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By: Kai Mildenberger on Jan 17 2007 at 07:44 AM GMT	A keynote of pre-announcements, but big ones! A review of the session "Opening Keynote" I have attended all of the Macworlds since 1992, but never have heard significant pre-annoouncements from Steve (or really anybody going back to Sculley), but these were huge. AppleTV While I think there's been enough coverage on the iPhone, I can't believe having walked out of the keynote almost forgetting the first hour - AppleTV. Even though there was advanced warning about the device last fall - seeing it in action and hearing the price point was impressive. It really is shaping up to be a device for the non-geeks - appropriately priced - that can bring all the useful features of even the most dedicated hackers into the living room (MythTV, hacked TiVos, running a Mac Mini with FrontRow, MediaCenter, MediaServer...) in a way "you're mother could do it!" I believe we are completely underestimating how this device with it's affiliated services has the power to continue the change in media distribution business. Clearly Steve isn't done doing what he did to the music industry to media overall. We might finally see some interesting convergence between internet video and the living room - imagine Dabble playlists on this device... iPhone (or whatever it will be called by June) The stuff desires are made of! After having purchased and used everything from a HPC, Blackberry and Palm device - the prospect of actually making the pieces we care about work is gigantic! There is no question in my mind that all of my friends (even the technologically challenged) and I will own one of these at the earliest possibility. This thing will be huge. There's only one worry, one element of unease as I roam through MacWorld. All of the demos are actually done on the SAME device. And the only other I found was in a glass cage. Can they really be ready to start shipping in June if all they have produced thus far is a single working model and one mock up (unlike AppleTV which littered the Apple booth)?? We'll see... Oh yes, one more thing: EDGE?? I truly hope that was a mistake and should actually have been HSDPA (3G on GSM)! Otherwise these beautiful features will be "Palm"-slow!
By: David Parmet on Jan 14 2007 at 05:25 PM GMT	iPhone baby! A review of the session "Opening Keynote" we wants one now
By: Salim Ismailsalim on Jan 11 2007 at 06:36 PM GMT	All the stuff....... so much stuff!! A review of the conference overall I've never seen so many accessories in my life. Walked the expo floor and my jaw was on the floor for most of it. Carrier bags and ipod cases up the wazoo! Saw the demo of the iPhone and have to say it's pretty amazing. Not sure the soft keyboard will be up to snuff, but if it is, then it's a killer device.
By: David Parmet on Jan 10 2007 at 03:19 PM GMT	the place for all things Mac A review of the conference overall This show just gets better and better every year. The exhibition hall is packed, the key note rocked and the speakers are all for the most part top notch. And Cheap Trick played last night!!
By: Rohit Khare on Jan 10 2007 at 01:46 PM GMT	After 30 years, still nothing like the real thing... A review of the conference overall Due to a scheduling snafu, I didn't see the keynote, but the repeat demos of iPhone on the show floor, while presented by mere mortals rather than with a charismatic showman's touch, were nonetheless stunning. It's a great way to recharge one's insiprational battery for the year to come! Other interesting sights: a mobile HDTV editing bay built into an RV; an all-Mac-mini colo hosting facility; and even niche applications like 'worship presentation' for megachurches and medical records software for Mac-centric small doctor's offices...
