Apple's 'Let's Talk iPhone' keynote liveblog

http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/04/apples-lets-talk-iphone-keynote-liveblog/

by 6ren • 15 years ago

120 115 15 years ago

engadget.com

gizmo• 15 years ago

These guys got a live stream for most of the keynote last time:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/applelivekeynotes

timmaah• 15 years ago

Either they crashed.. or they crashed ustream

xenophanes• 15 years ago

140,000 users viewing a black screen (broken video). lol that's a lot. hope it works soon.

the total views is going up at like 1500/second

buff-a2• 15 years ago

Fuck this is a shitty way to have to view an event in this century.

e28eta• 15 years ago

I agree, but it sure does feed the hype machine. Think about how many news sites are hosting live blogs, and how many incidental visitors are seeing front page articles about it, and have been seeing ads for the live blog for days leading up to today.

Now contrast that to a company where anyone can watch the announcement live. I think most places you'd just get an article or two at the end of a product announcement, because the people who really care will just watch the announcement themselves.

buff-a2• 15 years ago

The "This webpage is not available" page is even better!

ars is still up at least: http://live.arstechnica.com/Event/iPhone_5

lazugod• 15 years ago

For free.

hugh3• 15 years ago

Save time. Wait 'til it's over, and then find out everything you actually want to know when someone posts a summary.

Do we have a summary so far? There's an iPhone 5, I assume? How does it differ from the iPhone 4?

shoota• 15 years ago

iPhone 4S, differences are better camera, A5 processor.

Splines• 15 years ago

IRC with image links would have been easier to consume.

icey• 15 years ago

Ars has a pretty good liveblog going as well: http://live.arstechnica.com/Event/iPhone_5

6ren2• 15 years ago

That one's updating much more quickly, though has fewer photos.

EDIT seems to be fixed now EDIT2 yet, there seems to be a darth of images again... engadget still has them EDIT3 OK, engadget is offline EDIT4 engadget is back (am I really blogging bloggers?)

brlewis• 15 years ago

(I'm being told my images aren't coming through, we're working on it guys)

by Jacqui Cheng 1:24 PM

(ok, images seem to be going through again, hang tight)

by Jacqui Cheng 1:25 PM

joezydeco• 15 years ago

None of the blogs are working. A 1:n medium like Twitter is your last resort. There has to be a better way to do this.

wh-uws• 15 years ago

Just a note:

apparently ars is down accept for the liveblog

http://arstechnica.com/

acak• 15 years ago

At thisismynext.com from the former Engadget crew:

http://live.thisismynext.com/Event/Apple_iPhone_5_event_live...

ubasu• 15 years ago

Apparently, the HN dup-check differentiates on the trailing slash:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3071680

TallTalesOrTrue• 15 years ago

Saw this on Engadget:

1:26PM That got applause. People seem desperate to clap for something. That was it.

Pretty much sums up what we have seen so far

FireBeyond2• 15 years ago

"2:02PM Phil's taking a shot against the Atrix, Thrill, and Inspire 4G. "The iPhone 4S is just as fast as these phones.""

Wow. "Guys, this is awesome! Our new phone is just as fast as an Android phone that came out a year ago!" (The Atrix, about to be supplanted by the Atrix 2).

culturestate• 15 years ago

> Wow. "Guys, this is awesome! Our new phone is just as fast as an Android phone that came out a year ago!" (The Atrix, about to be supplanted by the Atrix 2).

He was pretty clearly using them as examples of "4G" phones when it comes to data transfer speeds and nothing more.

calloc• 15 years ago

It seems that ScribbleLive isn't keeping up anymore :/

joelanman• 15 years ago

the friend tracking feature seems similar to Glympse, which I've used a lot:

http://www.glympse.com/

sharing your location for a set time is really useful

gurkendoktor2• 15 years ago

I guess with all the toddlers supposedly owning iPods/iPhones/iPads, this has some valid use cases. But actively supporting personal surveillance systems seems like a weird move to me after the media hubbub about the location cache.

evgen4• 15 years ago

Yes, this is something people legitimately want. There are lots of occasions where I will go somewhere with friends/spouse and want to wander but occasionally sync up or know where someone else is. It sure beats SMSing "where R U" messages back and forth.

FireBeyond2• 15 years ago

"The MBA, which has fundamentally changed the way people think about computers"...

Err, no, I really don't believe it has.

baggachipz• 15 years ago

Damn, I have never heard of glympse. I actually made my own app for this six months ago: http://l.oc8.me . Glad I'm not going to spend time creating native versions, and can move on to my next pet project. :)

Gormo• 15 years ago

I actually like your implementation better. It's like a minimap from an RPG that shows the location of party members.

wanorris• 15 years ago

The killer feature Glympse appears to have in comparison with iOS 5: it's cross platform. Not everyone you're going to want to sync with will have an iPhone or iPad.

rodh257• 15 years ago

I've got an app that does real time location sharing: http://convoyapp.net/ aimed at people driving in groups. I wonder how well this location sharing feature will compete against it, and if it makes it obsolete?

