Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference opened today with intense speculation that a new iPhone would be unveiled when Phil Schiller, its vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, briefed the media at 10am Pacific time.
All we knew officially was that Apple would discuss the latest version of its operating system – Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard – and talk more about the 3.0 version of the iPhone OS. A new iPhone would have been no surprise, and we expected a cheaper version to be announced as soon as today. Any appearance by chief executive Steve Jobs, on medical leave till the end of this month, would have been a sensation. Here’s how the event unfolded, with our live blogging from the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
0945 Pacific Time: The doors have opened for the keynote and a stampede of journalists rush in to try to get a prime position. There were long lines of developers outside the Moscone West also seeking entry, many will watch the speech in overflow rooms. There are few other media events that attract this kind of hype and hysteria.
1003 Phil Schiller takes the stage to huge applause. “Can’t you feel the love in this room?”, he asks. Yes, it’s a regular Mac love-in. He’s starting by talking about Mac software and OS X.
1007 A new version of the 15-inch Macbook Pro announced with new lithium polymer battery with 7 hour battery life. Improved colour gamut, an SD card slot – what took them so long? Up to 3.06 ghz dual core – fastest ever processor, up to 500gb hard drive. Lower price $1699 – $300 lower for starter version with 250gb hard drive and 4gb of memory.
1012 Details of an improved 13-inch version, frenzy over Firewire inclusion (??). Starts at $1199. Available today. And a Macbook Air update – cheaper prices $2499 version reduced to $1799!
1024 A lot of fun is being made of Windows Vista and Windows 7 as the event turns to discussion of the next Apple OS – Snow Leopard. Lots of oohs and ahhs as improvements to OS described – faster, taking up less space, Safari 4 browser shipping today for Mac and Windows.
1026 Major upgrade to Quicktime player both in look and backend streaming capabilities.
1034 Apple claims new Safari is fastest browser on any platform. A panoramic view of your top 12 sites looks very cool. Coverflow view of browsing history very nice as well. Quicktime now lets you trim and share video with a nice timeline. Easy export to YouTube.
1041 You’re not missing any iPhone news, we’re having a long demo of Snow Leopard.
1047 New Snow Leopard upgrade will cost just $29 – whoops and cheers… Now we move on to the iPhone
1055 After a long video promoting the iPhone, we’ re getting a recap of the OS 3.0 features first shown to us in March
1100 iTunes improvement – now able to rent movies and TV shows right from your phone. Tethering enabled so you can share iphone’s internet connection with laptop – but no mention of AT&T support – cue huge groans when AT&T is not on the list of operators.
1106 Find my iPhone feature shown with 30 Rock video with Alex Baldwin and Tina Fey. Service available to Mobile Me customers – lose your phone, login and it shows you on a map where it is, send an alert sound
to it so you can find it, remote command can be sent to delete all data.
1120 We’re getting demos of how developers are using 3.0 – Gameloft shows Asphalt 5 racing game – ipod music can be played, multi-player enabled and voice chat while driving. Very impressive beeping vital signs displayed remotely in a patient monitor medical app from Airstrip. ScrollMotion digital books shows its store, shows copy, paste and email of book text.
1125 Tomtom shows turn-by-turn directions app coming this summer, then ngmoco with some more games and Pasco with an education app. I think this is as many demos as I can take. This is a marathon
keynote, but still time to announce a new iphone.
1140 Final demos from Zipcar – touch on horn icon to locate rental car, touch on unlock icon to unlock it, and then guitar and amp demo – app let’s you modify sound. Time for one last thing…..please!
1152 The iphone 3GS, here it is, with S standing for speed. A new three-megapixel camera inside with video added as expected. Tap to focus feature is very neat. Video editing capabilities are also there. Quality looks very good. Voice control added to phone – voice dialling basically. But there’s more, you can ask what song is playing or tell it to play a song. Also a digital compass. Support for Nike+. This is a much faster phone, 2x, Apple says, and improved battery life – from 6 hours internet wifi on current 3G to 9 hours now on GS.
It’s 199 dollars for 16Gb, 299 for 32Gb and in black and white versions. It is going to keep 3G in market at $99 price from today…as the FT’s Joe Menn reported last week. 3GS available on June 19.
1205 And that’s all folks! No Steve Jobs, no tablet device, but a new iPhone to keep Apple lovers happy, it looks a marked improvement over the current 3G version.