By: David Parmet on Jan 09 2007 at 11:47 PM GMT	Yawn A review of the session "A Q&A on Culture, Filmmaking, Storytelling and Cool Tools" If I wanted 90 minutes of dick jokes, I could watch Clerks again. I liked Clerks and I enjoy all of Kevin Smith's movies but this is Macworld, not the Kevin Smith Show... How does he use Mac's pro tools? What are his thoughts on the increasing use of professional equipment like DV and HD cameras by non-pros? We got none of that. All we got were 90 minutes of dick jokes. Yawn
By: Amy Morgan on Jan 09 2007 at 01:18 PM GMT	It exists A review of the conference overall New Iphone was introduced and it is wicked cool. Cant wait til June when I can buy it
By: Brad Hoffman on Jan 09 2007 at 01:05 PM GMT	Live Macworld Coverage (Posted by Tom Krazit) A review of the conference overall SAN FRANCISCO--Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs is expected to announce a set of new products at his speech at Macworld Tuesday. We're covering his keynote from the floor, so check back here for continuous updates as the news happens. Click here to see photos from the keynote. 10:55--You know Steve and I, we entered into a contractual agreement without ever seeing the design of the phone, Sigman says. And every time I see this, it's just wow. It's really, really cool, Sigman says. I brought with me another company to celebrate, it's the new AT&T. Cingular became a full part of the new AT&T familty. This family will help fulfill the vision of wireline, wireless and video in the ways customers haven't imagined, Sigman says. Sigman says the partnership takes the mobile phone experience to a whole new level. He says it's a multiyear exclusive partnership, only available with Cingular wireless services. This is not an MVNO, whatever that is, Sigman says. Someone shout from the audience: "Is it locked?" Sigman doesn't respond. 10:49--The iPhone will ship in US in June, in Europe in the fourth quarter and in Asia in 2008, he says. Our partner is going to be Cingular, Jobs says, adding that it's the best and most popular network in the country with 58 million subscribers. Cingular is going to be Apple's exclusive partner in the U.S. It's a unique partnership. We're not just going to be selling phones, we're going to be doing innovation together, he says. Apple worked with Cingular on the visual voicemail. That's the first fruit of this collaboration, he says. The iPhone will be sold in Apple and Cingular stores. Cingular CEO Stan Sigman joins Jobs on stage. 10:48--Speaking about the phone's design, Jobs says "multitouch, OS X, more miniaturization than we've ever done." Jobs says Apple filed for over 200 patents for all the inventions in iPhone, and we intend to protect them. "iPhone is like having your life in your pocket," he says. Price: "People spend $499 for an iPod and smart phone. So what should we charge for iPhone? It's got a lot more than just that. We thought long and hard about it. For 4GB model, price at the same $499, with a two-year contract, 8GB model for $599." Avilability: shipping these in June. "Apple is announcing it today, shipping in June, we have to go get FCC approval," he says. 10:41--"It's been great having the two greatest companies on the Web right down the block, Google and Yahoo," Jobs says. "Internet comunicator, iPod and a phone. Let's put them all together and see what you can do in a real life scenario." He starts a demo. Go into iPod, listen to music. Jobs gets a phone call. The music fades out, screen changes, and the ringtone plays. You can ignore it, Jobs says, "but I'll answer it." He puts Phil's picture up on the phone. Phil asks for a photo of Hawaii, Steve pushes the home button, but stays on the call. He goes to photos, and there is a green bar at the top that allows you to go back to the phone. Can e-mail the photo without leaving the call. Still on the call, he is e-mailing the photo. Then he keeps talking. Phil wants to go see a movie. Jobs keeps talking, and browses over to Fandango. He touches the top, goes back to the call and hangs up. Then, the music starts up exactly where it pausd when the call came in. "This is what it's like when you put it all together," Jobs says. How does this stack up? Compared to the Treo, Blackberry, Q, and maybe the Blackjack, it's hard to tell. The difference between the phones that hits home with audience is the Web browsing. Accessories: stereo headphones, and a microphone and switch built right into the headphones. "We also have a bluetooth accessory shipping," Jobs says. Apple has their own bluetooth headset. Battery life: "a lot of these smartphones have low battery life, but we managed to get five hours for talk time, browsing, or video. And 16 