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By Equal Tech News
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By Equal Tech News
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WWDC 2009: Live-Coverage
All times are in Eastern-Time
12:39 - Hey everyone, after a few technical difficulties, we’re now up and running with our live blog coverage. The Keynote starts at 1PM, so when the Keynote starts, you can come here, and get live updates. After refreshing, the latest updates will be at the bottom, its easiest for all of us at ETN, and it’s easier to read through after the Keynote finishes. As for now, until the keynote starts; catch up on some rumors, get excited because WWDC is here! 
12:51 - 9 Minutes and Counting! (Apple store is down as usual on a WWDC Keynote day.)
15:58 - 2 Minutes!
12:59 - Apple is asking people to please silence all cellphones and pagers. Because, we all know how huge the pager market is :-p
1:00 - Time for the keynote to start…
1:01 - Lights are dimming, every thing’s running on time, or so it seems.
1:02 - There’s an ad playing, Apple loves to kick off with their ads.
1:03 - The ad has finished, and Schiller has come on stage.
1:03 - There are 5,200 devs at the conference, spanning from around 54 countries.
1:05 - “So in this keynote we’d like to tell you about some of the things we’re doing on the Mac, the iPhone and the iPod Touch.”
1:06 - It seems like Phil isn’t wasting time, we’re jumping right into the Mac stuff, we’ll probably cover some sales stuff, but it seems like every things going quickly, like they have a lot to cover *wink wink*
1:07 - If I’m understanding this right, there’s now a new 15″ MacBook pro with a new Lithium Polymer Battery, thats non-removable, it lasts 7.5 hours.
1:08 - With over a 1000 recharges, Phil says the battery will last 5 years.
1: 09 - It features a new display with a 60% more color gamut, and it features an SD slot!
1: 10 - Apparently there’s a “lot more” to this MBP
1:10 - Up to 3.06 GHz, 8GB of Memory, a 500GB Hard drive or 256GB SSD.
1:10 - The new MacBook Pro is only $1699, a huge drop from the previous, $1999
1:11 - The 17″ MacBook Pro is now only $2499
1:13 - The 13″ MacBook is now getting this new internal battery as well.
1:14 - The standard MacBook 13″ now features a backlit keyboard, Firewire 800, the SD slot, and the 500GB harddrive. Also, is support for 8GB of ram. They’re closing the gap, and its only $1199 ($100 cheaper)
1:15 - The new 13″ is now considered a MacBook Pro, so what’s replacing the MacBook? Apple’s really pushing their “cheapest lineup yet.”
1:16 - The MacBook Air is now starting at $1499, a great price from the previous $1799 (I think that’s what it was.)
1:17 - “Great hardware deserves great software.” A lead in to OS X Snow Leopard perhaps?
1:18 - Bertrand Serlet is now on stage, poking fun at Vista as usual.
1:19 - He’s now saying that Windows 7 is the “same old technology as Vista.”
1:20 - The crowd didn’t seem to enjoy the Win 7 jokes, and neither did I. They deserve some huge credit with what they’ve done with Windows 7. Now we’re moving onto Snow Leopard, apparently they didn’t change the Finder’s UI, but all of the code it uses.
1:21 - Serlet is talking about some kind of 3D Dock, and you can now do some sort of Expose with the dock. Cool, but confusing.
1:22 - After upgrading to snow leopard, from Leopard, you’ll get 6GB of storage available, because of how small everything is now, installation is now 45% faster, and opening JPGs 2x as fast.
1:23 - You can now write Chinese language on the trackpad, and Mail is now faster. Not too much in revolutionary stuff, but nothing mind BLOWING.
1:24 - Safari 4.0 will be available today for Tiger, Leopard, and Windows.
1:25 - Safari 4 will now have a Crash Resistance feature.
1:26 - JavaScript is now 50% faster, and now introducing what we’ve heard non-stop about for the last year or so, Quicktime 10.
1:28 - Thumbnails can now be scaled up in Finder….whoopie? Was anyone really wanting this? Leave a comment.
1:29 - A new way to preview videos without having to scale up into Quick Look. Wow, Snow Leopard loves making us lazy…
1:30 - So you can now do different kind of Gestures, it seems kind of confusing, It’ll be more obvious when we get to see a Demo.
1:31 - As far as the Video Preview…it’s like a quick peek, when you don’t want to quick-look, so you don’t have to just open the dang file.
1:32 - Basically he’s jumping between Finder, QuickTime X, and Safari 4 in a never-ending vicious circle. He needs to pick a topic. Where’s Steve!? Where’s Phil!?
1:34 - And we’re back on Quick-Look, but he’s showing that you can quickly trim a video in the finder, then upload it to various services. (Actually, you edit in QuickTime, sorry we told you he’s jumping around topics non-stop.)
