Apple Announces Event on October 4th: Let's Talk iPhone

http://www.loopinsight.com/2011/09/27/apple-announces-iphone-5-event-for-oct-4/

by caiusdurling • 15 years ago

190 127 15 years ago

loopinsight.com

thehodge2• 15 years ago

Okay, Now I'm ready to admit that it's October 4th..

rahoulb• 15 years ago

actually today is the 28th

caiusdurling• 15 years ago

Wonder what they're going to announce in the iPhone 5. Better battery life and perhaps a better GPS is all I really want over my iPhone 4.

weaksauce3• 15 years ago

Improved camera would be nice.

blinkingled• 15 years ago

Interesting. I have heard from so many friends that current iPhone camera is about as good as it can get. Curious what you are expecting more - just bumped up mega pixels? Not sure how much that would matter - going from 5MP to 8MP for e.g.

the_mat• 15 years ago

In what way? It's already on par with most point and shoot cameras and better than many. Resolution is well beyond useful levels for a phone; I'm surprised Apple is chasing higher megapixel numbers when 99% of iPhone photos get cut-down for web use anyway.

thematt2• 15 years ago

I don't expect it to be announced here, but a full touchscreen would be nice... one without a physical button.

achompas3• 15 years ago

I hear this a lot. Why do you want a full touchscreen?

I disagree only b/c this creates accessibility problems for some users.

ceejayoz2• 15 years ago

The physical button is pretty important for force-exiting a frozen app. I can't imagine it going touchscreen.

Nemisis7654• 15 years ago

I'm pretty sure they're going dual-core processor as well (like the iPad 2).

thehodge2• 15 years ago

Wonder if the 1 notification on the phone is a hint that they are only announcing one phone not two as rumoured..

technoslut• 15 years ago

It's probably an indication of the announcement. I wouldn't read much more into it.

cryptoz2• 15 years ago

So many puns. "Let's talk iPhone" -> "Let's talk, iPhone" (new speech functionality). It's a phone, you talk to people, you also talk to it, etc.

I would expect this to be a very speech technology-heavy event.

dave16193• 15 years ago

Nice catch. Can't wait for Assistant.

mortenjorck• 15 years ago

Tim Cook's first product reveal, and the marquee feature is based around voice recognition.

Heaven help him.

stevenp• 15 years ago

I've never personally been able to get any use out of the voice control feature of iOS. In fact, after trying it a few times, the only time I invoke it now is by accident. I hope that Apple kicks some major ass on this feature and creates another "how did I ever live without this" moment.

hrabago• 15 years ago

I use it while driving to call people without having to dial with my fingers. Unfortunately once the call is placed I still have to use my fingers to set it to speakerphone.

nickheer• 15 years ago

When I can ask my smartphone "what time is the next bus arriving?" without having to touch it, that's when it's a really smart phone. I hope it's that level of a kick.

timanglade• 15 years ago

Seriously, look at the design of the invite. Calendar says Tuesday (October) 4th. Clock says 10am. Map app says this will take place at 1 Infinite Loop. And the Phone icon makes it clear this will be an iPhone event (rather than an iPod Touch / iOS event), with one unread notification alerting you that there is something you must pay attention to. They say everything in 4 icons. So awesome.

achompas3• 15 years ago

To be fair, the GMaps icon always displays 1 Infinite Loop. Still, great catch.

smackfu2• 15 years ago

And the clock icon never shows the correct time. It seems like the calendar app is a hack to get it to work right.

executive• 15 years ago

Since it's on October 4th and there are 4 icons on the invite, looks like we're not getting an iPhone 5.

xster• 15 years ago

loooooooool

0xABADC0DA• 15 years ago

I bet the 1 on the phone is for "one more thing"; they're going to call up Steve Jobs and talk with him since he can't be there live on stage.

sambeau• 15 years ago

I read it to mean: only one new phone. I hope you're right, an iPhone 5 and a 4s would be big news.

Steko• 15 years ago

I imagine Jobs will be there. He'll probably avoid the stage in order to not upstage Tim Cook's first big event but Cook may ask him to come out briefly at the end or they might do a call like you suggest.

notatoad2• 15 years ago

wow, that's just evil. TELUS (phone company here) has been running ads in really heavy rotation pushing the tagline "there's never been a better time to buy an iphone 4", and stating "offer ends october 4th".

moe• 15 years ago

Same here (different country, different phone companies).

