9:20AM PDT - They kept everyone outside a little longer than we would have liked, but theyre finally admitting. This is the Moscone West -- were assuming the huge hall Steve launched the iPhone in back in January.
9:23 - Were in and headed up!
Hold me closer, tiny dancer
9:32 - Were upstairs, the press is gathering. All the usual suspects are here; Mossberg just cruised up. This event space seats thousands, so were a little surprised Steves doing an event here for just a few hundred journalists. Were expecting a lot of empty seats... or a Cirque du Soleil performance on the open floor.
9:48am - So were in and seated, and yeah, the event is far smaller than it could be given the amount of space. Usual Apple soundtrack, Coldplays on the speakers.
9:55am - Its pretty well full up, but definitely not crowded to the brim. White Stripes, Alicia Keys, cameras on cranes and booms to film the event, all the familiar sights and sounds.
9:57am - "Good morning ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this special Apple event. Wed like everyone to take a moment to turn off ALL electronic devices." Apparently this special privilege is reserved for Stevie, and Stevie alone. Well, this isnt an airplane, and if they think were NOT going to liveblog this, theyve got another thing coming. But yeah, well def switch off our ringers.
10:01am - Lights are dimming, here we go! Musics over, lights go up, Steve takes the stage!
10:02am - Rounds of applause and cheering. And more. "Thank you." Hes grinning. "Today we get to talk about music, so lets start with iTunes." "iTunes is a pretty amazing phenomenon." Facts and figures: 600 million copies of iTunes distributed. Over 3 billion songs bought on iTunes. "Were pretty amazed at this." Giggles. "This is the number one music store in all 21 countries we operate in."
10:04am - "We started with just 200k songs, but we have over 6m songs in every single one of those stores. Millions ahead of anyone else. Weve become the number 3 music retailer in the US -- behind Wal-Mart and Best Buy, ahead of Amazon and Target." Over 550 shows, sold over 95m shows, 125k podcasts. "This is amazing material, its free, and over 25k are video podcasts."
10:05am - "This last statistic blew my mind: in the US of all the music releases in 2006, 32% were digital-only releases. They werent released on a CD. Live concerts, independents. Look how far weve come. A THIRD of the music released in this country was digital only."
"iTunes is clearly leading the way. Were going to ship a new version of iTunes tonight to support some new products. The biggest new feature: ringtones."
10:06am - Big applause. "Were going to do ringtones in our own special way. Of course these are for the iPhone. What we want: rather than let someone else make ringtones, we people to be able to make their own." Build your own from songs bought in iTunes, 500k participating songs...
10:07am - "Our ringtones are going to cost just $.99 in addition to the song." Psh! You have to pay a second time to use a purchased song as a ringtone?!
10:08am - "Heres how it works... when you plug in your iPhone a new column will pop up with bells -- that shows how many songs you can make ringtones out of." Any segment up to 30s long, fade ins/outs. "When youre ready to buy, push the buy button and for 99c you have a ringtone." Demo time.
10:09am - "I like Aretha Frankins Respect -- I can just tell this is going to make a great ringtone. I can put it on my iPhone, make it my default ringtone. Im going to assign this one for when my wife calls..." laughter.
10:10am - Steves grooving to R-E-S-P-E-C-T on stage. "There we go, thats what I want, and Im going to just buy this ringtone right now." The clip appears in the ringtones folder along with other clips of music Steve didnt mind buying twice.
10:11am - Gonna Make You Sweat by C+C Music Factory? Damn Steve. "Isnt this great? Pick the exact section of the song you like, make a ringtone out of it!" Uh oh, hes playing the Beatles... Give Peace a Chance... "Thats when NBC calls." Uproarious laughter.
10:12am - "You can assign it as your default ringtone, or to your favorite people when they call... custom ringtone maker built in, over half a million participating songs, sync em right on your iPhone. Were going to turn this on next week. Youll need the new version of iTunes were going to ship tonight. So thats the first thing today." Applause.
"Now lets talk about the iPod. Its doing really well. Theyre... rather strong." Teehee. "Weve sold over 110m to date... and youll notice the place where the sales curve is strongest is during the holiday season... today were going to refresh or replace EVERY single product in this lineup to get ready for this holiday season."
10:13am - "Lets start out easy... iPod shuffle. Refresh for this product. Holiday 2007 were going to give it some new colors, when you see these in person youre going to love them. We also have something called the PRODUCT(RED) nano..."
10:14am - Hes explaining the RED thing. "We are adding a RED shuffle -- if you want to do something about these diseases in Africa. Same 1GB of storage, $79, shipping today, available shortly. Now lets move on to something more substantial, the iPod nano."
