This is the spot for our live coverage of Apple’s (AAPL) 2010 Worldwide Developers Conference.
Steve Jobs’ keynote started at 1 p.m EDT (10 a.m. PDT). All times below are EDT unless otherwise indicated.
The headline is the iPhone 4, as promised (and leaked), with a higher-resolution display, a bigger battery, a faster chip (the same A4 used in the iPad), a gyroscope, a 5 megapixel camera that can shoot HD video and a second camera for two-way video chatting. Available June 24 in five countries in white or black for $199 (16 GB) or $299 (32 GB).
There was no Mac news — no hardware upgrades, no Mac OS X news, no new sales figures. It’s as if the product category didn’t exist, at least for Jobs’ keynote. There was also no Apple TV or multitouch peripheral. So much for the rumors.
But Jobs did trot out some new milestones in the nice round numbers he likes to use: 225,000 apps, 8,500 native to the iPad; 5 billion App Store downloads. $1 billion revenue to the developers; 100 million iOS devices (formerly known as the iPhone OS) by the end of this month; 150 million accounts, with credit cards, across Apple’s 3 stores (iTunes, iBookstore, App Store). Over 16 billion downloads all told.
“There is definitely a market for your apps,” Jobs tells the developers, looking healthier and more vigorous than we’ve seen him in years.
Below: The live blog in reverse order, with the most recent posts on top. Apple’s iPhone 4 press release is available here.
2:55 p.m. EDT: And that’s a wrap.
2:50 Jobs puts up the slide showing the intersection of Technology and Liberal Arts that he showed earlier this year, talks about Apple’s core values and thanks the teams — hardware, design, software, manufacturing, operations. “I’m really proud of all you guys. Awesome job.”
2:31 Jobs saves video chatting for last with a classic “One more thing …”
Calls Jony Ive on his iPhone 4. First his face, then Ive’s appear on the screen and they begin an awkward video chat. There’s an echo and a delay, which Jobs blames on people in the room refusing to turn off their Wi-Fis.
“I grew up with the Jetsons dreaming about video phones,” says Jobs. “It’s real now.”
He calls this FaceTime video calling. It works iPhone 4 to iPhone 4, anywhere there is Wi-Fi. You can use the front or rear camera. Portrait or landscape. Wi-Fi in 2010 (later for 3G; he’s got to work on the carriers first). Says Apple will ship 10s of millions of FaceTime devices this year.
Shows a charming movie of babies, grandparents, graduations, trying on clothes, sonograms of a fetus sent to a soldier in the field, sign language phone calls between the deaf. Hits all the emotional buttons.
“This is one of those moments that reminds us why we do what we do,” says Jobs.
To do away with the alphabet soup of standards FaceTime uses, Apple is offering it to the standards bodies as an open video standard.
“FaceTime. That’s No. 9,” says Jobs.
Price and availability of the new iPhone. Two colors, white and blacks. $199 in U.S. For 16 GB, $299 for 32 GB. (IPhone 3GS now starts at $99.)
AT&T is offering a new iPhone 4 at the subsidized price ($199 or $299) to all customers whose contract expires anytime in 2010.
Goes on sale: June 24. Pre-orders June 15. Shipping in US, Frtance, Germany, UK, Japan. In July, 18 more countries. By end of September, it will be available for sale in 88 countries. Our fastest rollout ever, says Jobs.
Accessories: Dock $29. A case — the Bumper. Comes in colors. $29.
IOS upgrades for iPhone 3GS and 3G (not all features) and iPod touch (not all features) free on June 21. Thanks to the end of subscription accounting, Apple can now offer OS upgrades free to iPod touch owners.
Goes to a video, starting with Jony Ive.
1:28 (This timestamp covers nearly an hour, as Jobs ticks off eight features of the new iPhone)
Now, says Jobs, the iPhone. A lot of stats going around, some good, some questionable. He trots out the Nielsen report (naturally). RIM 35%, iPhone 28%, Windows 19%, Android 9%.
Net Applications for May: iPhone 58.2% of Web traffic, Android 22.7%. (Does not mention the NPD survey that showed Android getting 28% of U.S. Sales in Q1, versus the iPhone with 21%.)
In 2007, he says, the iPhone reinvents the phone, says Jobs, starting a timeline. Not that big an overstatement, in retrospect.