hours of audio playback," he says. 10:37--Jerry Yang on stage: "I'm not a board member of Apple, but I'd love to have one of these," he says. "We are really proud at Yahoo to be partnehing on e-mail. It's the first one we're doing, but a variety of other popular services with Apple." Yang says he hopes they can get Yahoo "OneSearch" onto this phone. Mail is a killer app on the phone, he says. "Yahoo is trying to redesign the Internet experience." "It's lke have a Blackberry without the Exchange server." Lastly, we want to be able to take what Apple is doing, reiventing the phone, and we want to do that on the Internet, take great form factors and experiences and UI that we're taking from the Web and translate into a seamless Web experience. 10:35--Google's Eric Schmidt is on stage. "I've had the privilege of joining the board," Schmidt says, and he jokes about merging the companies. "AppleGoo?" "What I liked about the new device and the architecture of the Internet is you can merge without merging. Each company should do the absolutely best thing they can do every time, and I think he's shown that today," Schmidt says. Internet architecture allows you to take the enormous brain trust generated by the Apple design team, and take it with open standards lke the Google Internet stuff, Schmidt says. "Google pushed very hard to partner with others, and especially Apple, the cultures are similar," he says. Steve showed a little of the components, but understand this is a set of data from maps and partners so you can get the full integration. This the first of a whole new generation of data services," he says. You can't think about the Internet without thinking about Yahoo. Have Yahoo search built right in, and of course we also have Yahoo imap e-mail. Jerry Yang joins Steve on stage. 10:32--Cisco calls CNET News.com reporter with a statement about Apple's use of the term "iPhone" for its new product. "Given Apple's numerous requests for permission to use Cisco's iPhone trademark over the past several years and our extensive discussions with them recently, it is our belief that with their announcement today, Apple intends to agree to the final document and public statements that were distributed to them last night and that address a few remaining items we expect to receive a signed agreement today." 10:31--"This is a breakthrough Internet communicator built into the iPhone," Jobs says. He's still calling it "iPhone." "We're very happy with this, push e-mail and almost any other free IMAP or pop services you want to hook up to," he says. "It's the Internet in your pocket." You can't really think about the Internet without thinking about Google, Jobs says. We have Google search built right into the browser, and Google maps, and we've been working very closely with them, he says. Google's Eric Schmidt then joins Jobs on stage. 10:30--Jobs shows off the iPhone's widgets, checks Apple's stock and, believe it or not, it's up. "Now I'm going to show you something truly remarkable, Google Maps on iPhone." You can already get Google Maps on Palm and Windows mobile, and it doesn't appear that the Google iPhone version is any different right now. But you can place a call right from the maps screen. Steve calls Starbucks and orders 4,000 lattes to go. He cancels the order. Can use fingers to zoom in on the map. Can replace the map with a satellite image. Again, I belive that's a standard part of Google Maps for Palm or Windows. 10:25--Jobs gives a demo of how the Web part of the iPhoen works. There is an e-mail inbox, running live on Yahoo inbox e-mail. Photos are built right into the e-mail, online photos, rich text e-mail. iPhone parses out phone numbers. "I can just touch it and I'm going to call this place," Jobs says. "I can look at e-mail from a split view, like how you can preview the e-mail while still scrolling through the inbox, it's real e-mail just like you're used to on your computer." And again, free imap e-mail from Yahoo. There is a touchscreen keyboard to type e-mail. How dirty is that screen going to get? No details yet on the physical specs of the screen, the type of material, etc. Jobs shows Safari running on the mobile device. Jobs is loading the New York Times. Rather than just give you a WAP version or wrapping around, the iPhone is giving you the whole thing. In landscape mode, you can scroll around a Web site just like a real browser. Can zoom out to scroll faster around a big site like the Times, and then click again to zoom in on a Web page. Can have multiple Web pages open, like having Windows open on a desktop screen. "If you've ever used a Web browser on a phone, you know how revolutionary this is," Jobs says. "We are bringing the real Internet onto your phone." 