6ren2• 15 years ago

The verge is updating pretty quickly http://live.thisismynext.com/Event/Apple_iPhone_5_event_live...

heh, they didn't ripoff that guy that did the watch version of the nano, but instead complemented with "16 new clock faces."

melling• 15 years ago

Engadget and Ars keep going down. Ugh.

rkaede• 15 years ago

CNN live video stream: http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/cvplive/cvpstream4#/video/c...

Slimy• 15 years ago

iPhone 4S? I want the iPhone 5 :(

ABCD_FUFU• 15 years ago

Yeah, they are smoking crack, no screen bump no money.

Thrymr• 15 years ago

Lots of AT&T 3GS owners just out of contract, though. They'll probably go for the 4S. And Apple gets to save the iPhone 5 for another big announcement in 6 months.

jfb4• 15 years ago

Once Apple can put the tech that would justify a jump from 4 to 5 and retain their (50% of ASP!) margin, they will.

Idly, I wonder if they're getting a sufficient cut from the carriers to make the 3GS at no cost profitable, or if rather this is what they mean to do with their cash hoard: chase market share AND increase profitability.

DISCLAIMER: I used to work for Apple. I have no specific knowledge about the phone.

djloche• 15 years ago

The prices you saw are the carrier subsidized prices. The carriers buy the phones from apple and then subsidize the cost, and try to make a profit over the length of the contract.

The presentation was a little bit sloppy, because previous presentations would have footnoted that these were with a new 2 year contract prices, not "we're selling these phones at these prices".

biot3• 15 years ago

I'll sell you an iPhone 6, as long as you're not picky about the product version being written on a sticker.

tvon2• 15 years ago

I'm surprised so many live blogs have gone down considering how tame the rumors leading up to this event have been.

tejaswiy• 15 years ago

Hmm, everything seems pretty expected till now. Dual core processor, better graphics, "4G" support, better camera. Roll out the speech tech and nfc !

alnayyir2• 15 years ago

But is the 4g support included with Verizon service? 3G is my main dislike of my iPhone 4.

joeguilmette• 15 years ago

HDSPA, so Apple gets points for not buying into the 4G marketing bullshit while still of erring next gen mobile bandwidth

al_james• 15 years ago

>Hmm, everything seems pretty expected till now

Except its called iPhone 4S and not iPhone 5!

cpeterso• 15 years ago

The "iPhone 4S" name was a pretty common rumor, so it is not unexpected. Given the iPhone's "tick-tock" release schedule (3G->3GS->4->4S), I was not surprised.

evgen4• 15 years ago

Both GSM & CDMA. This is going to be one of the huge factors for the 4S & 5. If I can now play Verizon, Sprint, & AT&T off against each other then this may be a big, big win for US consumers.

pflats• 15 years ago

This also means that Verizon's iPhones lose one of their biggest downsides, that whole worldwide compatability thing.

evgen4• 15 years ago

Yeah. I wonder how things like carrier lock are going to work on this new model. If I have Verizon service in the US and go to Europe can I drop in a local SIM card and use that? If so what is to prevent me from using that same feature when I am back in the US? Hmmmm....

alexg0• 15 years ago

Think Sprint may still be able to sell that big chunk of phones they committed themselves to. I can definitely see going back to Sprint, if they get reasonable roaming deals, particularly on international data.

tvon2• 15 years ago

I'm having a hard time separating the wheat fromt the chaff in all that camera talk, is anyone familiar with these changes/sensors (since I suspect they're not unique to Apple devices)?

wiredfool• 15 years ago

It's still a phone camera. It's better than it was, but image quality is still not going to be as good as a dedicated camera, even one of a few generations back. It should blow away the ipad2/ipod touch cameras. It may be a noticeable difference from the iphone4, but I wouldn't bet on it.

The best camera is the one you have with you. And on that front, it's a good camera.

anigbrowl2• 15 years ago

The camera was one of the most impressive aspects of the device. For people who are into photography, that's a big step forward.

potatolicious2• 15 years ago

I'm an amateur photog, and I'm excited about the camera:

- backlit sensor = better low-light pictures, with dramatically less noise

- faster lens, hopefully with better clarity (less haziness that's characteristic of phone cameras)... but we'll see how well it actually works out

- and most importantly, fast. I know I hate using my phone's camera since by the time I pull it out and the phone lets me take my first picture, the moment's already passed. The whole "1 second to first picture, 0.5s between shots" I think is going to be HUGE. It's going to get people using their cell phones as cameras a lot more than than they are now.

jrnkntl• 15 years ago

"Remind me to call my wife when I leave for work" - http://imgur.com/Y3Y3s His wife, geofence setup. Blows my mind.

vogonj5• 15 years ago

"my wife" is Almost Certainly* explicitly flagged in his address book, either as an alias or through a "relationship" field. he didn't show you that part. (the same is likely true of the geofence, though a location-aware algorithm could probably do a better job inferring where your work is than who your wife is.)

