11.55 Just to sum up (they won't let us out of the room yet, so I have to do something)...
- the iPhone 3G will launch in the UK and US on July 11
- it's very similar looking to the original but has a black plastic back. The 16GB version will be available in white (despite me saying white was so last year in a previous post. Ooops).
- It'll cost no more that $199 for the 8GB version in all territories - which means £99 by my reckoning.
- It features sat nav, Microsoft push email and 3rd-party apps... but it looks like the camera remains at 2MP (this I will endeavour to confirm).
- The battery life is BETTER than the GPRS version. We'll see about that one! (incidentally, there was no mention how GPS affects battery life... make your own mind up about that one!)
Check back later for my hands-on first impressions. And in the meantime check out of
iPhone 3G preview page and related news
Oh, and by the way - the sneak peak of the next Mac OS X, codenamed Snow Leopard, is happening later today, and I'm not sure the press are invited...
11.50 Well, that's it. My MacBook Air's battery survived this epic event (just). I'm now off to try to get hands on with the new phone. What do you think? Is this the killer phone? Strikes me that the lack of a decent camera might put some off, but otherwise it addresses pretty much all of the original's frailties. I'll report back as soon as I know more - and watch out for a video later in the day. See ya later...
11.49 So what about the camera? There doesn't appear to be one on the front, and no mention of upgrading the one on the back... and it's all over now!
11.46 Roll out on July 11 - and the MAXIMUM price is $199 throughout the world.
11.44 It'll cost $199 (8GB) $299 (16GB). 16GB is also available in white.
11.43 Scatch that - 70 countries will have the iPhone over the next few months.
11.40 The iPhone is available in 6 countries; but will be available in 25 countries - nearly all of America (North and South) and Europe. We're being treated to an animated map of the countries.
11.39 So, built-in sat-nav and 3G, plus exchange support...
11.36 Better battery life:
- standby is 300 hours
- 2G talktime 10 hours (up from 80
- 3G talktime 5 hours (rivals have 3 hours apparently)
- Browsing - 5-6 hours
- Video 7 hours
- Audio - 24 hours.
PLUS GPS!
Pretty impressive
11.34 We haven't seen the front of the phone yet, but Steve's showing us the speed difference in loading a page between 3G and EDGE - an image-heavy website loads in 21s in 3G and 59s on EDGE. Wi-Fi was 17 seconds. The iPhone is 36% faster than the Nokia N96 in downloading a website.
11.32 today we're introducing iPhone 3G -
- black back
- non-recessed headphone port
- same-sized screen
- and of course 3G
11.30 In the first year, Apple has sold 6m iPhones 'until we ran out'. "We did figure out what our next challenges are"
- 3G network
- 3rd party apps
- enterprise support
- more countries
- more affordable
here it comes!
11.28 Steve's back and talking about iPhone. " The phone that's changed phones forever"
11.27 MobileMe comes with 20GB of storage and costs $99 a year (absolutely no applause), although you can have a 60-day free trial. And yes, it replaces .Mac, but you can keep your @mac.com email addresses.
11.26 You can directly upload pictures taken on your iPhone to your MobileMe gallery, too.
11.24 And now we're being shown the iPhone integration - rather than accessing the full me.com service, it integrates into the existing email, contact and calendar apps. So if you update your calendar on your phone, MobileMe will get updated over the air - and if you update it on the browser, your iPhone will be immediately updated. That sounds like a lot of network traffic to me - and potentially shorter battery life. But we'll see.
11.20 MobileMe includes iDisk online storage too - so it really is a new name for .Mac. Wonder if they'll reduce the rather extortionate price. Surely Apple can afford to give it us for free, like Google does?
Phil is demoing Mobile Me and it really does look very impressive - it works quickly, and despite the fact it's inside a browser it has an app feel to it. see the pic below.
11.16 Mobile Me works with Outlook as well as Mac Mail, and includes a AJAX front end. Go to
me.com on you desktop or laptop and you see email that feels like a desktop application. It also includes mac.com's gallery feature.
11.13 Now we have something entirely new:
Mobile Me. Phil Schiller is on stage to talk about it. "It's like having Exchange for the rest of us".He just 'accidentally' called Microsoft ActiveSync "Activestink". Naughty. Anyway, MobileMe is push email, calendars and addressbook to your phone. Sounds like a new name for .Mac., but it works over the air.
11.12 There are two other way of getting apps onto the iPhone
- Enterprise clients can authorise iPhones and create applications that only run on those phones - and they can distribute them on their own intranet.
- Ad Hoc distribution for developers means that certified developers can mailed around apps to up to 100 iPhones.
11.11 the AppStore will be built in to the new software, and will automatically tell you if apps you've bought have been updated. Developers get 70% of the revenue and don't have to pay to give apps away for free. The Appstore will allow downloads over the cellular network if it's under 10MB but only via Wi-Fi or iTunes if it's bigger.
11.10 The iPhone 2.0 software will be available in early July - It'll be free for iPhone users, $9.99 for iPod Touch users (still don't get that one - yet it gets a smattering of applause).
