsewhere. Not that excited about this actually.
pretty much going to be between an iphone and a macbook
looks pretty bad.
If it doesn’t have 3G built in thats useless.
No keyboard will also make it damn annoying to use for
any extended period of time.
Would want to read anything on a screen with so much glare.
Give me a headache right away.
At least the price is a little more reasonable than
it was speculated to be.
Sounds nice, but can you use it as a phone?
Typical Apple super-hype. Why are people so easily excited and eager to part with their cash?
This product is a big yawn. I’ll stick with my netbook.
Thanks for the coverage, it looks neat. I know we at Gazaro are pondering how we might bring Gazaro to the iPad, in addition to our iPhone app.
Great, As a writer I want to hand write on the ipad and have it coverted to text in the ipad. Can it do that?
I agree, for years we were putting our hopes in apple to bring out the ultimate tablet machine, good for work as well. For something called “pad” I would expect to be able to grap a pen, switch it on, and within a second to be able to jot down some words and potentially a little diagramme, maybe even on top of an adobe acrobat pdf file as comment, or as lecture notes on a powerpoint/or pdf file. This WAS WHAT We expected… It is a pity the iPad does obviously not have this capability and something like a no-go for me then!
It does’nt have macos x but iphone os x what the?
[...] the kind of hype that only Apple can build. From Steve Jobs’ announcement of the iPad, to the reaction of the blogosphere, to the retail debut in the U.S., it’s hard to recall a [...]
I just heard that Apple’s quality is good, and in new style, reasonable price. Next time, I will go to buy some Apple products to experience.
This is a great post, i love it, thx.
The tech specs aren’t that impressive. Also, I don’t see anything that would make me want to give up my Sony Reader