In 2008, we added 3G and the App Store
In 2009, 3GS, twice as fast, added video
In 2010: iPhone 4, the biggest leap since the original iPhone. Now, this is really hot, he says. Well over 100 new features. I get to cover 8 of them for you.
No. 1: An all-new design. Stop me if you’ve already seen thins (big laugh from everyone who knows the lost iPhone story, which is everyone here). Believe me you ain’t seen it, says Jobs.
Compares the design to an old Leica camera. This is the new iPhone 4: 9.3 mm thick, 24% thinner than iPhone 3GS. Thinnest smartphone on the planet. Volume controls. Front-facing camera. Micro sim Tray. Camera and LED flash on back. 2nd mike for noise cancellation.
What’s this? The slit on the bottom. What are these lines? Three lines. They are part of some brilliant engineering. Uses the stainless band as part of the antenna system. Never been done before. Really cool engineering, says Jobs. Uses stainless steel for strength, glass on the front. Integrated antennas, extraordinary build quality.
No. 2 Retina display. 4 times as many pixels. Demos what the extra pixels do. Tricks with gray pixels. Zoom out, you can see really really sharp text. 326 pixels per inch. Oohs and ahhs from the audience.
It turns out there’s a magic number 300 pixels — the limit of the human retina to tell the pixels apart. Text looks like a fine printed book. Jobs is weaving his magic really hard right now. Demos with text. (I’m having trouble seeing the difference on these screens.)
Once you’ve used retina display, you never go back, Jobs quips.
Going to the demo.
When he blows up the 4 and a 3GS side by side, you CAN see the difference.
He’s having trouble downloading the NYTimes. Welcome to our world. Asks the audience to get off Wi-Fi.
“Well, geeze, I don’t like this.” Goes to some photos instead.
Summary:
3.5 display
960 x 640 pixels.
326 pixesl per inch.
800:1 contrast ratio.
IPS technology for color and wide viewing angle. Better than OLED, he says.
78% of the pixels in an iPad.
We’ve got something here now that’s like the best window on the planet, he tell developers.
No. 3 The iPhone 4 is powered by the A4 chip. (Same as iPad) Designed by our own team. Shows the insides. Biggest single component: the battery.
Improved battery life:
3G talk 7 hours
300 hours of standby
Four checks on the environmental checklist.
Qp to 32 GB of storage. Quadband HJSDPA/HSUP, up to 7.2 Mbps down, 5.8 Mbps up.
No. 4 Remember accelerometer? Adding gyroscope. Big applause. 3 axis gyro, pitch roll and yaw. With compass and accelerometer, 6-axis motion sensing. The first-person gamers are going to like this. Demo.
Turns on Gyro. Shows how it rotates when he does. Pulls out pieces from a wooden puzzle. He’s having fun with this demo. The audience is oohing and ahhing. “I practice this a little bit.” The blocks finally fall. Big applause. “You get the idea.”
No. 5 The new camera system. Everybody else talks about megapixels. We talk about better photos. Cameras are really about capturing photons and low-light photography. We’ve gone to a 5 megapixel camera with a backside illuminated sensor — getting a lot of the wiring out of the way. LED flash. Kept the pixels the same size — 1.75 um size pixels. 3.5 zoom. Tap to focus. Photos look pretty good.
But that’s not all, because the camera records HD video. 720p at 30 frames per second. Added tap to focus video. Built in video editing. One-click sharing, LED flash will stay on for video recording.
Written iMovie for iPhone. Big applause. Demoed by Randy Ubillos. A new face at WWDC.
You can buy it soon for $4.99 — if we approve it. Big chuckle.
Before Jobs begin No. 6, he address the audience. His people have been working on the Wi-Fi problem. Jobs says there are 570 Wi-Fi basestations operating in this room — including dozens of MiFi units. We can’t deal with this. We can either turn them off or see the demo. Your choice. Asks the journalists to put their laptops on the floor and their neighbors to police them. (I’m using a Verizon USB 3G dongle, so I’m spared.)
No. 6 iPhone OS 4. Renaming iOS 4. We’ve seen this stuff before. 1,500 new apis. Over 100 new user features as well. We weren’t first with multitasking, just like we weren’t with cut and paste. Quotes Larry Page on multitasking buring the battery quickly. Added folders, etc. Going to the demo.
