Gearfuse Technology, Science, Culture & More
9:06- There is constant alternative pop music playing. Gnarls Barkley, Beck, Gorillaz, Sheryl Crow. The usual.
9:07- Booming voice, this baby is starting… or just telling us that we should turn off our cellphones.
9:10- No luck with wireless network signal.
9:13- I Feel Good by James Brown. It’s possible someone will have a seizure from all of these flashes. Lights dimming. One minute.
9:15- And it begins. Talking about switching to Intel microprocessors. Planned in 12 months, completed in 7.
9:17- Over half of sold Macs are going to new Mac users. Some small jabs at Microsoft. New Vista ad. Pretty funny, speaking of death because of switching to Vista. “If I don’t come back, you can have my peripherals.”
9:18- Shuffle = World’s most wearable mp3 player
9:19- Sold over 2.0 Billion songs on iTunes. Refutes reports of iTunes sales slowing. Over 5 Million songs per day = 58 songs per second. 5th largest reseller of music, passed Amazon in music sales.
9:21- 50 Million TV shows sold. 1.3 Million movies sold. Paramount is now iTunes partner for movie sales.
9:23- Trash talking the Zune. Effect of Zune going up in smoke. New iPod ad. Reverse of previous ads. Colored figures, on black background. Very simple, just as captivating as before. To be running shortly.
9:26- New iTV. Now called Apple TV. New way to enjoy media on big screen TV. iTunes to Mac to iPod to TV via Apple TV. Power connector, USB 2, ethernet, wi-fi, hdmi or component for analog. Up to 720p video, with 40GB hard drive, 802.11 b+g+n standards, with Intel processor. Auto sync videos from your Mac to your Apple TV (sort of like smart playlists). Streamable from up to 5 computers (not stored on hard drive). Very nice screensaver effects. Looking at menu. All media (ie podcasts, music, videos, shows). Showing The Good Sheperd trailer (don’t go see the movie, not good at all). Zoolander, pre-walkoff confrontation. Showing Heroes (gamblers get killed by Jessica while playing with Hiro Nakamura). Calling the Apple TV an iTV by accident, no problem, he apologized before hand. Playing music (John Mayer, Daughters). Shows album covers during playback. Photos: very nice auto-slideshows with panning and zooming already done for you. Very simple connecting to nearby Macs, you can watch what is on the other computers remotely. Streaming content. $299. Shipping in February.
9:40- Getting inspirational here. Going over Mac history. Something big is coming NOW. Widescreen iPod with touch controls. New mobile phone. New internet communicator. One device. Only one device. iPhone!!! It’s now! It will be a smart phone. He doesn’t really like smartphones right now. Brand new UI, it will be an interplay of software and hardware. Problem with current phones is the keypad (bottom 40% of phones nowadays). The buttons and controls cannot change. No stylus, only fingers. Multi-touch, new technology. Multi-fingered commands. iPhone runs OS X, why? Because it already has everything that we need. It will sync with iTunes, PC, and Mac with a nice little dock. Music AudioBooks, Podcasts, Movies, TV Shows, Music Videos, Contacts, Calendars, Photos, Notes, Bookmarks, Email accounts. 3.5 inch screen 160ppi, only one button = the home button. Super thin. 11.6mm. Thinner than all other smartphones. 2.0 megapixel camera built in. Headphone jack, SIM card, and Sleep/Wake buttons on top. Speaker, Microphone, an 30 pin iPod connector on bottom. Proximity sensor senses when you bring it closer to your face (it turns off inputs when it’s against your face). Ambient light sensor to match backlight. Accelerometer to know when switched from portrait to landscape. “You can touch your music”. Widescreen video & Cover flow. During demo, it looks like it’s on Cingular. Amazing UI. Completely new. You can literally throw your finger up to scroll and it’s just super intuitive. Looks like he has TONS of media on it. Videos look beautiful. “You had me at scrolling.”
10:01- Moving away from iPod capabilities. Going to the cellphone features. The killer app is making calls. Visual voicemail = you can choose what messages you want to listen to. Quad band DSM + EDGE, WiFi and Bluetooth 2.0. Very simple interface, just like iPod. Switching between multiple calls at once is super easy, and he just made a conference call with a push of a button. SMS texting, you can have multiple sessions at once. He’s actually typing, talk about risky, but that’s what he’s all about. Photo aspect: simple scrolling and easy slideshows. Nice little bounce effect, automatically senses your orientation and resizes photos to match. Amazing touch controls with zooming. Everything is just outstanding.
10:15- Internet capabilities. Rich HTML email (any IMAP or POP3 email service). Safari web browser (WHY???). First fully usable HTML browser on a phone. Fully integrated Google Maps. Widgets. WiFi and EDGE access. Highlighting Yahoo! mail (IMAP), they have over a quarter billion users. Free “push” IMAP email to all iPhone customers. You can call directly from a web page, integration to the max, people! Real email just as we are used to. Now we get Safari. Shows the entire website, then you can just view it in landscape or portrait as you want, simple zooming through pinching touch effects. Multiple webpages in one session. Al Gore’s An Inconvinient Truth is #1 Amazon seller. Very nice webpage switcher (though multiple sessions). Stock information straight through widgets (looking as nice as on a Mac). Weather widgets, it’s 49 degrees right now. Warmer in Paris tonight than it is here right now. Raining in Hawaii. Now we see Google Maps. Perfect images. Shows where the nearest Starbucks is (or any store for that matter). You can call them from Google Maps. He ordered 4000 lattes for us, oh wait, he said wrong number… Dang. Great zooming with satellite images just like Google Maps on your computer. Wonderful zooming depth. Google and Yahoo! Searches integration as well.
10:30- Dr. Eric Schmidt (Google CEO) comes on stage. He wants to make Applgoo. Get it? If not, its not my problem. Just talking about basics of integration and information technology stuff. Not news.
10:35- Jerry Yang (Co Founder and Chief Yahoo!) comes to stage after Schmidt. Same stuff as Schmidt, reaffirming what Steve Jobs has presented.
10:40- Put it all together in one big presentation, he played Red Hot Chilli Peppers, answered a call, then send a picture to the guy he was talking to, then looked at Fandango.com and checked out movies while talking to the man on the other end, they agreed on a movie, he ended the call, and RHCP faded back in. Simple, amazing.
10:42- New stereo headphones with a mic and switch built into them (like a headpiece for phones). Bluetooth accessory, looks like one little ear piece of iPod headphones. Very small, like the Jawbone. Battery life = 5hours of talking and videos. 16 hours of audio playback. Beginning to wrap up. 200+ patents for inventions on this iPhone. “The ultimate digital device.” Pricing? Come on Steve, tell us! Comparing other prices of other smartphones. 4GB = $499, 8GB = $599. Shipping in June. Europe in Q4 2007. Asia in 2008. Cingular is official partner. Only partner, it’s exclusive. Will be sold in Cingular and Apple stores.
10:50- Stan Sigman (Cingular CEO) comes to stage. Talking about the new AT&T family with Cingular. Now he’s just promoting Cingular, we’ve heard it all before. He is bringing down this speech. Get him off the stage. Ok, he’s done.
10:55- The clicker isn’t working. Wow, he is a true speaker. He just went into a speech about the TV scrambler he made with Steve Wozniac. He wants 1% market share of 10M units in 2008. Mac, iPod, Apple TV, iPhone. All at the same keynote. New name. They are now called Apple Inc. No longer Apple Computers Inc. “I didn’t sleep a wink last night”. Neither did we, Steve.
11:00- John Mayer takes the stage!!!
— Nik Gomez