1:35 - Now we’re moving onto how these new processors are fantastic, and RAM & Processors are getting faster. Now we’re moving onto 64-bit.
1:36 - He’s getting ready to talk about Grand Central, the new Snow Leopard technology that lets the OS take advantage of these dual-cores we’ve had in these Intel-computers.
1:37 - And I called it! We’re now talking about Grand Central; which is basically multi-core support for all of the OS.
1:39 - Grand Central is now a open-standard, for other companies to use. Pretty cool stuff. Apple’s really hitting the software. 
1:40 - Now we’re moving into Exchange support.
1:41 - Basically, we’re talking about how business-friendly Macs are.
1:42 - Spotlight even works with Exchange, so you can search your exchange files. Interesting, but a tad sleepy. If you need a refill on your drink or snack, now’s the time to get it…
1:43-1:45 - We just got wind of a rumor, Snow Leopard in September for $29 - yes, only $29…. This is UNCONFIRMED. Also, demo units of iPhone 3G’s have been pulled in store, and staff is apparently not allowed to take vacations from today, up through the next 3 or so weeks. It looks like the new iPhone is today…
1:45 - Only time will tell, what we’ll be doing, but it sounds like Betrand is wrapping up, so we might get a confirmation on that price in a second.
1:46 - So, Snow Leopard is for Intel-Only, he’s saying how Leopard was 129, and Snow Leopard will be availible for $29 dollars, available this September, apparently the rumor was true.
1:47 - $29 for an Upgrade from leopard is HUGE, Apple’s really shutting up Microsoft with this whole “price” thing.
1:48 - Scott Forstall is on stage.
1:49 - There are now 50,000 apps on the store. They’ve sold over 40 Million iPhones and iPod Touches.
1:50 - There’s now a video playing, talking about the Developers, it’s hard to tell, but it looks really similar to the one they showed during the 3.0 Keynote.
1:51 - I don’t think its the one from the 3.0 Keynote. Still a tad boring in my opinion. But lets recap what we’ve done in our first 50 minutes:
- All new MacBook Pro’s for a great price, and speed, with a long-lasting internal battery.
- The white MacBook is now the only non-”Pro” model, explaining Tuesdays update.
- The MacBook Air is $1499
- Snow Leopard is coming in September for $29 (as far as we can tell, that’s the upgrade price, the standard will probably be the standard $140, but we’ll see).
1:55 - The video has finally ended.
1:55 - Now we’re moving onto iPhone OS 3.0
1:56 - Forestall is talking about Copy & Paste.
1:56 - Now we’re talking about the Landscape keyboard.
1:57 - Talking about MMS; basically hes just walking through the features, but I’m thankful he’s keeping it quick.
1:58 - Talking about Search, he mentioned that it’ll be available ”later this summer.” That could be just a stall.
1:59 - Movies & TV Purchases & Rentals are now available through the iTunes Store on the iPhone and iPod touch. Even Audiobooks & iTunes U are available on the mobile iTunes store.
2:00 - We’re now talking about Parental Controls.
2:01 - We’re now talking about Tethering, this could be interesting…
2:02 - A seamless experience with Tethering, they’ve got 22 carriers on board…
2:02 - Talking about Safari for the iPhone - don’t worry Bertrand didn’t come up and start talking about Safari 4 again :p
2:03 - You can now save usernames/passwords in Safari. Nothing about Flash….
2:04 - Adding support for new languages in 3.0 - Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Korean, and Thai. New support for over 30 more languages. (Thought: Wow that menu is already cramped, now were adding 30 more lanuages!!!)
2:05 - They’re showing a 30 Rock clip about how she lost her phone, talking about the phone tracking in 3.o
2:06 - Find My Phone is available to Mobile Me customers, you can log in, it’ll show you where your phone is on a map.
2:07 - You can make your Phone play alert noises if you’ve lost your phone, regardless if it’s in your house or not. This is great if you’ve lost it in your house, and so you can walk around the house and find it. Even if it was on silent.
2:08 - You can wipe your phone if you can’t find it, then if you ever do find it, it’ll restore back through iTunes like it normally would.
2:09 - We’re starting to talk about In-App Purchase, this topic might go on a while, but hopefully it wont.
2:10 - He’s talking about P2P connection to play games with each-other, and its free for any application.
2:11 - Hardware devs. can now make applications that talk directly with the iPhone or iPod Touch and an accessory. The famous diabetes application and accessory, that made a splash at the 3.0 keynote, is a good example of this.
2:12 - Now talking about how you can use Google Maps in other applications. Then, allowing turn-by-turn, as long as they use their own maps.
2:13 - Moving onto the Push-Notifications…
2:13 - Forestall is inviting up some developers that will show off Push Notifications.
