Apple Special Event: "It's Showtime" live coverage
Welcome to Tech Digest’s coverage of Apple’s Special Media Event. Latest info will be added to this post as it happens in reverse chronological order. Further reaction and analysis to the announcements will be posted later in separate, linked posts. Stay tuned! (Times are BST)
Grateful thanks to iLounge, MacRumorsLive.com, Google News for update info.
18:14: Jobs closed the event with a live performance by Grammy-winning musician John Legend.
News and reaction coming later tonight and tomorrow. Keep it here!
18:11: John Legend has a new album next month (OK)
18:10: Another ‘one more thing’ it comes down to the artists.
19:09: Steve says: Apple is now in your den, living room, car, pocket
19:06: works with iTunes on PC or Mac. price will be $299
19:01: According to Engadget: Steve finds and plays The Incredibles. it’s not 640×480, it’s HDTV – wow.
19:00: The software features 3D animated graphics with a menu on the right and graphics on the left. Jobs demonstrated it, going into the Movies menu and scrolling through floating artwork on the left-hand side. (MacCentral)
18.58: Apparently demo: “Video access is instantaneous, looks like watching a DVD” – fine for DVD will it stand to HDDVD? Bet they have near perfect wi-fi set up too…
18.57: half the size of a Mac Mini, built-in power supply, USB, Ethernet, 802.11 “wireless component video”, optical audio and HDMI ports, plus old RCA stereo audio ports. Works with Apple Remote
Definitely moving to the HD realm now – excellent – but they’ll need to work on the remote 🙂
Will that Ethernet be 802.11g or (draft) n?
Interface is like next gen Front Row
18.55: LOL – it’s working title is iTV – as in iEverything else. Wonder if they’ll get sued by our good ol’ ITV? 🙂
It will be like a Mac Mini
18.54: As has been widely predicted: Mac to TV Wireless set top box (STB) coming Q1 2007. What’s the betting that’s US only for some time? Anyway…
18.52: One last thing – sneak peek…
18.48: Bob Iger called Disney and Apple’s first partnership to bring TV shows to the iTunes Store last year “a breakthrough,” and added that “the marriage of great content and great technology — and of great user interface — is truly a killer application.” (MacCentral)
18.45: hehe – too many different sources – now apparently “we HOPE to take this international in 2007”. Mmm.
18.42: Can watch movie as it downloads. Can download multiple movies at once.
18.40: “Near DVD quality. Same encoding as TV shows at 640×480. If you have a 5mb/s broadband connection, it will take approximately 30 minutes to download a movie”
OK so avg 2 Mb connection will take about 1 1/4 hrs?
And this is based loosely on NTSC DVDs – we PAL lovers will get a slightly duff version or else wait longer for downloads (720 x 576 pixels (PAL DVDs), or 720 x 480 pixels (NTSC DVDs))
Aha it’s going ‘international’ in 2007. Oh well we can wait. Releases will be on same day as the DVD itself (at least in US)
18.36: Movies: Today, films from Walt Disney, Pixar, Touchstone, Miramax
(this seems to confirm the rumours that only Disney were on board with this so far, after wrangles over licensing etc. from others – these are all Disney owned companies)
75 films online. more each week & month.
$12.99 new release first week and preorder – then $14.99 – most titles $9.99
of course no word on when/if/how this is going to translate to the UK (and other) iTunes stores. C’mon Steve roll it all out and make it a decent price)
18.32: iTunes poised to overtake Amazon, Jobs states (bold claim): (tuaw.com)
18.30: Sync between multiple computers and iPod as long as all authorised (more DRM on its way to what we already have in iTunes then – makes sense though).
18.27: New 640×480 video resolution (was 320×240). Gapless playback in iTunes 7. iPod updater software integrated into iTunes. This is all quite low-level s/ware stuff not hugely exciting at one level but sure it all fits into the master plan and it’s a nice sounding transition.
18.25: Free cover art if it’s missing: 3 different iTunes views: list view, album view (with art and tracks), then “cover flow view” lets you rapidly find what you want by album cover. Nice.
18.24: As we expected, iTunes 7 is released for download today. Store has its own section, devices have their own sections, playlists too; source list now includes library with separate libraries for all forms of media
18.22: nano: metal body, 1 model (1GB), $79, ships in october
18.17: All models are 52% smaller in volume than previous nano. Packaging is 52% smaller not the nano 🙂
iPod shuffle 2nd gen – size of iPod radio remote
18.14: Nano’s 2nd gen in aluminium and colours – green, black, blue, pink, silver – 24 hour battery life – available 2, 4 and 8 Gb models. – 2gb in silver, 4gb all colours except black, 8 gb all colours.
18.10: 60 and 80 gb capacity ipods – us$ prices given but we know they’ll be a lot higher in the UK as always.
18.06: New 5G iPod today:iPod is getting enhanced today. 60% brighter with brighness control, 3.5 hours video playback (up from 2 hrs… big version goes to 6.5 hours), new headphones, gapless playback, instant searching, new games (Bejeweled, Cubis 2, Mahjong, Mini golf, pac man, tetris, texas holdem, vortex, and zuma), games for sale off iTunes for $4.99 (via iLounge / MacRumors), games will work on 5G ipods
18.03: “”We’re going to give you an overview of the iPod and then move onto some other produts. we’ve shipped over 65 million ipods as of june, and there are lots of acccessories. there’s a new place you can use your iPod [shot of ipod toliet paper dispenser] 70 percent of the new cars sold in the US offer iPod connectivity as an option.” (via Engadget)
All Apple-related sites are extremely clogged up!
