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[PSUs]
Tuesday 9th January 2007
Live feed from Steve Jobs' keynote address 4:19PM, Tuesday 9th January 2007
Welcome to MacUser's coverage of Steve Jobs' keynote address, coming to you live from San Fancisco's Moscone Center.

The most recent updates will appear towards the top of the page.

Click here to see the latest news.

That's it, folks; the Apple TV and iPhone from Apple Inc. Thanks for joining us to witness it. Leave your thoughts on the accouncements in the Comments box.

It may be that we don't get a 'One more thing'; Jobs introducing John Mayer, and the musical performance is usually the last event. Mayer now playing live on stage.

As is now traditional, Jobs is thanking those who worked on these products, and the families of those folks for their understanding.

Jobs is now getting an actual standing ovation...

Apple Computer, Inc will now be called Apple Inc. to reflect changing product portfolio "I didn't sleep a wink last night" says Jobs.

Plans to grab 1% of the market in 2008.

Jobs' clicker is not working; the slides won't advance. He's talking about the TV jammer Steve Wozniak developed to break TVs, as he waits for the technical problems to be fixed.

(We're still here; being treated to a very long and not particularly scintillating speech from Cingular's CEO.)

Confirms that visual voicemail is in partnership with Cingular; the carrier has to support the service.

Price: 4GB $499 with a two-year contract; 5GB $599 with two year contract. Shipping in June (to groans from the audience) to US; Europe by Q4, Asia in 2008. Confirms partnership with Cingular.

Battery life: 5 hours talktime/video/browsing; 16 hours audio playback.

Accessories: headphones with mic for handsfree, tiny Bluetooth headset.

Jobs demonstrating how all the features work together; while he's listening to some music, a call comes in from Phil Schiller. Schiller asks for a photo that Jobs has; Jobs goes into photos - while call still live - pics and emails the photo. Once he ends the call, the music restarts.

Both Yang and Schmidt just talking about the collaboration; buzz-phrases are coming thick and fast!

Now on stage: Jerry Yang, 'Co-founder and Chief Yahoo!'

Steve Jobs introducing Dr Eric Schmidt as 'Google's CEO' to talk about the collaboration. He wants to merge the two companies and call them 'Apple Goo'. (Joke, naturally...)

"It's the Internet in your pocket, for the first time ever"

We're now being shown the Google Maps widget; Steve Jobs searches for Starbucks next to Moscone; finds one, calls it, orders 'four thousand lattes to go', then hangs up. Such behavour! (Let's hope they call back and interrupt the keynote...)

Showing some widgets; Apple's stock is showing up by 2.43%, which draws a big reaction from the crowd.

You're not limited to special sites formatted for mobile devices; this is a full web browser.

You can view multiple pages too, a bit like with tabbed browsing. They're shown like thumbnails that you can select by tapping.

When you load webpages, it by default scales to show the whole site; you can flip the phone to widescreen. You can 'pinch' you fingers to zoom in and out, or double-tap to zoom in on a page element.

iPhone parses out phone numbers, so that if a phone number appears in an email, you can just tap it to dial.

Yahoo is offering free IMAP push email; a bit like how the Blackberry works.

Because it supports IMAP, you could use Exchange server's IMAP option; an important consideration for enterprise.

Now looking at the iPhone as an Internet communication device. Rich HTML email, IMAP or POP3 email service plus Safari, Google Maps (for directions too), Widgets; the iPhone scwitches seamlessly between mobile service and Wi-Fi.

"We have reinvented the phone"

You can also use gestures to scale pics; 'pinching' your fingers together makes a pic smaller; the opposite action enlarges it.

Now being shown photos. As well as the 2mp camera, we're looking at the mobile photo management app. If you view a pic that's landscape, just flip the phone sideways to switch to landscape view.

The virtual keyboard offers error correction and prevention. SMS 'conversations' looks like iChat conversations.

Now looking at voicemail; you see a list of voicemails that you can play. Jobs mentioned that this was part of a collaboration, so it may be dependent on the carrier. (As mentioned below, the phone being demonstrated is connected over Cingular.)

You can easily join together two calls from on-screen buttons to create conference call.

Now we're being shown the iPhone as a phone. Apple is commendably focussed on making calls; Jobs very keen to get you to use your contacts. Mentioning 'visual voicemail'; you can go directly to the voicemails that interest you. Quad-band GSM/EDGE phone. 3G is for the future. Plus Wi-Fi and Bluetooth (Phew!)

"It's the best iPod we've ever made"

We're also seeing movies being shown; you can change the aspect ratio to have the film shown full-screen or letterboxed.

(Incidentally, we saw that this phone is connected to the US mobile network Cingular; looks like Apple may not be doing the virtual mobile network operator thing that many suspected in the industry.)

