MacDailyNews and iPodDailyNews coverage of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ presentation at Apple’s “Let’s Rock” event, which kicked off at 10am PDT/1pm EDT today (Tuesday) at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Performing Arts.
Live coverage of Apple’s “Let’s Rock” event in reverse chronological order:
• Apple’s “Let’s Rock” special event ends.
• Steve Jobs: “Thank you all for coming.”
• Standing O for Johnson.
• Johnson starts next song…
• Johnson ends song. Applause. Johnson thanks Apple for being very supportive.
• Jack Johnson onstage playing. Jobs off stage…
• Jobs introduces special guest, the No. 1 selling male artist in the history of iTunes Store: Jack Johnson
• Jobs: “We think we’ve got the best lineup we’ve ever had for this holiday season. We’re ready for this holiday shopping season.”
• iPhone: 2.1 update is free, of course. iPod touch owners who paid to update to OS X 2.0 get free update to 2.1. If not: it’ll be $9.9.
• 2.1 is a big update. Fixes lost of bugs. Fwere dropped calls. Significant battery improvements. Fewer App crashes.
• iPhone, iPod touch 2.1 software update available today…
• New iPod touch ad: “The funnest iPod ever” – Ad focuses mainly on games (Nintendo and Sony can’t be happy)
• iPod touch pricing: 8GB for $229, 16GB for $299, 32GB for $399. All three models available immediately.
• iPod touch is also environmentally-friendly: arsenic-free, BFR-free, Mercury-free, PVC-free, highly recyclable.
• Steve Job: “This is the funnest iPod ever.”
• Steve Jobs back onstage: iPod touch battery: 36 hrs. audio, 6hrs. video.
• “Need for Speed” demo.
• Phil shoots, he scores!
• Spore, then “Real Soccer 2009” demos…
• VP of worldwide marketing, Phil Schiller now onstage to demo some App Store games for iPod touch/iPhone.
• Steve demoing iPod touch (videos, music)
• Wireless App Store currently available in 62 countries and counting.
• 100 million App Store apps downloaded in first 60 days. Whoa! (Jobs does not give paid vs. free apps breakdown)
• Genius can create playlists directly via iPod touch.
• Volume controls now on side of touch, built-in speaker for “Casual listening.”
• iPod touch. Enhanced UI as with nano. Niek+ now built-in…
• New earbuds – 2 drivers each (woofer + tweeter) = $79. Jobs: “They finally got it right this time.”
• 4G iPod nano pricing: 8GB for US$149, 16GB for $199. 8GB here today, 16GB by next week at the latest. “Hopefully this weekend.”
• 4G nano environmentally-friendly: arsenic-free, BFR-free, Mercury-free, PVC-free, highly recyclable.
• 4G nano colors: black, silver, violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, pink – no white.
• 4G nano battery: 24 hrs. audio, 4 hrs. video.
• Shake nano and it’ll shuffle: “Shake to Shuffle.”
• iPod nano display auto-rotates based on orientation – landscape to portrait and vice vrsa – like iPod touch/iPhone.
• If you attach a microphone to nano, you get a voice-recording option.
• iPod nano features a curved glass display. iPod nano gets accelerometer.
• New iPod nano 4th-gen. Display covers half of device’s front side. Click-wheel on bottom as usual.
• iPod classic now in 120GB only. No 80GB or 160GB.
• Over 160 million iPods sold to date.
• Over 5,000 accessories – some makers even announce products before we want them to (iPod nano skins).
• Pie Chart: NPD: iPod has 73.4% market share. “Other” has 15.4%, SanDisk has 8.6%, Microsoft Zune has paltry 2.6%.
• iTunes 8 available for free download today.
• Jobs demos… Aretha, John Mayer…
• 65 million iTunes users now… Genius will get very smart.
• Of course, users can choose to opt-out of Genius.
• Genius works completely anonymously – sends weekly info about your library to Apple. Genius gets smarter and smarter.
• Genius will also recommend iTunes Store music based on your library/listening patterns.
• Genius auto creates playlists based on your taste (or lack thereof) in music.
• Accessibility, new browsing options, “Genius Sidebar”…
• iTunes 8…
• $1.99 for SD TV shows, $2.99 for HD TV Shows.
• HD TV shows. NBC back in iTunes Store. Zucker finally wised up?
• iTunes now has over 8.5 million songs; over 3,000 apps for iPhone/iPod touch.
• Jobs: “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
• Jobs looks thin (same as last time or close to it), but seems to be energetic, smiling…
• Lights go down, Steve Jobs takes the stage.
• The Doors’ “Touch Me” playing… (hint, hint?)
• …presentation will begin shortly.
• Announcement: Please turn off cell phones and PDAs…
• White Apple logo on black screen as those assembled wait for Steve Jobs to take the stage.
• 9:39pm PDT – getting close now…
• 8:17am PDT – Apple Store currently offline.
So what did the progress bar at 20% at the bottom of the Let’s Rock announcement mean?
Here come the astroturfers and trolls.
Apparently, either school got out early or iwantapinkzune.com is not keeping their attention.
RE: Comment from Viktor
“Disappointed. I was expecting something bigger.”
That’s what SHE said.
Is it just me or is anyone else wondering if Steve still has any interest in the Mac or the OS?
WTF, have they revised the MB or MBP or MBA this year? or Mini or iMac or iLife or….
Lame.
Looking foward to iPhone OS 2.1!!!!
i was holding out for iChat and push notification
Yes, but is Apple still going to ship the new iPod Touch with version 1 of the system software forcing new users to pay the $10 upgrade fee out of the box like they were doing just yesterday?
Okay, enough iPod, iPhone stuff, I’m ready for Mac news/speculation.
Where’s the HD movies for Macs? MacMinis hooked to two TVs and only SD rentals. Come on Apple!
Sony’s making some money off me via the PS3 (which does a great job of upscaling the $2.99 SD rentals).
Apple needs to stop doing these events. It doesn’t make sense to have them when rumor sites have all the details days before the event. Apple should just update their site and send out a press release. Try as they might, Apple will always get screwed by rumor sites.
Just a note, I’m on rumor sites constantly so I really don’t have any expectations of these events. The last three or four major events have all been fully revealed or close to revealed by rumor sites. I’m all for the events and I love to be wowed, but spoilers are just ruining it for Apple. And seeing that news outlets read rumors to it just makes Apple look like one big flop. Apple should have Jobs heath check events. People seem more interested in that stuff.
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It’s completely just you. Look at the history of these events. These are always almost completely (if not completely completely) iPod events. Plus, “Let’s Rock”… hello?
When will people learn. Mac announcements are coming people, cripes!
If you honestly think Steve has no interest in the Mac or OS X, then you just don’t get it at all. Please return to your space under the rock.
totallyagree@Just Me
okay where is the 2.0 software?
Oops, meant 2.1
Hmmm, any ideas where iPhone 2.1 software is?? I still don’t see it…
Well, iPhone 2.1 for the iPod Touch is out, but not for the iPhone itself apparently. Interesting.
Must have missed this somewhere but it appears that Friday is the day for iPhone 2.1. So say AppleInsider and Ars Technica.
@tc60045:
You said “WTF, have they revised the MB or MBP or MBA this year? or Mini or iMac or iLife or….”
All hardware other then the Mini and MBA has seen a revision this year. The MBA only started shipping this year but we have already seen slight price drops on the SSD models. My understanding of the situation was that products would be announced over the next several weeks. That may not mean that every week something will be released but it was clear from this invitation that this even would be about music related stuff.
please sombody tell me where can I download the let’s rock event video other than podcast
i need it urgently