10:15am - "Its the most popular music player in history. People just love it. We want to make it better, and customers have told us how we can make it better. Customers want to watch video on their nanos on an even larger, brighter display. Wed like to put Cover Flow in, we think its a great way to browse your music library."
"Games. More storage, and a full metal design. Were introducing a new nano here today... let me show it to you." Its the fatty!
10:16am - "Its incredibly tiny, this is the new nano, its incredibly thin. Its REALLY nice." Huge applause. "Let me show you some bigger pictures of it... comes in beautiful colors. So whats the video like? New nano: larger 2-inch screen, its going to look the same as it did on the iPod video, its the same QVGA resolution. Weve achieved this with a screen with the highest pixel density weve ever shipped."
10:17am - "Weve also got an enhanced UI. Its going to show you album artwork floating by. When youre on videos... photos... it will even show you what youre going to get when going to extras. And weve got Cover Flow. Take your thumb, roll it around the wheel, it looks really nice. Its pretty stunning, all in such a tiny device. Were really, really happy with this."
10:18am - "Were also including 3 games bundled in with the nano. Let me show you one now, its called Vortex." Demo time -- its basically Arkanoid made circular. "Weve also done some other games were selling on iTunes."
Demoing EAs Sudoku game.
10:20am - "Isnt that incredible? All in a product this big. Video, new UI with Cover Flow, games... lets take a look at the new iPod nano." Demo time again, Beatles album artwork in screen. He does this every time!
Hes scrolling in Cover Flow -- it looks decent, but a bit choppy and slow. Not super surprising considering the nano doesnt exactly have a lot of horsepower under the hood. Dont expect the iPhone Cover Flow experience, people!
10:21am - "Its that simple to browse your music collection." Doing video now. "I love Jon Stewart, I hope all of you watch his show. Its the best place to get the news every day." Showing the John Hodgman clip on net neutrality, trying to get Hodgman to admit to being a PC. Highlarious.
10:23am - Podcasts now, showing G4s Freestyle. Now photos... "I can just scroll through these photos here." iPhone-like motion... oh no, a photo montage to Green Days Time of your Life song.
10:24am - "When we went about replacing the most popular music player in the world we took this really seriously. We think weve nailed it with the new nano. The battery life is awesome: 24 hours audio, 5 hours video playback." Applause and cheers.
10:25am - "Lets talk about storage: a 4GB and an 8GB version. The 4GB version will come in silver, the 8GB will come in all the colors. The 4GB will be priced at just $149. The 8GB version will be just $199." Applause.
"These new nanos have left our factories, theyve shipped and will be in our stores by this weekend."
"Our line for it: A little video for everyone." Showing the ad for the new nano.
10:27am - "A little video for everyone, thats what we set out to do with the new nano. We hope you love it as much as we do... That brings us to the iPod. The iPod... its got a... its got a funny name. Its got a funny name. Its time to give it a name: were calling it the iPod Classic because its the original iPod." Ha!
10:28am - "Weve got new iPod Classics: full metal design, even thinner than their predecessors. The new classic is starting at 80GB audio 30 hours, video 6 hours. And weve got the whole enhanced UI on the new iPod classic." Sorry, iPod touch is a no go! Unless its a one last thing...
10:29am - Were going to offer a slightly thicker one as well... and its going to have 160GB." applause. "This BOGGLES the mind! This new 160GB, which is far smaller than the original iPod, puts 40k songs in your pocket. Even better: battery life. 40 hours audio, 7 hours video."
10:30am - "The 80GB used to sell for 350, now its 250.The 160GB is $350." Applause. "Theyre both available today, theyre shipping and be in stores by this weekend. We think youre gonna love em, and the enclosure is just gorgeous. So lets take a look at the iPod lineup for this holiday season..." review time.
10:31am - "This is an incredibly iPod lineup for this holiday season." Applause. But hes not done. "But... were not done yet. Far from it."
"When we introduced the iPhone in Jan, we said it was the best iPod ever. and iPhone owners agree with us, its incredible with its multi-touch interface, it is the best iPod ever. People have been asking us when were going to bring this technology to the iPod. The answer is were going to do it today. And this is what the product looks like." Its a friggin iPhone!
Its called the iPod Touch.
10:32am - "Its the same size screen as the iPhone, but its even thinner. Its 8mm thin. Unbelievable. The new iPod touch. Its one of the 7 wonders of the world." Laughter.