10:19--"We have reinvented the phone," Jobs says. "So, now let's take a look at an Internet communicaitons device." Rich HTML e-mail on a mobile device works with any pop or imap client, Jobs says. Safari is running on the iPhone. It is the first fully usable HTML browser on a phone, according to Jobs. Google maps is built in. "We have widgets," he says. The iPhone communicates, automatically switches to Wi-Fi if it detects a signal. That's an amazing concession from whatever carrier plans to carry this, still no details on that. Jobs highlights Yahoo mail, the biggest mail service in the world, with 250 million users. "Today we are announcing that they are going to provide free push imap e-mail to all iPhone customers. That's like having a Blackberry iPhone. It pushes your Yahoo e-mail right to the iPhone." 10:14--Jobs moves onto a demo of SMS texting. "Now I go to the SMS icon in the upper left corner, and push it. I can do multiple sessions, can be alerted to multiple messages, and iPhone sets it up in an Internet-style reply e-mail. There is a touchscreen keypad with autocorrection. Push the buttons with your fingers and send the message and go. The keypad disappears. Photos--"I have a two megapixel camera, and the coolest photo management app ever. I can just scroll thorugh photos with my finger," Jobs says. "To go through pictures, I just swipe them from side to side to scroll through photos. "You can take pictures and make them bigger, can take fingers and adjust the size of the picture, zoom in and edit photos with your fingers, move the sizing around, you can also choose to make a photo my wallpaper. That's part of our phone package for iPod," Jobs says. 10:10--Jobs gives a demonstration of how the phone works. He shows four things--the phone app, photos, calendar and texting. Users will scroll through contacts the same way they scroll through music. "If I want to call somebody, I scroll around, and push his mobile number." Jobs is calling Jony, Apple's design chief. It's the first public phone call with iPhone, Jobs says. Phil Schiller calls, and Jobs shows how the call does three-way calling. Jony: "It's not too shabby, is it?" Users can add contacts from a recently-called list, can edit favorites, move people around, delete and add entries. The iPhone lists the recent calls as red if missed. "If I'm real last-century," Jobs says, "I can push the keypad," and he calls 408-996-1010. iPhone users can see who called, and go right to the message without having to listen to the first five voicemails. There is an Al Gore voicemail, and a Tim Cook (Apple's COO) voicemail waiting. Users can listen in any order, Jobs says. "I've got voicemail how I want to listen to it, in any order I want to listen to it," he says. 10:05--What's the iPhone's killer app? Making calls, says Jobs. "People use their recents as their address book; we want to let you use contacts as never before. You can sync your PC with your Mac like never before." The iPhone will use "visual voicemail." "Wouldn't it be great if you had six voicemails, and you didn't have to listen to five first before listening to the sixth?" Jobs says. It is a quad-band GSM/EDGE phone. "We decided to go with the most popular international standard," Jobs says. "And of course, we have Wi-Fi and bluetooth." 10:03--Jobs says the iPhone has a great album view that shows all the album art, and I've also got videos. "It's a video iPod and a regular iPod, plus a phone. And it's widescreen when you hold it in landscape mode, on its side." There are touch controls on the video iPod as well--play, pause, etc. The phone is a candy bar shape. There don't appear to be any moving parts; all the buttons are touch-screen except for the home button. "It's the best iPod we've ever made," Jobs says." Jobs says he was giving a demo to somebody inside Apple who had never seen it before, and they told him, "you had me at scrolling." 9:59--Jobs keeps referring to Apple's phone as the "iPhone," even though Cisco owns the trademark. There is a slider bar switch above the home button, four touch-screen buttons to activate the iPod. Users can hit the home button to go back home. Want to scroll through songs? Touch the screen and flick toward the top of the screen, or the bottom. Select songs by touching them. Flip the album art for the track listing, with a button in the upper right hand corner. Turn the phone into landscape mode, and it shows you all your albums in the cover flow applications. He's really got to get some new demo music. I've heard way too much Green Day at Apple keynotes. 