* a term of art meaning "certainly"

anigbrowl2• 15 years ago

I have no problem with that. This a great demonstration of what Apple does best - optimizing products to fit the needs of most users. Google already has the voice tech in place, but often fails to follow through on the usability front. A perennially annoying example for me is when I'm on the road somewhere, bring up Maps, and ask for directions from wherever-I-am to 'home'; it doesn't know where 'home' is. This is even more annoying, because there is a 'home' tag in Maps, but it doesn't get searched on. Likewise, there's no easy way to tell it that one person is my wife, another person is my business partner, a third person is my nemesis and so on.

Apple are leveraging a culture of paying attention to detail to overcome technical handicaps, but it's hard to quantify or A/B test that, and most firms aren't comfortable with a budget line item called 'magic.'

biot3• 15 years ago

And when you leave the work radius at lunchtime with the cute coworker you're flirting with, you suddenly hear your wife over the in-vehicle bluetooth handsfree.

btucker• 15 years ago

According to the video, he said that Siri knew his wife's name from "a previous conversation". Which seems to indicate that Siri has some learning capability built in.

lamby• 15 years ago

Out of curiousity, why on earth would you need to call your wife every time you left work..?

danssig• 15 years ago

There is a such thing as one-time alarms.

revscat• 15 years ago

If Siri works as advertised, that's... pretty cool.

bemmu• 15 years ago

Extremely skeptical. Perhaps if you speak clearly (sometimes repeating yourself), have a perfect accent and know exactly which phrases it understands.

vogonj5• 15 years ago

educated guesses:

a) Siri won't work at all, or will degrade to something like Voice Control, if the server is unreachable or you're out of coverage; b) all of your dynamic data (address book, calendar, etc.) needs to be synced to iCloud for Siri to see it; c) third-party extensibility won't be available until iOS 6+.

ceejayoz• 15 years ago

Yeah. I remember the Wolfram Alpha video demo - it looked amazing and natural, but when you got to use the real thing 95% of your queries didn't work at all.

thought_alarm• 15 years ago

"Siri, take a memo: Beat up Martin."

Siri: Eat up Martha.

astrodust• 15 years ago

The Newton experience all over again!

evgen4• 15 years ago

No iPhone 5! Some people are seriously losing on their announcement bets.

kahawe• 15 years ago

Much worse, AAPL is going to take a big plunge - no matter how awesome and flashy the 4S features are. After the HUGE pre-event hype and blabla, everyone is only going to take "What, NO iPhone 5????" away from this, sadly.

kls2• 15 years ago

Unfortunately, I have to agree, I am a 3GS owner and was waiting for the 5. The thing that I keep thinking is with this being the first big announcement since Steve left the company they really needed to show the world that they where going to keep hitting home runs. While the 4S is an nice upgrade, it is in no way the home-run I would have expected to show that they are no worse for wear without Steve. I was very surprised when I learned that it would not be a 4G phone, that would have at least been an easy win for getting people to make the upgrade decision. My wife picked up an Atrix almost a year ago and it was 4G. I know the coverage is still growing and there are areas that do not have it, but it is not like 4G is not standard equipment on the higher end Android phones. To me that was the biggest miss.

evandena• 15 years ago

My gut says Sprint will announce the iPhone 5 soon.

jfb4• 15 years ago

Does anybody know if the GSM concept of unlocked has an analog in CDMA? IOW, if I buy my new 4S factory unlocked, can I use it on Verizon OR Sprint? I'm assuming yes, because it really looks like a single SKU, but I don't know.

ben1040• 15 years ago

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_iphone/family/iph... (this is the text of a popup window on the unlocked iPhone page).

The unlocked iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S will not work with CDMA-based carriers such as Verizon Wireless or Sprint.

Sounds like that's a no-go for the 4S. Which sucks because my wife wants to replace her Android phone, but we're not upgrade eligible from Verizon yet. So that means I'm going to have to pay same price as the unlocked phone, but it's going to have the GSM side locked out if I ever want to sell it.

jfb4• 15 years ago

http://www.apple.com/iphone/compare-iphones/

Footnote 2: CDMA available only if iPhone 4S is sold and activated for use on a CDMA network.