10:33am - "It features our revolutionary multi-touch interface that youve come to know and love on the iPhone. If youve used an iPhone youll feel at home, its exactly the same. Scroll through the artists with a flick of your finger. Turn it into a landscape position, it goes into Cover Flow, its just magical."
10:34am - "All on this 8mm device. Lets look at video... all on this gorgeous 3.5-inch widescreen display. And photos... just like the iPhone this is the best way to share photos on a portable device. Ever. Flick through them, pinch them to make them larger or smaller."
Demo time!
10:35am - "Let me go ahead and show you the new iPod touch. Again, slide to unlock. Here we are -- lets go into music." The icons look really strange and sparse on that huge screen. Its freaking us out!
Steves browsing by Cover Flow -- note: it has WiFi! The WiFi meter is up at the top where it would be on the iPhone.
10:37am - Steves watching, um, Wild Hogs. Hes not having a mid-life crisis, too, is he?
10:38am - "Lets take a look at photos here... its great, lets go into an album... I can just go like this, flick through these photos. Theres just never been a better way to share photos with friends on the go. Its sooo nice. Turn it back. Boom." Icons: calendar, contacts, clock, calc, settings, music, videos, photo..."I showed you the clean side... I was keeping a secret. Weve built in WiFi to the iPod touch." The antenna looks, um, bad.
10:39am - 802.11b/g -- "Others have done this and its failed. We understand why its failed, and we know what to do make it successful. Well, whats the problem with WiFi? Well, part of the problem is getting onto WiFi... you may be fine at home and the office, but anywhere in between can be challenging."
10:40am - "You may log in but youll get a screen. Even walking through Stanford University you get a login page... so you can build in the hardware but you cant get the network [without the page]. So what do you do about that? Were going to add an application to the touch: the Safari web browser."
10:41am - This really is the phone-less iPhone. "But besides being able to log into WiFi, you get an incredible web browser! It is the best web browser on any mobile device, and its built in to the iPod touch."
10:42am - "Were very, very excited about this. First time EVER on a music player to have a browser built in." Uh, totally not true: look at Archos. "Why stop there?" YouTubes on the Touch as well.
10:43am - "Watch millions of free videos streaming over WiFi to the iPod touch. Let me show you these things..." Demo time! The hidden icons are now apparent -- the two missing were Safari and YouTube. Still looks a little sparse though!
Looking on the NYT. "We can go over here... boom." Aw, it was a little boom that time.
10:44am - Steves now browsing Facebook. "Were pretty excited about this." Applause.
10:45am - Bookmarked videos... "You get the idea, this gives you a feeling for what Safari and YouTube are like on the new iPod touch. Weve built WiFi in and weve made it USABLE. Were REALLY excited about this."
10:46am - Connector on the bottom, but no speakers. "This is a worldwide product, the first touch product Apples going to ship outside the US, its going to be shipping all around the world."
"The battery life is fantastic: 22 hours audio, 5 hours video playback. All in something this thin. Its... its... amazing to me. The new iPod touch."
10:47am - Review time: multi touch, widescreen iPhone display, Cover Flow, WiFi, Safari / YouTube... "Were going to offer it in two configurations, the first is 8GB, the second is 16GB of storage. Again, how do you fit all this in here?"
10:48am - So, 8GB is $299... the price for the 16GB is $399." Less applause on the second one. "Both models are available in just a few weeks... theyll be shipping this month."
Hes gonna show the iPod touch ad now.
10:49am - Not shabby -- and thankfully no more Orba Squara iPhone music. But there is one more thing... if youll bear with us for a few more minutes.
10:50am - "You might have noticed theres an empty spot there on that dock. What could that possibly be for, you might ask? Its for a new application weve written for the iPod touch, its called the iTunes WiFi music store." Huge applause. "FINALLY, some of you are saying. Lets take a look at what it is."
Four buttons: featured, top tens, search, downloads... "If you see something you like, tap it, free preview of the song." "You are now downloading the song... when its done you can listen to it on your iPod touch, and it syncs back up to iTunes." Applause.
10:52am - "You can search for anything in the entire iTunes store. You can search for any artist, any song name, any album name, preview it, and if you love it go buy it. This is the new iTunes WiFi music store. Let me show it to you now."
10:53am - "Demo time: This is live coming over WiFi. I love John Lennon... so Im going to buy this. Its now downloading... it takes a few seconds and once its downloaded I can go to the downloads playlist and I can play it with album art and everything else. This is all live."
"Isnt this incredible?" Applause and cheers.
10:54am - He plays a wacky R%26amp;B track: "Ooook." Chuckles. Now hes listening to Coco -- "Thats now being bought, as you can see. I want to search for something, so of course Im going to search for Dylan. Live search comes back from the store...