Everyone is obviously pushing hard to sell their iphone4-stock now, before Joe Sixpack gets told by the news-anchor to delay his purchase for the iphone5.

notatoad2• 15 years ago

i get that they want to push it and get rid of their stock, that's just good business. what i don't like is that they specifically go out of their way to lie about it. they don't have to mention the time, they could just be pushing features or style. there's plenty of other ways to sell iphones.

simonsarris2• 15 years ago

Is the iPhone 4 still the same price that it was when it came out?

This reminds me of April 2010 when I wrote a couple articles about how Apple is fairly unique among computer manufacturers for charging enormous prices for old hardware and going so long without update or a price drop. In April 2010, depending on the week, you bought a Macbook Pro that was miserably outdated or a Macbook Pro that was very modern for precisely the same price.

(If you're interested: http://simonsarris.com/blog/22-mac-envy-2 )

potatolicious2• 15 years ago

The thing geeks don't realize is that Apple doesn't sell "hardware" - they sell an appliance. This year's GE dishwasher won't get cheaper as the year goes on - it'll just get replaced by a newer model at some point. Similarly, a Toyota Prius won't get cheaper as the year wears on, it'll also just get replaced by a new model, at the same price (with the requisite temporary discount to clear old stock).

And the other thing that geeks don't realize: this is also how most of the world thinks, and how they want their products to be.

Also re: "miserably outdated" - this, again, only applies to us geeks. For us it's disappointing to not get the latest, shiniest chipset, or this year's "it" mobile GPU. But here's the rub: the year-over-year performance increase for a laptop in the same model line is, what, 15%? A March 2010 MacBook Pro will surf the internet, access email, and hell, play games just as well as a May 2010 MacBook Pro. They are, for 99% of users, identical unless you put it under benchmark conditions.

We geeks place way too much importance in hardware when thinking about the market in general. We have to remember that nobody else cares.

Wazzup122• 15 years ago

What could the badge on the phone icon indicate? That's the biggest puzzle...

wmeredith• 15 years ago

In the context of the actual iOS, it indicates one missed call. (Which is pretty sly considering they're announcing the phone everyone was expecting in June)

sjwright• 15 years ago

You missed a call.

cpr• 15 years ago

Gruber says it means 1 iPhone model only.

beerglass• 15 years ago

Mayb be a reference to the one iPhone 5 model reported to have lost in a bar ;)

Wazzup122• 15 years ago

Okay, my take is that it means 1 common iPhone for CDMA and GSM

john2x• 15 years ago

Not 9:42 AM?

timjahn2• 15 years ago

Next time somebody asks you why you prefer Apple products to competitors, show them this invite. Explains everything.

So beautiful.

untog• 15 years ago

Then they might justifiably reply "So, you don't care about the product at all, and just care about the way the company presents itself?"

gmac• 15 years ago

Right, because the products Apple makes don't need designing... ?

timjahn2• 15 years ago

I'll never understand why people pay so much money for jeans with holes in them, when you could simply just rip the holes yourselves.

But I won't hesitate to pay a bit more for a quality Apple product.

Some things just don't make sense. :)

raganwald2• 15 years ago

It’s a reasonable question, however consider the following: If someone is late for a job interview and unkempt, do you question whether they will be on time for work and will have meticulous software development hygiene (by whatever standards you employ, e.g. tests, proper use of source control)?

It’s true that some unkempt people are very careful about their work, and some people who are late for an interview are on time for work. So I would personally probe further to make sure this is not a sign of a deeper lack of commitment.

Careful attention to detail in marketing materials doesn’t automatically mean careful attention to detail in product development. But you know, I doubt it’s a coïncidence that Apple's marketing materials are clean and simple, and they don’t play the “Intel Inside” sticker game, and they are restrained in the CrapWare they allow on their OS X machines, and so on and so forth.

So if you show me a busy, confused marketing item, I won’t automatically refuse to buy the product. But I will certainly probe to see if this is an anomaly or whther it is representative of their approach to product development.

ceejayoz2• 15 years ago

Attention to detail in one spot makes it more likely there's attention to detail elsewhere.

mikeash• 15 years ago

It's not justifiable, it's just obtuse. The invite is being used as an example of the attention to detail and high quality that people like about Apple.

heynk• 15 years ago

Might be too much speculation, but the first thing I thought when I saw the maps icon was a hint that they'd reveal their own non-google maps system.

r00fus3• 15 years ago

That would indeed be huge, but I'd be a bit worried, as Google Maps has been the market leader for some time.