9:56--The iPhone's screen will be 160 pixels per inch. "It's gorgeous," Jobs says. There is only one button, the home button. It's really thin--11.6mm, thinner than the Q or Blackjack. And we've got controls on the side," Jobs says. The iPhone has a 2-megapixel camera, iPod headphones fit right in, there is a place for sim card, and it has a wake/sleep switch. A proximity sensor senses your face and turns off the iPod and turns on phone when you bring it up to your face. And ambient light sensor switches the light based on the available light. It has got an accelerometer for portrait vs. landscape. "It's an iPod; you can touch your music," Jobs says. "And it's got cover flow." 9:49--"We've been very lucky to have brought a few revolutionary user interfaces to the market--the mouse, the clickwheel, and now multitouch," Jobs says. "We're going to build on top of the interface with software, software on top of mobile phones is like baby software. Today we're going to show you a software breakthrough, software that's 5 years ahead of what's on any other phone," Jobs says. The iPhone runs OS X. "Why do you need such a sophisticatd OS on a mobile device? Because it's got everything we need. It's got power management, the mobile multitasking that has let us create desktop class applications, not the crippled stuff you find on most phones." "We love software...Alan Kay, people who are really serious about software should make their own hardware." "We're bringing breakthrough software to a mobile device for the first time. The second thing we're doing is learning from the iPod, syncing with iTunes. People know how to sync media onto their iPod. You're going to do the same thing with iPhone," Jobs says. "iTunes is going to sync all your media on the iPhone, but it also syncs a ton of data, already can get contacts and calendar on the iPod, and all that stuff can be moved over to iphone automatically." "Set up the phone in iTunes, just like an iPod or Apple TV. It is just like an iPod: Charge and sync." 9:48--"We're going to start with legendary user interface," Jobs says. "The problem with the standard ones is the keyboard; they are there whether you need them to be there or not, control buttons that are fixed in plastic. Every application wants a set of buttons optimized for it." "So what do you do? It doesn't work, because the buttons and controls can't change." "How do you solve this? Turns out we have solved it; we solved it in computers 20 years ago," Jobs says. "A bitmap screen, and a pointing device; we solved it with a mouse." How are we going to take it to a device? We're going to get rid of all these buttons, and just make a giant screen. Who wants a stylus? Nobody wants a stylus, so let's not use it. We're going to use the pointing device we're all born with. We have invented a new technology called 'multitouch.' You don't need a stylus, and it is far more accurate than any pointing device that's shipped. And boy, have we patented it!" 9:45--"We are calling it iPhone," Jobs says. "Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone, and here it is." Jobs shows a spoof of an iPod with a old-style rotary phone. Much laughter. Joke, joke. Jobs says he will talk about "a category of things called smart phone, which combine a bunch of things." "Problem is," says Jobs, "they aren't so smart, and they aren't so easy to use." Smart phones are definitely a little smarter, he says, but they are harder to use. 9:43--The second big announcement is a revolutionary mobile phone, which is a breakthrough Internet communications device, according to Jobs. 9:42--"This is a day I've been looking forward to for two and a half years. Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. You're very fortunate if you get to work on one of these for your career. In 1984, we introduced the Macintosh. It didn't just change Apple; it changed the whole computer industry," Jobs says. "In 2001, we introduced the Apple iPod, which changed the entire music industry," Jobs says. "Today, we're introduing three revolutionary products of this class." The first one is a widescreen iPod with touch controls. 9:40--He's demonstrating content synced from computer to Apple TV. He demonstrates what happens when Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, comes over with a notebook. It can connect to a new iTunes, running on Schiller's machine. He has to type in a PIN, and Jobs can load Schiller's MacBook and look at Schiller's TV shows. You can watch movies from an somebody else's notebook on your iTV. But how is that DRMed? It doesn't appear to allow you to transfer content between friends, just stream. The price is $299. Apple will be taking orders today, and shipping them in February. 