Features

Apple's September announcement (liveblog)

Blogging live (via satellite link-up) from the Brewery in London

Apple's September announcement (liveblog)
|

Hello and welcome to the latest in our series of liveblogs from Apple announcements.

This time round we're not meta-liveblogging from our desks, but sat in a live venue, the Brewery in the city of London, surrounded by hundreds of other live journalists to witness a live satellite link-up of a live announcement in San Francisco.

Confused yet? I am. Still there's free wifi and water.

17:55 The venue is filled to the rafters and we've been asked to switch all electronic devices to silent mode. A pretty girl holding a media placard aloft smiles my way..Concentrate!

17:57 Chatter amongst the journos is relaxed as we speculate what's to be unveiled. Updated Apple TV? A fancy new music-service? An end to world hunger? We'll have to see, but my money's on an iPod with iPhone 4 specs for starters.

18:00 Lights down, Jobs is up on stage (well screen).
He's standing in front of the massive guitar image we've all seen the last couple of days and has just introduced his partner in crime. Wozniak's in the house. Cue whoops and applause in San Fran.

18:01 Steve's kicking off talking about his new shops in Paris, China and Covent Garden...blimey, some people will cheer anything. [Notably none of the UK journos cheer the London store.] First big number on the board and it's 300 (there are 300 Apple stores) in 10 countries, soon 11 thanks to Spain.
There are over 1 million people a day entering Apple stores on several days in a month, apparently.

1804: Right then, into something meatier. We're talking iOS now and he's unveiled 120 million total iOS devices in existence. A gentle dig at Android there as 'friends who are counting activations per day' in the wrong way apparently. iOS has 230,000 new devices activated every day.

200 apps have been downloaded and there are 250,000 apps on the store, 25,000 of them are iPad apps.

18:07 Today we're introducing iOS 4.1

  • Fixing bugs
  • Improved high dynamic range photos
  • Rental of TV content
  • and....(drum roll)
  • Game center is making it's debut - now that IS interesting.

Stay tuned!

18:09 Steve is showing off some nice effects with HDR which

Right, now we're onto Game Center.
It's all about multiplayer games, challenging friends (auto matching if you don't have them) comparing high scores and gaining rewards/achievements.
He's done a quick demo where Thor has invited him to play and it auto-matched opponents of similar.

18:11 Now it's showing off a cool upcoming game, from Epic Games.

Epic Games CEO is up on stage and he's showing off Project Sword, unreal-engined powered action adventure.
Looks rather lush I must say.

There's a demonstration of a head to head battle. Two titans face off in a multiplayer match up and show off some nice moves, combos and game center achievements.

The game's going to be out in the holiday season on iPod, iPhone and iPad. More on that VERY soon.

18:14 That's a quick look at 4.1 and it'll be out next week for free on the app store.

Now a sneak peak at iOS 4.2. It's all about bringing everything to iPad, including wireless printing and something called Airplay...more on that in a moment.

18:16 After a brief printer demo, we're onto Airplay, which will work like AirTunes but all sorts of content around the house.
He's doing a demo of multi-tasking, checking e-mail with music playing in the background, slipped into a site featuring a Gibson guitar image that looks remarkably similar to what's on the invite. Then he's off onto folders.
A wireless computing device. With folders. Be still my beating heart.

OS 4.2 is a free update that'll be out in November.

18:19 Right then, enough iOS stuff, we're onto iPods.
Kick off with a big number (well why change a winning formula?) - 275 million iPods sold.

ALL NEW IPODS!
Seriously though, this is relatively interesting. New designs across the entire range from shuffle to inevitable 4th gen iPhone 4 alike.

New iPod shuffle is smaller than second gen, but has buttons and playlists, looks pretty much like an audio control you get with other mobile headphones and is about the same size as Shreddie. Comes in five colours and sells for $49, if you're interested in such things.

Nano up next. Smaller, multi-touch-screen.
The new iPod Nano has multi-touch. Hmm, interesting.
46% smaller, 42% lighter with a clip on the back.

Yep I know this isn't games-related, but who knows, maybe we'll see apps on these things in time to come - mind you you'd need really spindly fingers to play Flight Control on one of these babies. Similar interface though, for moving stuff about and you can rotate the screen (which brings forth a whoop from the US crowd - do people really need to whoop for rotation?)

Nano comes in 6 colours and will be on sale for $149 (8Gb), $179 (16Gb) and available this holiday season.

Onto the iPod Touch...

18:30 iPod Touch is the most popular iPod now (more popular than nano).
It's become the number 1 portable games player in the world outselling Nintendo and Sony's portable games-players combined. Over 50% market-share in US and worldwide.
Over 1.5 billion games and entertainment titles downloaded to iPod touch.

So what next...

18:32 It's slimmer (but not squared off like an iPhone 4). Has the same Retina display as iPhone 4, the Apple A4 chip, 3 Axis gyro, iOS 4.1 with Game Center and a front facing camera for the (it'll never work) Face time. Also HD video recording.