Jobs demos multitasking with Pandora, Safari, Mail, unified inboxes, threaded messages. The Internet is working again, thanks to his insistence that everybody shut down their laptops.
Demos folders. This is all a recap of the iPhone 4.0 intro.
Enterprise integration: better data protection, mobile device management, wireless app destribution,, etc.
On consumer side, choice of Google search, Yahoo, adding Bing — as rumored. Google is still the default. Microsoft’s done a great job on this, he says, employing HTML5.
IOS 4. Golden master in developers hands today. Final version “out soon” — no date given.
This month, we will sell our 100 millionth iOS device. “There is definitely a market for your applications,” he tells developers. “No one even comes close to this.”
No. 7 iBooks. We are bringing it to the iPhone with the iPhone 4. Same controls, notes, etc. Makes a big deal of features that Kindle already offered — buy once for all devices, save latest place, etc.
No. 8 iAds. Why are we doing iAds? Doing it for one reason only: we are doing it for developers so they can earn money from free and low-cost apps. (Leaving aside that Apple might be interested in taking some business from Google.)
Recapping April’s intro. Key featured: emotion plus interactivity. Keep you in your app. Built into iOS 4.
Names some of the companies that have done iAds since April. Shows a 15-second science fiction-themed Nissan ad that’s a work in progress but looks pretty good.
IAds goes live July 1. Has sold $60 million worth in the past two months. Estimates that that’s 48% of the entire mobile ad market for the second half of 2010.
— end the long timestamp that started back at 1:28 —
1:26. Jobs is back with some new stats. Just last week we crossed 5 billion downloads. How much have we paid developers? A few days ago, we crossed $1 billion. And that’s what makes the App Store the most vibrant on the planet.
1:23 Activision. Karthik Bala with a new Guitar Hero app for iPhone and iPad. Demo. New strumming commands and slides and hammer and pull-up combos. The guy on stage is pretty good. “You rock, Jason!” Says Bala. Available now for $2.99. Jobs is impressed.
1:18 Zynga. Mark Pincus CEO. Farmville for the iPhone. 35 million play Zynga’s game — more than the number of viewers who watched the finales of Lost and 24. 70 million monthly active users of Farmville. Demo.
1:15 Focus on eBay. CEO John Donahoe says 10 million downloads. $600 million in first year. It’s going to do $1.5 to $2 billion this year.
Introduces Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. Great success. The No. 1 most downloaded entertainment app. Announces free app for iPhone this summer. Demo.
1:11 The App Store. We support two platforms at Apple: HTML5. Fully open, uncontrolled platforms forged by widely respected standards bodies.
The second platform we support is the App Store. It’s a curated platform with 225,000 apps — that’s a new number.
Addressing the approval process. We get 15,000 new apps a week — new and updates. Come in in 30 languages. 95% approved within 7 days.
What about the 5% that aren’t?
No. 1 reason: Doesn’t function as advertised.
No. 2 Use of private APIs. Why can’t developers use? Because when we change our APIs, the apps will break.
No. 3: The apps crash. If you were in our shoes, you would be rejecting them too.
1:09 Improvements to iBooks. You can make notes. Added control to bookmark page (like Kindle has). Catching up to Amazon. Ability to view and read PDFs. Added a selector on top, new bookshelf just for PDFs. Later this month.
1:08 Updating iBooks. Stats: in first 65 days, customers downloaded 5 million books, 2.5 per iPad. 5 or 6 biggest publishers tell us that the share of e-books is about 22% — so iBooks market share is 22% in about 8 weeks.
1:06 Now 8,500 native apps for iPad, downloaded 35 million times, 17 per iPad. That’s a great number.
Cites several iPad apps in particular: Pulse. Web MD, eBay, Anatomy, Ironman, Avatar, Field runners, Flight trackers, FT, Wired, The Elements. Elements author says. I earned more from The Elements in the first day than I earned in five years from Google AdSense.
1:05 The videos in foreign languages are pretty funny. You know what they are saying even if you don’t understand a word.
1:04 I’d like to start with a few updates. Starting with the iPad. Big applause. A whole new way to interact with the Internet, with apps, and it is magical. Proof: got an e-mail from a girl in a cafe who was interested in me.
