WWDC Steve Jobs keynote (meta) liveblog: meet the next iPhone

Last year at E3, Sony's Kaz Hirai took to the stage to announce the PSPgo. Details about the device had been rampantly and comprehensively leaked by several sources in the weeks leading up to the event, so the atmosphere in the Shrine Auditorium was tense. Kaz cut the ice with a joke, introducing the PSPgo as “the worst kept secret of E3.”

Right now, Steve Jobs is sitting in an antique barber's chair in the beauty wing of his California mansion watching his reflection in a wall-sized smart-mirror as his team of cyborg maids and footmen grooms and dresses him. In a couple of hours he's going to unveil the next iPhone to a roomful of gawping journalists and technophiles, and he's wondering whether to steal Kaz's joke.

Because, of course, we know what the iPhone 4G is like, thanks to Gizmodo's audacious purchase and subsequent expose of a unit lost in a San Jose bar. It's smaller but heavier and displays at a higher resolution than the iPhone 3GS. It has separate up and down volume controls. It has a front-facing camera as well as a larger rear-facing one. It uses a micro-SIM. And it has an A4 CPU.

Or does it? Or will it even be announced? The iPhone 4G may be the world's worst kept secret, but it still is technically a secret and Apple may embarrass Pocket Gamer and the entire technology journalist community by revealing a device none of us expects, or by not revealing a device at all.

As ever, we have a man on the inside in the shape of Apple editor Tracy Erickson. And as ever we'll be running the liveblog from afar, drawing on the observations of a range of sites, including Engadget, Ars Technica, and the New York Times.

Check back here at 6pm GMT for a possibly amusing account of the iPhone 4G announcement as it unfolds, plus expert analysis, summary, and opinion.

19:57 - Thank you, thank you, thank you, and goodnight.

19:52 - Video is over. Steve is back, talking about how the thing that makes Apple great is that it brings together technology and the humanities. Hardware and software working together. Oscar winner-like, he thanks the teams that have put the device together in turn. 19:47 - The iOS 4.0 upgrade will be free, and available for 3GS, 3G, iPod touch 2nd and 3rd Gen, and of course iPhone 4 on June 21st. Not all of the features will be available on the older of these models. A video demonstration is going on. 19:44 - Pre-orders start June 15th, and the iPhone 4 goes on sale June the 24th, even earlier than rumoured today. It'll ship in the US, France, Germany, UK, and Japan first, then 18 more countries in July. Also comes with a case, called the Bumper. 19:42 - So there we have it. iPhone 4 - in Jobs's estimation the biggest leap since the original iPhone. It comes in black or white, and costs more or less the same as a 3GS (details to come.) AT&T in the US is offering users whose contracts expire in 2010 the option to upgrade at the same cost as the 3GS, which will slide down the long tail and become cheaper. 19:38 - It's called FaceTime. Jobs likens it, not unreasonably, to The Jetsons. A video demonstration tugs on heartstrings by showing people goobling at babies and chatting via sign language. 19:36 - Steve: turn off your wi-fi. The implication is that is attendees don't do as he says they will be imprisoned. He tries to hold a video chat but the delinquents still using wi-fi make his demonstration fail. "Turn off your wi-fi." The operatives close in, unhooking handcuffs from their belts. Jobs gets a brief conversation going over video with Jony Ive, legendary Apple designer. He uses the opportunity to criticise the excessive wi-fi use at the keynote. The operatives prepare the syringes.

Video calls appear to be wi-fi only.

19:30 - iAds will be here at the beginning of July. Jobs shows off the Nissan Leaf ad, which Nissan was apparently reluctant to allow him to do. Nobody stands in Jobs's way. 19:27 - In the eight weeks since it started selling ads Apple has attracted several large brands, including Disney. 19:23 - iAds, aiming to sell you stuff through an intoxicating combination of emotion and interaction. Ads, rather than taking you out of the product you're enjoying, will be a part of it, like Disneyland in software form. 19:20 - Now, iBooks. It's coming to iPhone as well. You'll be able to use the same bookshelf, and sync books across devices without paying twice. If you sync you can save your notes and bookmarks in one device for use on your other one.

iBookstore has become Apple's third store, along with iTunes and the App Store.

19:17 - iOS 4.0 details aplenty - better email threading, better everything. Developers can have a Golden Master Candidate today. 19:09 - Jobs tells everybody to get off the internet. The link is broken. Good job Engadget have a a dongle - iPhone OS 4.0 has been renamed to iOS 4.0. Now some of the stuff we've heard about already - multitasking, folders. Meanwhile burly Apple beefcakes stalk the venue karate-chopping journalists on the back of the neck for not getting off the wi-fi.