9:37--Jobs gives a demonstration of how Apple TV will work. It can stream video directly over the Internet to TV and you can control it with a remote to browse for shows or trailers on the iTunes store. Jobs is showing demos of movies, TV shows and music. There are album covers, movie posters and TV commercials floating around the interface as you select a song, TV show, or whatever from the menu. You can put photos, as well, on your TV, stream them over a wireless network or move them to Apple TV. 9:31--Apple TV will allow users to stream content from up to five computers, and autosync from one computer. "Just like you set up an iPod, set up a TV. The 10 most-watched movies on Apple TV, for example." TV shows can be set to automatically stream to Apple TV and reside there on the hard drive when you purchase them. If you like Lost, you can set it to download every Lost episode to the Apple TV when you purchase it. Other videos you can choose to keep on your Mac or PC. "You can also stream from up to five computers, watch on Apple TV but not store on the hard drive, like if your neighbor comes over," Jobs says. 9:28--Jobs introduces what has been known as the iTV. It is now called "Apple TV," consisting of the Apple logo, then "TV". Jobs describes it as a way to enjoy your content on your TV. Users can wirelessly transmit the content to an Apple TV from a PC or Mac, according to Jobs. "I'm going to use a Mac," he says. Jobs says Apple TV will use the same hookups as we saw in September and will have 720p high-definition video. "It's got a 40GB hard drive, up to 50 hours of video, and comes in handy for something I'm going to show you," Jobs says. Apple TV will use 802.11n, the new draft Wi-Fi standard. And it's got an Intel processor in it, but he doesn't say which one. 9:26--Jobs talks about Microsoft's Zune as a new competitor to the iPod. "How did they do?" Jobs asks. Then he cites data for November, which was the Zune's launch month. The Zune grabbed 2 percent market share, according to Jobs. The iPod had 62 percent market share, he says citing NPD. A Zune goes up in flames, and the crowd titters. Jobs shows off new iPod ads: the same silhouette ads of people dancing around. 9:23--"We are the fifth largest music reseller in the U.S.," Jobs says. "Because of the growth of iTunes, we have now passed Amazon; we are now No. 4." "You can guess who our next target may be: it's Target." TV shows--we have sold 50 million TV shows on iTunes. Movies--(the) pioneering partner we had with TV shows was Disney. We have sold 1.3 million movies in the first four months, which I think has exceeded all of our expectations." Jobs announces Apple's new partner will be Paramount. "They have some awesome movies, all six Star Trek movies," he says to laughs. "We are going go be moving up to 250 movies on iTunes; we hope to add more movies as other studios throw in with us," he says." 9:21--"2006 was an awesome year for the Mac," Jobs says. "But that's all we're going to talk about the Mac today." Jobs gives an update on Apple's music business. "We've got iPods. A few things about iTunes--we have crossed a major milestone; we have sold over 2 billion songs on iTunes. iTunes sales were really up this year. It took us three years to get to 1 billion; we got our second billion in a year." "We're selling over 5 million songs a day on iTunes." 9:19--Jobs references retiring Microsoft exec Jim Allchin's oft-cited quote, in which he said he'd buy a Mac if he didn't work at Microsoft. A Vista ad is shown on screen, with the Mac and PC guys who've starred in Apple's most recent ad campaign. The "PC guy" is in a hospital gown, scared about major surgery. "Mac," he says, "if I don't come back, I want you to have my peripherals." 9:17--"We said we'd do Intel in 12 months; we did in 7. Beautiful, seamless transition of OS X for Intel processors. Rosetta software created to run PPC apps on Intel processors," Jobs says. "We didn't do this alone; we did it with a lot of folks. Our new colleagues at Intel helped us. Thank you very much." "We've had an extremely succesful year, and I want to thank our users very much," Jobs says. "We are pleased to report that Macs are selling through all channels, over half are selling to people who have never owned a Mac." 9:15--Steve Jobs comes on stage to James Brown's "I Got You, (Feel Good)." He's wearing his traditional outfit, turtleneck. "We're going to make some history together today," he says. 9:07 a.m. PST--We're awaiting Steve Jobs here at Macworld, a little past 9 a.m. People were lined up by the hundreds in the pre-dawn hours to get a prime seat for Jobs' speech in which he's expected to discuss an Apple-designed phone, the company's iTV product, and who knows what else. We'll bring it to you live as Jobs presents at Macworld 2007.