Sold over 2 million. One every 3 seconds. Now in 10 countries. Video reel of some of the press coverage overseas.
1:00 Jobs walks on stage. Standing ovation.
It’s great to be here. We’ve got a great conference. Over 5,200 attendees. 57 countries. 8 days to sell out. Over 120 sessions, over 120 hands-on labs. Over 1,000 Apple engineers. He loves those round numbers.
12:34 This huge room is filled with flashes as developers by the hundreds raise their cameras over their heads and shoot pictures of the empty stage, the giant screens, the phalanx of videographers.
12:28 They’ve let the developers in. They’re rushing forward. And we thought the press was unseemly.
12:22 The doors have opened. We’re moving in. There’s the usual unseemly rush for the front seats. The usual array of video cameras fill a set of risers stage right.There’s giant screen behind the podium and two more that drop from the ceiling. We’ve parked ourselves below one of them.
12:20 There’s a cool computer generated display on the second-floor wall that looks like a giant color Tetris game. According to the legend: “This visualization of the 50,000 most popular App Store apps on 30 synchronized 24-inch LED Cinemay Displays. Each app falls when downloaded and is sorted based on the color of its icon. It takes 10,800 apps to fill the displays completely.
12:18 Still waiting for the doors to open. Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher just sauntered in. There are too many celebrity bloggers to mention. Besides.
12:00 noon The developers have been penned in hallways on the second floor. The press is being fed and hydrated on the third. The media are engaging in their usual greeting and preening and edging their way toward the big metal auditorium doors that won’t open for at least another half hour.
11:40 Judging from the posters on the second floor, this keynote could end up being very iPhone 4.0 centric — basically a repeat, presumably at more depth, of the event last April. The key themes: iPad (“It pays to advertise.”), Folders (“Drag. Drop. Organize.”) and Multitasking (“Get things done behind the scenes.”).
11:22 Don’t know what’s going on in the market, but at 10:00 a.m. Apple started heading south and didn’t stop until it was down more than $3.40 for the day.
11:15 We have our purple media badge. We have Wi-Fi. All is well with the world.
11:10 While the developers were transported by escalator upstairs, the press and V.I.P.s have been cooling their heels in ragged lines on the ground floor. The lines just started moving.
10:40 The doors opened for developers 40 minutes ago and they are still streaming in. We counted 11 TV satellite trucks plus one remote TV studio guarded by Apple security. That turns out to be precisely the same number that turned up in January when Steve Jobs introduced the iPad.
9:50 The biggest buzz on the tech blogs this morning is Engadget’s item about what appears to be a Bluetooth multitouch trackpad peripheral that it’s calling the Magic Trackpad. You can see the spy shots here. But if you’re looking for meatier pre-WWDC speculation, I recommend Adam Lisagor’s thoughtful discourse on iPad TV at his lonelysandwich blog.
9:45 The markets opened down a bit, but Apple opened $2.41 (0.94%) higher than Friday’s close of $255.96.
9:30 a.m. Several analysts have just come out with new Apple reports, trying to get in under the wire. BMO Capital’s Keith Bachman has raised his AAPL price target to $310 from $300. BGC’s Colin Gillis has initiated coverage with a buy rating and a $350 price target. JMP’s Doug Ireland reports that he called a dozen Best Buy (BBY) stores over the weekend and could find only iPad available anywhere in the U.S. “The 3G-enabled devices are selling within hours of arriving, with the WiFi ones very close behind,” he writes. “San Francisco stores said that they get calls every morning asking if they received shipments of iPads.”
9:00 a.m. It’s 6 a.m. In San Francisco, an hour before the doors open, and than four hours before Jobs takes the stage. But the line of developers vying for a good seat in the auditorium has wrapped around the Moscone Center on 4th Street and down Minna toward 5th St. As far as the eye can see. Stragglers are actually sprinting down Minna St. Toward the end of the line.
More than 5,000 Apple developers have descended on San Francisco for five days of demonstrations, technical sessions and hands-on training, but the keynote — to be delivered again this year by CEO Steve Jobs after a one-year hiatus — is the headliner and always packs the Moscone Center main hall.
See also:
- Steve Jobs’ troops are in town
- Can Steve Jobs deliver the goods?
- Steve Jobs’ June 7 dilemma
- What Steve Jobs has up his sleeve
[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]