19:05 - The man on stage, Randy Ubillos, shows off a video Apple made for the demonstration. Predictably enough, the people at the venue cheer as if something life-changing has just happened to them. Engadget was impressed.

19:00 - Apple has made an app for it - iMovie. All very slick and iPhone-like, allowing you to drag and pinch clips and photos around to good effect. Also includes optional geo-location. 18:57 - Now the camera. This one is 5-megapixel sensor to capture lots of photons. More megapixels, but not reduced in size. LED flash, tap to focus, digital zoom. And it lets you record HD video - 720 at 30fps - and edit and share it on your phone.

18: 53 - A gyroscope, to join the old accelerometer, compass, and proximity sensor, giving you the potential for six axis motion gaming. After making a joke about the network (George in tech support, meanwhile, hangs his head and empties his desk) Jobs shows off a Jenga-like game, made by some Apple engineers.

18: 52 - Next, the A4 chip, which is made by Apple and therefore in Jobs's opinion peerless. In conjunction with the better li-ion battery the A4 chip gives you 40 per cent more talk time than the 3GS. 18:50 - OS 4.0 makes it so apps automatically use Retinal Display. 18:46 - The iPhone 4G has four times as many pixels and four times as a good a contrast ratio as the 3GS, which, if you have one, you might as well stamp on because it already looks ridiculous.

Retinal Display is, in the words of Jobs, better than OLED. He's probably right.

18:42 - A demo shows the iPhone 4 display to be sharper and brighter than the 3GS's. Some network issues prevent Jobs from getting online to show off the device's surfing capabilities, so he gives up.

Somebody has just lost his job.

18:39 - Next up is the retina display, which increases the pixel density by four times. It displays at 326 pixels per inch, which is apparently beyond the human eye's ability to perceive jagged edges. 18:37 - 9.3mm thick. Etc. You've seen the specs already. Only big new revelation is the purpose of the three slits down the side: they're antennae for Bluetooth, GPS, wi-fi. 18:35 - "Some of you have already seen this." Very funny. It does indeed look exactly like the leaked device, which means it is. Jobs is quick to point out that you haven't seen it until you've touched it. Well played. 18:34 - iPhone 4. Steve says it's hot. 18:32 - Some data. iPhone is second in the US after RIM, with 28 per cent market share. Apple has three times the market share of Android. iPhone has 58.2 per cent of all mobile data usage in the US. 18:30 - Apple has so far paid developers 1 billion dollars. Only 40 per cent of that has gone to Lima Sky. 18:26 - Guitar Hero iPhone. It's got a custom strumming interface, social features. And it's out now for $2.99. 18:23 - FarmVille has 70 million monthly active users. The iPhone version will have push notifications, possibly to wake people up in the middle of the night so that they can attend to crops and so on. It'll be out by the end of June.

God help us.

18:20 - After a Netflix demo, Mark Pincus of Zynga is on stage. He's the man who admitted that Zynga's Facebook Apps were dodgy.

Uh-oh, news bomb: FarmVille for iPhone.

18:17 - 15,000 apps submitted per week, between new and updates. 95 per cent are approved within a week. Of the ones that don't, there are three reasons for rejections. 1) Apps not doing what they should, 2) Apps using private APIs, 3) Apps that crash. (Laughter, possibly ironic.) 18:15 - And now the App Store, which is 225,000 strong. He wants to tell us about the approvals process. You know what I'd approve of, Steve? Some iPhone 4G information. 18:14 - And he's talking about HTML5. He's in favour. 18:12 - You can now view and read PDFs in iBooks. Apple now accounts for 22 per cent of all ebook sales. 18:08 - There are now 8500 native iPad apps - a big increase on the last figure I heard, of 3000. Jobs takes a minute to show off some apps. 5 million books downloaded since US launch. 18:06 - Now a video reel about the iPad. iPad users take turns explaining that it's awesome. This seems an unnecessary bit of an evangelising for a device that's sold more than two million units. 18:04 - Jobs is on stage talking up the iPad. Apparently it's great. Claims of magicalness verified by elevated attractiveness of an iPad user in a cafe. 18:01 - People are filing in, Apple personnel are asking attendees to switch off phones, minor celebrity John Hodgman is rumoured to be in attendance. The presentation is about to begin. 15:44 - So this is basically how the liveblog works. I type something in here and by continually refreshing the page you get to see what new and amusing things I've written. In two hours and fifteen minutes you can see it in practice.