More likely, they've made improvements that distinguish the iPhone in an Apple-esque way, and probably increased the likelyhood that iOS maps could be switched to say, Bing in a more direct fashion.

loire2803• 15 years ago

I wonder how many iPhone users realize that the Maps app on their phone is powered by Google maps?

shinratdr2• 15 years ago

Pretty unlikely, we probably would have seen some slip-ups in the iOS 5 beta if that was the case. As it stands they are still steadily improving the existing Maps with Google services, adding alternate routes and whatnot.

watmough• 15 years ago

Sadly, Apple do not yet have their own orbital launch capability... though maybe it's not so far fetched looking at the characters that do!

matthew-wegner• 15 years ago

Probably just turn-by-turn spoken directions or voice command input, if anything.

nizm• 15 years ago

Maybe Apple is trying to promote 4ormat http://4ormat.com with the "4"

sneak• 15 years ago

I just got excited, then deeply sad when I remembered that this is going to be without Steve.

Best of luck to Mr. Cook, but I will always miss Stevenotes no matter how great a CEO he turns out to be.

culturestate• 15 years ago

I wonder if Steve'll be in the audience?

athoma• 15 years ago

No Steve Jobs :(

drivebyacct22• 15 years ago

Wow. We're debating the presence of "one notification" to be a response to extremely speculative rumors of a "cloud iPhone" (in the day of poor batteries and data-caps?) Or that Assistant, even in this thread, is being touted as revolutionary? Or that people seem to attribute webOS with Android-style notifications despite being later to the game? The iPhone 4 is gorgeous and iOS is in a class of it's own, but I can not understand the blinders that come on around announcement time.

revscat• 15 years ago

Your entire message is a strawman; there is nothing in this thread which supports your claims.

drivebyacct22• 15 years ago

There are 3 comments in here speculating that the '1' is specifically about one model of an iPhone. There are at least 2 comments praising the magicalness of Assistant. The notifications misconception is one that is popular around here and even amongst the "geekier" people I know. I knew it wouldn't be a popular opinion, but my comments are not a terribly unfair depiction of the reaction to iOS announcements on HN.

sidcool• 15 years ago

Two words, Cloud iPhone...

baddox• 15 years ago

The article is still speculating about the "iPhone 5" part, right? Last I checked, we still don't know if it will be a hardware upgrade (perhaps "4S"), a low-cost version, a world phone, a complete form factor upgrade ("5"), or some combination of these and other things.

gto161082• 15 years ago

I really can't wait to see how Tim Cook brings the new iPhone to the market. There's a lot of pressure on him to perform in the same way that Steve Jobs has in the past. He has, to his advantage, been more chatty with Apple employees via corporate webmail so I'm excited to see what he says and how he brings his team around a much awaited iOS 5 and iPhone.

guywithabike• 15 years ago

No need to wait. Tim Cook has already hosted some events, like the Back to the Mac event.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxWSIDoE8Hk

(I can't find better videos at the moment, but they're around.)

gto161082• 15 years ago

Ahh yes. I must give Tim credit. He is a very good speaker, that's for certain.

egiva• 15 years ago

Nobody thinks that having four icons indicates that they finally made the smaller iPod Shuffle-based iPhone? There was speculation last year that they were looking at a smaller lower-priced entry iPhone with limited features based on the Shuffle. I would wear it running, so I'm hoping the four-icon picture isn't just a coincidence.

ctdonath• 15 years ago

[Insert Stimpy "JOY!" here]

That would, indeed, be awesome. I take the iPad almost everywhere, so I have no need for an iPhone which is little more than an iPad Nano. Thing is, I need that "little more" - the phone part - as well, and want it as a separate device which I _can_ have everywhere. It's back to the "just a phone" desire, a device focused on making phone calls with Apple design sensibilities. Take an iPod Nano, insert a bigger battery & cellular chip, support Bluetooth headsets, sell millions.

Methinks coincidence though. Four icons is just enough to get the invite info across in a cute way, and there just isn't another suitable way to arrange them (a 4x1 line? not for advertising).

prawn• 15 years ago

Would that kill existing apps for iPhone and force them to be redesigned? That's the reason I don't think that they will change the screen shape.

philwelch• 15 years ago

I don't know why everyone's assuming Tim Cook will actually deliver the keynote when execs like Schiller and Forstall have been doing the keynotes with Steve and Tim Cook never has.

dave16193• 15 years ago

It's about exerting leadership and taking the realm publicly. Tim Cook needs to do the keynote for Apple, Apple's fans and the public.

espressodude• 15 years ago

Can't wait to see that new iPhone also if Tim Cook could match the level of how Steve Jobs presents Apple products on his keynotes.

Apple Announces Event on October 4th: Let's Talk iPhone

Related Stories