2:14 - The one dev. is talking about how you can access your iPod, within apps, with 3.0 It’s a really boring recap from a few months ago. This is another great time to take a break, you’re not missing anything too big.
2:17 - Scott is inviting up a Medical Team, I don’t think it’s the one that did the diabetes thing at the last keynote, but I’m sure it’s probably going to be boring, cool if you’re in need of medical care, but boring… The snack & potty break continues…
2:20 - The medical team is off-stage, but now there’s another team coming up. Heck, I’m tempted to go take a potty break, get a drink, and snack. :p
2:23 - The medical team just finished, and now Tom-Tom is coming on stage to announce their turn-by-turn GPS app for the iPhone.
2:24 - I have to say its nice having a direction app that tells you to “bear right, then keep left” and stuff like that, so thats nice.
2:25 - Tom-Tom is announcing a Car-Kit so you can stick your iPhone to the windshield like a standard GPS, it charges the phone, plays your music, and works in Portrait & Landscape. This is some really cool stuff, I’ve been wanting a GPS like this that I can just stick it to the windshield, and go, without another device.
2:27 - NGMoco is now coming up.
2:30 - There’s some kind of science & education, dev. demonstrating some application. He seems wayyy to enthusiastic about this job.
2:32 - Apple, seriously, enough with the demonstrations….we get it 3.0 does some cool stuff.
2:35 - Sorry there’s not many updates, but there’s not to much to talk about with these (fairly-boring) demonstrations.
2:36 - Not to mention, a lot of this was boring the first time we saw it in March.
2:37 - I have to admit, this company that lets you rent cars from your iPhone is cool, you use your iPhone to unlock the phone. Basically, it works as your keyless remote. Cool? Yes. Do we want to move on? Definitely.
2: 38 - Apparently not, more developers have come up to talk….
2:41 - I’m half-expecting Steve Jobs to come onstage in a bath-robe going, “I was watching this from home, and these developers have been talking for wayyyy to long. What are you guys doing?”
2:42 - Looks like we’re finally finishing up the developers thing…
2:43 - Forestall is talking about how it’s coming June 17th!
2:44 - Phil is coming back on stage.
2:45 - He’s talking about how the iPhone has changed the way we do things. C’mon Phil, a great segway into a new iPhone!
2:46 - He’s comparing the other app stores to the Apple App Store
2:47 - He’s gonna tell us about the new iPhone 3GS. The S stands for Speed.
2:49 - The iPhone 3GS has a new camera!
2:49 - The 3GS features a 3MP camera w/ auto focus, auto white balance, auto exposure.
2:50 - The tap-to-focus rumor is true.
2:50 - The tap-to-focus allows for auto-macro,which means you can take pictures as close as 10cm.
2:51 - The iPhone 3GS, captures video. I don’t know if it applies to the old 3G as well, but we’ll see.
2:52 - The video allows for the same auto focus/macro/exposure/white-balance. It also allows you to edit. Then send it via MMS, email, Mobile Me, and YouTube.
2:53 - Voice Control works on the iPhone 3GS. My question is, will the 3GS replace the current 3G? I’m assuming it will. Why would anyone want anything else?
2:54 - Phil should call Steve with Voice Control, it’d really make people happy. Anyways, the iPhone does voice commands like iPod controls, and you can even ask it, what song is playing.
2:55 - You can ask the phone to “Play more songs like this,” and it’ll go into Genius mode.
2:55 - It has the compass application, which also works in conjunction with the Google Maps app, and if you tap “find my location” two times, it’ll rotate the Google Maps so that it’s pointing the right direction.
2:56 - The 3GS, also features Accessibility so you can use voice over, it also features Nike + built in, and data encryption.
2:57 - They’ve created “state of the art battery life.”
2:58 - The iPhone 3GS is of course eco-frinedly, with arsenic free glass, smaller packaging, etc.
2:59 - He’s leading up to how this is an amazing phone when you pair it with 3.0 and the apps.
3:00 - The iPhone is $199 for 16GB & $299 for 32GB. (Both Black & White)
3:01 - They want to make it more-affordable, and so the standard iPhone 3G that’s out now, will drop down to $99. They just rocked the competition with that pricing point.
3:01 - The 8GB drop is available today.
3:02 - The iPhone 3GS will be available June 19, just two days after 3.0 launches.
3:03 - Phil is recapping; New MacBook Pros, Snow Leopard in September for $29, iPhone 3.0 on the 17th, and the new super-affordable iPhone 3GS on the 19th. They’ve really tackled these Microsoft ads in my opinion.
3:05 - The Keynote has ended.
So in my opinion, Apple did a lot today, a lot of really remarkable stuff, that they’ve needed to do. What are your thoughts on todays events? Tell us in the comments below.
I want to thank everyone for tuning into our live blog today, stay tuned throughout the week as we’ll be bringing you more coverage on today’s announcements.