11.06 Right, Steve's back. Phew. Now he's talking about new features in the iPhone 2.0 software:
- Contacts search
- Full iWork document support (viewing only)
- MS Office support completed with PowerPoint as well as Word and Excel
- Bulk delete and move
- A scientific calculator, which works by turning the iPhone to landscape mode with standard calc on
- parental controls
- 'a trememendous amount of language support' - which suggests a global iPhone roll-out is imminent.
11.04 One last developer bit - talking about the demand for keeping apps running in the background, which eats battery life and processor power. Scott's taking the mickey out of Windows Mobile Task Manager ('this is nuts') and presenting the iPhone alternative, which allows apps to push notifications to the user. I'm out of my depth here. Bring back Steve!
10.57 And our last application (an audible sigh of relief passes through the press enclosure)... Digital Legends present a 3D fantasy action game called Krull (I think). It looks incredible, but won't be out until september.
10.50 There's a baseball stat app - yawn - and a couple of medical apps. One of the apps shows a CATscan that can be manipulated by touch.
Below is a pic of Band.
10.47 We're now seeing a brilliant pocket musician app called Band, which allows you to play instruments on the iPhone. It's coming in a few weeks time. The demo includes playing an entire blues song live - it gets the biggest cheer of the keynote so far.
10.41 Pangea have two games that use the touchscreen - a 50-level puzzler called Enigmo, where you have to bounce streams of balls around. Cro-Mag rally (see picture, above) is a 9-track 3D racing game - the iPhone is the steering wheel, using the accelerometer.
10.40 Associated Press have built a native iPhone application that lets you access news and videos from AP.
10.36 The next application being demoed is TypePad, the largest professional blogging service in the world. The iPhone app allows quick photoblogging - although you're stuck with the iPhone's crappy camera... unless the 3G iPhone has a better camera of course. But I'm getting ahead of myself...
10.34 Loopt is a location-based social networking service that 'makes serendipity happen'. Loopt will be available for free at the launch of the AppStore.
The picture below is Super Monkey Ball. Honest.
10.31 And now it's eBay, who began developing just 5 weeks ago. The eBay app is... well, you can probably guess. It's just realtime eBay buying and selling. Meh.
10.27 Now Sega are up on stage to demo what they've been doing with their game Super Monkey Ball. It uses the tilt control and the animation looks really smooth. I want it! It'll be available at the launch of the AppStore at $9.99. "Productivity deteriorates," says Scott. Damn right.
10.26 We're now getting a few quotes from people who have used the iPhone SDK - how brilliant it is, particularly in comparison to Blackberry and Symbian.
10.25 Scott's just built an app that shows you any contacts in your local area, just to show how easy it is.
10.21 We're getting a developer demo now, which is a bit complex but shows how the iPhone can use location-based services. He's showing off the iPhone simulator and Interface Builder, a development app that will be familiar to those of us who installed the Developer Tools that come on a CD with your Mac. Not many of us, then...
10.18 Scott's walking through the applications that will allow development for iPhone - which includes a cool-looking iPhone simulator that runs on the Mac. I like the idea of a virtual iPhone... although I guess it's not much use without a touchscreen Mac.
10.17 Now it's the SDK (software development kit). Scott Forrest is onstage talking about how the iPhone uses the exact same kernel as Mac OS X on a Mac computer
10.15 Slightly disturbingly, the video features the army and the secret service, gushing about the ability to remotely wipe all data from your iPhone.
10.12 35% of the Fortune 500 companies have taken part in the beta development programme. We now have an Enterprise video. Don't worry, it'll get more interesting...
10.10 But this morning is about iPhone. Starting with the Enterprise features - and specifically hooking iPhone up to Microsoft Exchange. Push email, contacts, calendar, global address lookup and remote wipe is all built into iPhone software 2.0. There's a bunch of security features too.
10.09 Steve says there are three parts of Apple's business now: Mac, iTunes and iPhone. Coming up later is a preview of the next version of OS X - Snow Leopard.
10.07 Steve is on stage, telling us that the WWDC is sold out - with 5200 people. He says he's excited about what's coming up. Quelle surprise...
10.05 Goodness Gracious Great Balls of Fire is fading out and the lights are dimming...
10.01 The announcer is on welcoming us to the conference and telling us to turn off our phones. It's coming..."in a few minutes." D'oh. The music is still playing.
9.56 They're playing classic rock'n'roll records - Rollover Beethoven is the current choice. Nobody's jiving in the aisles, but given the buzz it wouldn't surprise me if they started!
9.50 10 minutes to go. I'll be posting the latest updates at the top of the page so you won't have to scroll down when you reload.
9.45am - We're in the venue, and there's a mad rush to get the good seats. I'm definitely too English about these things, so I'm about 10 rows back - but I have a pretty good view of the stage.
9.30am I'm now in the Moscone Center, waiting to be seated in the keynote. Al Gore has just wandered by.
I
Read our preview of the 3G iPhone