So yes, it is an iPhone 4 without the phone, and in a old style curved design (albeit thinner).

How much you say?
8Gb for $229, 32Gb $299, 64Gb for $399.

All iPods available...next week!
What, no whoop?

Ah, there it is. Phew I thought we'd lost the West-coast for a minute.

18:35 Yay, it's the Ads! (Not iAds)
The iPod ad is notably absolutely dominated by games, as well as an attempt to shoe-horn in FaceTime (give it up Steve, it'll never work!)

18:37 iTunes now
Some big numbers, 11.7 billion songs downloaded, 450 million TV episodes, over 100 million movies, over 35 million books, oh and over 160 million accounts with credit cards.

Today Steve's announcing iTunes 10 and it's got a new logo!
The CD has been ditched for a simple blue circle-thing.

A few interesting tweaks, most notably in discovery with social features being implemented via Ping, a social network all about music (described as Facebook and Twitter meets iTunes). Artist posts and concert dates, friends posts, favourite songs and concerts. There'll be follow options with the ability to create limited friend circles. Yep, it's pretty Facebooky so far.

Obviously this isn't games-related yet, but it's already throwing up some pretty clear indications of what could happen in the app store and game center. Can they still call it Ping, maybe Pong would be more apt...

18:44 Still talking iTunes. Ping is available...now in supporting countries. Don't go away and sign up yet though, who knows what's coming next.

To be honest it's actually pretty cool stuff and is likely to further cement iTunes as the all-conquering home of music. Anyone planning their own Facebook-style music start-up, might want to go back to the drawing board.
Ping is also, naturally, all synced into the iPhone and iPod.

All ready to download today, right now...but don't go yet, there's still the big finish...

...here we go. One more thing. One more 'hobby'.

18:50 Talking about Apple TV, introduced in September and it didn't work, but people who used them, loved them.
What people wanted was hollywood movies and TV shows in HD at low prices but they don't want a computer on your TV, to have to manage storage or to sync to their computer...

I'm guessing there's a solution to all these problems, I wonder what it could be...

...blimey, it's the second generation of Apple TV, who'da thought it?

18:53 It's a small black box, a quarter the size of the original and works wirelessly to provide streamed music, TV shows and more in HD.
There's no storage involved or purchasing, it's all rental and (apparently) cheap rental at that.

First run HD movies for $4.99, TV shows can be rented for 99 cents, all commercial free (not all the studios on board though, just ABC and Fox at the moment) as well as YouTube and Netflix (for subscribers) plus streaming from your laptop.

Sorry, nothing gamesy here now, nor particular pocket-based, but I think it'd be conceived as rude if I walked out

19:00 As Steve's doing his TV demo, I'll round-up the key issues:

  • Game Center is coming next week with iOS 4.1
  • The new iPod touch is here from tomorrow and is, as expected, packed with iPhone 4 specs
  • iOS will be with us in November, bringing all the iOS multi-tasking, Game center goodness to the iPad
  • Epic Games have given us a sneak peak of the phenomenal looking action-adventure Project Sword that'll be coming in the next couple of months and be all Game center'd up
  • iTunes 10 is here now complete with it's own social network, Ping surely foreshadowing future social functionality for the App store too

19:05 Oh hang on, we're not finished yet. We're onto Airplay - streaming content from an iOS device onto a different Airplay-ready screen. So you can switch from watching a TV on your iPad to the big screen or show iPhone photos.

Apple TV will be just $99, down from $299 (that's quite a way down). Available in about 4 weeks.

19:08 Nearly done now surely. Steve's doing his round-up of what we've learned today. New iPods, new iOS, new iTunes with Ping, new TV and....new Apple CEO, he's resigned!

Only joking of course. Sorry, got carried away there.

Now we're onto the reason for the guitar with the Apple icon. Apple loves music, they wanted to remind themselves how much they love music, so they asked Chris Martin of Coldplay to come and perform for us all.

Just Chris Martin as it turns out. Yes, in their bid to reduce everything, Apple have invited one quarter of Coldplay along to play on his own live. Which we have the pleasure to watch. Via a big screen satellite link-up. It's almost like being there. Except of course, it isn't.

I think that probably wraps things up though.
There's no boom but we do have a middle of the road stadium rocker, singing Yellow (which is incidentally one of the colours in which you can get the new iPods).

1918: Chris is still singing and the UK audience are a bit confused. On one hand we're now essentially watching a music video, in a big hall, with friends, on the other hand we're British and a bit too polite to leave...

Either way I think we can consider that is probably the end of the event, unless Steve's about to come out and announce some new products on backing vocals.


Chris James
Chris James
A footy game fanatic and experienced editor of numerous computing and game titles, bossman Chris is up for anything – including running Steel Media (the madman).