Turn the phone sideways to landscape mode, and you get
 
 
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a 'Coverflow' of your albums that you can flick through.

To unlock the phone, you slide your finger across the screen.

"You can touch your music" Now we're getting a demo of the iPhone as an iPod.

3 sensors built into the phone: a proximity sensor. When you bring the phone up to your ear, the input and screen are turned off; ambient light sensor; accelerometer to tell the device if it's portrait or landscape.

160-ppi, 3.5in screen. 11.6mm thick. Only one button on the front, called the Home button. 2 megapixel camera.

"Something wonderful for you hand"...

"We're learning from the iPod", so Jobs is talking about syncing. "You're going to do the same thing with iPhone". iTunes will sync media and data - not mentioned if it supports .Mac explicitly yet - to a Mac or a PC.

Why use OS X? It has everything built in, with support for all the technologies we want. Power management, networking, etc. "We've been doing this for years."

The iPhone uses a UI '5 years ahead of any other phone'. It uses Mac OS X

You can use multi-finger gestures.

The iPhone is just basically a screen; Apple isn't not using a stylus, it will use your fingers; the technology is called 'Multi-Touch'

The iPhone has a 'revolutionary UI'; the problem with the UI of existing models is the keyboard that's there whenever you need it or not. Jobs making the very valid point that each application requires a particular dedicated interface.

We're now looking at the market; Jobs telling us why 'smartphones' aren't smart at all.

It's called the iPhone!

WIDESCREEN iPOD WITH TOUCHSCREEN CONTROLS. MOBILE PHONE. 'BREAKTHROUGH INTERNET COMMUNICATION DEVICE' The new iPod is all three.

"Today we're introducing three revolutionary products"

Looking back through Apple's revolutionary product catalogue; the Mac, the iPod, etc.

"This is a day I've been looking forward for two and a half years" says Jobs. Implying a very revolutionary product is about to be released.

$299 for the Apple TV - we'll update you with UK pricing as soon as we have it. Accepting pre-orders now for February availablilty.

Phil Schiller has just come onto the stage; Jobs demonstrating the ability of the Apple TV to switch to a different source. Media now being streamed from Schiller's MacBook. (We were before being shown media being played from the Apple TV's internal hard disk.)

Jobs thinks many people will buy the Apple TV to stream music from their collections through their home cinema system.

Jobs is still going through the interface; it's just like a slightly shinier version of Front Row.

How showing the interface; looks similar to the preview we saw last year. The screensaver shows a cascade of your photos.

Can auto-sync with one PC; you can, as with iPod, configure Apple TV to sync and store the latest unwatched TV shows locally on the Apple TV's hard disk, say. Or you can stream information from five Macs and PCs.

720p high definition video; 40GB hard disk; 802.11 wireless networking, including 802.11n; Intel processor.

Here's an update on iTV; it's no called Apple TV, written out with the Apple symbol followed by lower-case 'tv'.

Now talking about Zune. "How'd they do?" December data not available, but based on November data (the Zune's launch month), it took 2% of the market; the iPod commands 62%.

250 movies now available on iTunes, and "we hope to be adding more movies".

50 million TV shows sold on the iTunes music store; 1.3 million movies sold in the first three months. New partner as of today for movies: Paramount.

Apple now sells more music than Amazon.

Recapping music business. iPod is dominant. iTunes has sold over 2 billion songs.

We're going to move on; no more stuff about the Mac today, Jobs says.

Showing a new "I'm a Mac" ad about the problems PCs might have upgrading to Visata; rapturous applause.

Reminding us of a high-ranking Microsoft exec who said that he'd upgrade to Mac.

The retail stores are selling over half their Macs to switchers, and that's now happening throughout the channel.

Talking about the smoothness of the transition. "We didn't do this alone" Thanking Intel "very much", and thanking developers for porting their apps to Universal Binary. And a big thank you to users.

We're recapping the move to Intel; reminding us that the transition took 7 months.

He's looking well and fit; thanking us all for coming. "We're going to make some history here today"

And so it begins; Steve Jobs takes to the stage to whoops and hollers from the auditorium.

Latecomers still being seated...

We're about to begin. We've just been asked to turn off all mobile phones and pagers.

Folks are still filing in. Despite the fact that nothing has happened yet, flashbulbs are popping like we're on a red carpet. Banks of video and stills cameras are ranged along the sides of the halls, and three huge video cameras in the rear centre are all set up to capture this year's keynote.

This year's keynote is being held in Moscone West, while in previous years it was held in Moscone South. This presentation hall is huge, with three huge screens showing what's on stage; it's like a rock venue. But with geeks.

We're in the hall! As is traditional, when the doors were opened, there was an actual stampede of folks up the escalators. Actual sprinting.

MacUser has arrived at the Moscone West, the venue for this year's keynote address. We're just waiting to be seated, and we'll bring you the news as soon as it happens!

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