Oh well.

scott_s• 15 years ago

Is Siri specific to iPhone 4S, or will it be a part of iOS 5? It sounded like it is only a part of iPhone 4S, but it seems like it's all software. Perhaps the iPhone 4 isn't powerful enough to do the voice recognition seamlessly?

doctoboggan• 15 years ago

One of the live blogs I was following (don't remember which, sorry) confirmed that Siri would be iPhone 4S only.

potatolicious2• 15 years ago

From what I hear the A5 in the 4S has some hardware components not available before - including a hardware DSP and image processor. That's what's powering Siri and the newfangled fast-camera features.

ashbrahma• 15 years ago

No iPhone 5..Bummer!

paraschopra• 15 years ago

Anyone else disappointed with the announcement? Looks like a pretty standard upgrade.

FilterJoe2• 15 years ago

This upgrade reminds me of the upgrade from the Blackberry 9700 to the Blackberry 9780. In both cases: camera is considerably improved, processor and/or memory modestly improved, more interface eye (or ear) candy. It's no wonder that many people seem to be disappointed, given all the associated hype.

The iPhone 4 seemed like a huge step up from prior models to me thanks to a 326 PPI display, a much faster processor, and a variety of other reasons. I guess even Apple acknowledges this given the naming convention of going from 4 to 4s. Not enough of a change to warrant iPhone 5.

danilocampos• 15 years ago

It's odd you reach to Blackberry, here.

This is just like the iPhone 3G > iPhone 3GS transition. Doing a new enclosure every year would be pretty taxing, so they take a year off. Incremental hardware improvements meanwhile. The funny bit is they barely needed to do this much — iPhone 4 was still selling steadily.

alanfalcon• 15 years ago

It has what I want. Improved camera (especially image stabilization in video mode), and faster at loading games (and probably useful apps too). I don't care much about Siri, but then I didn't realize how amazing Maps was on a mobile phone until I had it myself.

I suppose I also had a good idea about what would be announced thanks to MacRumors accurate reporting, so I wasn't let down that the phone is called 4S instead of 5 (besides, I love the iPhone 4 external design).

kls2• 15 years ago

I never used voice recognition on mobile until my wife picked up an Atrix and there was a little mic button on the home screen, I clicked it and said direction to Hatteras Flats and it pulled up Google's turn by turn navigation. From that day on, I have been waiting for that level of voice recognition to come to the iPhone. I would have never though that it would have been such a killer feature and now I feel like I am in the stone ages without it. To the point that I was considering switching if IOS 5 did not have it.

robchez• 15 years ago

most people bought the iPhone 4 on a 24 month contract, those people probably wont by the iPhone 4S due to the high cost of early termination fees for little gain. (of course some people will which is just a bonus).

This cycle is pretty clever as it pretty much guarentees majority of iPhone 4 holders will upgrade to iPhone 5, whilst simaltanously giving a decent bump in sales to people who have had there friends talking up the iPhone 4 for a year a chance to one-up them.

guelo• 15 years ago

But what about the 3GS people that are coming off their 24 months and were waiting for the 5? Those people might start looking to see what Android has to offer.

Jun8• 15 years ago

On a tangent: I miss Steve! These guys may be good but from the photos here most seem to be reading from a prompter screen and they just don't seem to have the look-into-your-eyes "believe me, this is the greatest thing ever" stare that Steve Jobs could do. Also, the black turtleneck may be untouchable, but rumpled blue shirt? Doesn't that shout blue collar corporate manager?

duck• 15 years ago

Seems like apple.com is down hard:

Access Denied

You don't have permission to access "http://www.apple.com/ on this server. Reference #18.cc896783.1317755134.6ee996bd

Edit: That only lasted a minute... it is back up.

biot3• 15 years ago

I'm still getting that. Somewhere, a sysadmin has had better days.

a235• 15 years ago

apple releases their iphones every year, but sales them with a 2year contract. Hmm, it seems like they are forcing you to use outdated hardware.

drieddust3• 15 years ago

I am just wondering what the fuck has happened to Microsoft.Seems like apple picked kinect and ran with it. Gates must be very restless today.

duskwuff• 15 years ago

Kinect? I am confused. I didn't see anything even vaguely related to Kinect in this keynote.

Also, Gates hasn't been working at Microsoft full-time since 2008.

drieddust3• 15 years ago

kinect was the one of the first device to sucessfully use natural language processing for controllerless entertainment which already works pretty well in the context but MS never thought of probably extending and integrating the tech with other products.

http://digitizor.com/2011/06/17/microsoft-kinect-sdk-windows...

Strong point of MS was integration of different technologies but ever since Gates stopped taking interest in MS they have lost it. Now they have uncapitalized half assed implementation of technology laying around in silos.

Note: I am well aware of when Gates stopped working with MS. Even before stopping to work, he stopped taking interest in MS's future vision atleast years before that.

gfodor• 15 years ago

For all you devs here, the GM seed dropped on the iOS dev center today.

SODaniel• 15 years ago

Clearly the most 'non event' keynote from Apple in the last few years.

Apple's 'Let's Talk iPhone' keynote liveblog

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