10:55am - "WiFi, as you may know, is faster than any 3G cellular network, so its really fast." Zing!
10:56am - "So, not so bad for the new iTunes WiFi music store." Applause. "The new music store will be available internationally in every one of those 22 countries Apple operates in. Were gonna do something else, too: were gonna bring it to the iPhone." Big applause.
10:57am - "Its going to come later this month with a free iPhone update -- everyone with an iPhone is going to get this too. Were really, really excited about this. Theres even ONE MORE incredible part of this. Weve been working on this for two years."
10:58am - "I cant tell you how much pleasure it brings me... we have a GREAT partnership with Starbucks were announcing today. We love Starbucks. Its an incredible phenomenon in our culture. We want to combine our great iPods and our love of music and their great coffee and their great love of music."
10:59am - "When you get near a Starbucks a fifth button will come up in the WiFi music store -- you may have been in a Starbucks wondering what song is that playing? Now you can buy it with a tap of your finger. And if you just missed it, you can still find it..." Is anyone else underwhelmed by this "feature"?
Demo time. "So they just built a Starbucks back stage." Laughter. "Theyre playing a KT Tunstall song... I can go in here and preview it."
11:01am - "It will be right on my iPod touch, and sync right back to iTunes when I get home. Were really, really excited about this partnership. Its my great pleasure now to welcome Howard Schultz, founder and chairman of Starbucks." Big applause -- but why? Pretty weak, if you ask us.
"Thanks Steve, I was NOT back stage visiting the store, but I was waiting for you." Har. "Let me provide you a snapshot into the global reach and ubiquity of Starbucks." Yeah, we get it, Starbucks is like air for their customers.
11:02am - "We open 7 stores every single day." The room sounds like someone just hit everyone in the gut. Over 14k stores, 50m customers per week, 18 visits per month per customer. Yowza.
11:03am - "Who would have thought that a coffee company could win a Grammy? Let alone 8, when we co-produced with Concord Ray Charless last album."
11:04am - Hes going on about how this is going to transform the marketplace. Dude, lets not delude ourselves here. Its big, but its not that big.
11:05am - Free access to the store while at Starbucks.
11:07am - Its exclusive with iTunes -- we wonder how T-Mobile feels about partnering indirectly with Apple. Ok, rollout plan: 5800 WiFi-enabled stores nationwide. Starting October 2nd: New York and Seattle. 600 stores, followed up in November with 350 stores in SF.
11:08am - ...then LA and Chicago in 08. By 2009 they hope to have all WiFi Starbucks completed. [Our customers] are really going to respond to this." Oh really?
Ok, Steves back on. Big, big applause.
11:10am - "We know a lot of people that are going to be happy with this new combination of coffee and iPods." Heh. "Its one of the three apps using WiFi built into the new iPod touch. So lets look at our lineup for this holiday season: the iPod shuffle in 5 great new colors. The iPod nano. The renewed iPod classic with up to 40k songs in your pocket. The revolutionary iPod touch that youve seen here today."
"We think this is going to set a lot of peoples worlds on fire. And Im going to include the iPhone, because as weve said, its the best iPod ever."
11:12am - "But we want to get even more aggressive with this. Take a look at the iPhone. You know, the surveys are in: the customer satisfaction numbers on the iPhone are off the charts. Theyre higher from iPhone owners than any Apple product. Ever. They LOVE them. We want to make the iPhone even MORE affordable for even more people."
"So were going to do something about that today. Were on track to ship our 1 millionth iPhone this month -- to get ready for the holidays heres what were going to do. Its clear customers want the 8GB model -- its not going to sell for 599 anymore.
"Starting today effective immediately, were pricing it at just $399." HUGE applause.
"We want to put iPhones in a lot of stockings." But what about the 4GB? Does that mean its being discontinued?
"Thank you very, very much."
11:13am - Applause... "A lot of people at Apple have worked on these products. Some are here today, some are watching from our campus in Cupertino. Id like those folks to stand up..." Wow, this is like half the audience.
11:15am - "One of the traditions we have at our music events is to remind ourselves of why we do all this. We all love music too. Theres nothing better to remind us of that than to have a musician come perform for us: a really talented young musician, flew in from across the pond, KT Tunstall. Shes very hot." Chuckles.
11:16am - Her drum machine messes up: "Technology, eh?"
11:19am - KTs performing on stage.
11:21am - KT: "Im very much looking forward to the iLoop pedal." Waaah. "Its fantastic that Steve Jobs is making it more fun to pay for music than steal it!"
11:22am - Looks like thats it! Were out of here!
