iPhone Announcement: Live Coverage

RandomMaccess will be covering the Apple iPhone announcement as it happens. Check back here starting at 10 a.m. Pacific/1 p.m. Eastern Time. And look for RandomMaccess Publisher Chuck La Tournous on a special MacJury session reviewing and analyzing the announcements.

Among the anticipated (OK, rumored) enhancements we’ve seen bouncing around the web: Voice Assistant, Dual Core processor, 8 megapixel camera, “teardrop shape,” larger screen, 4S/5 or both, iPod touch 3G, App rentals…did we miss any? Read on to see what’s really announced.

Live Coverage (Most-recent posts at the top.) Please refresh your browser to make sure you have the latest updates.

That’s it, folks! Thanks for tuning in and look for a special edition of The MacJury as we dig into all the announcements.

  • Thanks for coming!
  • Very proud of this company and team.
  • Cook’s back for a wrap-up. Each of these things is industry changing. Only Apple can put them all together.
  • 70 countries by end of 2011; 100 new carriers. (The quest for world domination has begun.)
  • Now available on Sprint.
  • 4GS available for pre-order on Friday, October 7th; available on the 14th.
  • iPhone 4S: 16/32/64GB for $199/$299/$399 in the US with two-year contract. Comes in black and white. iPhone 4 still available: 8GB for $99. Even 3GS is still around: 8GB is now free. (All with two-year contracts.)
  • Requires a data connection to work. (Lots of processing most likely working in the cloud — Dragon and the original Siri work the same way. Android too.)
  • Phil’s back. Siri also does straight dictation. Works out of the box, but gets better as you use it. (Labeled beta just in case.)
  • (If anything was said about Siri only working on the 4S, I missed it. Likely, I supposed, but not stated explicitly that I saw. Hope springs eternal.)
  • Siri apparently understands lots of things. A list of examples is available. (The old Siri standalone app was no slouch either, but the system integration makes it killer.)
  • Location-based actions, too: “Remind me to call my wife when I leave work.”
  • Reads text for you too, like text messages, and lets you interact with them: check appointments, respond. (Amazing stuff if it works as advertised. Very reminiscent of Apple’s old “Knowledge Navigator” concept video.)
  • Activate like previous Voice Command, by holding down the Home button.
  • “Find me a great Greek restaurant in Palo Alto” brings up a list via Yelp.
  • “Wake me up tomorrow at 6 a.m.” sets the alarm clock.
  • Lots of ways to ask the same question: Is it raining in Cupertino? Do I need an umbrella today? What’s the weather like. etc.
  • Not limited in your commands.
  • Answer: Yes. Even kept the name Siri.
  • Voice. (Payoff for the Siri purchase?)
  • Airplay mirroring. Put your game on the big screen. (Not sure if apps have to explicitly support this or it’s now built in. Could turn the iPhone into a true gaming console.)
  • 1080p video capture. (Wow.) Video image stabilization and temporal noise reduction. (Does that mean it’s quieter when you’re traveling through time?)
  • New camera: 8 megapixel, backside illuminated CMOS (because more pixels alone doesn’t mean better quality.)Faster capture. 30% more sharpness. (Seems like a weird thing to measure in percentages.) f2.4 lens (that’s impressive. Lets lots of light in — should improve things like time to capture and shutter speed.) Face detection, better white balance
  • CDMA and GSM in one phone — i.e., “World Phone.”
  • HSDPA networking support (or as I like to call it, not 4G.) Theoretically twice as fast as iPhone 4.
  • New wireless system to improve call quality. (Wait — you can use this to make phone calls?!
  • Still has great battery life. (Can’t tell if it’s same as iPhone 4.)
  • Infinity Blade II. Only on the 4S. Available December 1st.
  • Game demo.
  • 4S. Same retina display, but inside it’s all new. A5 chip. Up to two times faster.
  • iPhone.
  • iPod touch. Price drop: 8/32/64GB $199/$299/$399. White model coming (where have we heard that before?) Also available October 12th. No hardware update, then?
  • Most affordable ever: 8/16GB $129/$149.
  • iPod nano updates. Can’t tell whether they’re software updates or only in new models. New single-app display, “improved fitness experience,” 16 new clocks, including Mickey Mouse (‘pays to know someone on the Board of Directors, I guess.)
  • Phil Schiller up to talk iPods.
  • ‘Find My Friends.’ (Um, OK.) Temporarily stalk, er, track them so you can help them if they get lost on the way to your house.
  • iCloud also launches October 12th.
  • iOS 5 available October 12th as a free update.
  • iOS 5 features. Nothing new yet: notifications, reminder, iMessage, Twitter integration, Newsstand, improved access to the camera app; use volume button as shutter release…
  • Cards. Real postcards from your iPhone. Apple prints it and puts it in the mail. $2.99 anywhere in the US. Sounds just like Apple legend Bill Atkinson’s app — I wonder if they bought it from them.
  • Scott Forstall up to talk iOS 5.
  • iPad. Every state in the US has an iPad deployment in place. Universities, High Schools, Grammar Schools.
  • iPhone. iPhone 4 is the Number one selling phone in the world. Half of all iPhones sold are the 4. But still just 5% of world market. (I sense a cheap iPhone coming. 4S? iPhone ‘nano?’)
  • iTunes. 16 billion downloads. Number one music store in the world. Music is a mature industry and an important one to Apple.
  • Music. iTunes. iPod. iPod introduced 10 years ago. Number one music player in the world, etc.
  • Mac update. Sales outpacing industry every quarter for the last five years. Approaching 60 million Mac users. (Not sure how that’s calculated — X users/Mac owned?) Not too long ago, Mac share was in single digits.
  • Lion update. Six million downloads. Took Windows 7 20 weeks to get where Lion was in 2. (Lion cost a lot less, but still very impressive, given the available user base.)
  • Retail store update. (Hard to believe now that there were people convinced brick and mortar stores were a huge mistake.)
  • Two new Apple stores in China. (Presumably authorized stores.)
  • Tim Cook takes the stage: “privilege of a lifetime” to be in this new role. (Nice start.)
  • Apple’s Ginza store website apparently jumped the gun — showing iPhone 4S available October 14th and a new nano.

    • Coverage aggregated from live event coverage, other sources and RandomMaccess analysis.