Steve Jobs live -- Apple's "The beat goes on" special event
By Ryan Block 
posted September 5th 2007 12:57PM
posted September 5th 2007 12:57PM
9:20AM PDT - They kept everyone outside a little longer than we would have liked, but they're finally admitting. This is the Moscone West -- we're assuming the huge hall Steve launched the iPhone in back in January.
Hold me closer, tiny dancer
9:32 - We're upstairs, the press is gathering. All the usual suspects are here; Mossberg just cruised up. This event space seats thousands, so we're a little surprised Steve's doing an event here for just a few hundred journalists. We're expecting a lot of empty seats... or a Cirque du Soleil performance on the open floor.
9:55am - It's pretty well full up, but definitely not crowded to the brim. White Stripes, Alicia Keys, cameras on cranes and booms to film the event, all the familiar sights and sounds.
9:57am - "Good morning ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this special Apple event. We'd like everyone to take a moment to turn off ALL electronic devices." Apparently this special privilege is reserved for Stevie, and Stevie alone. Well, this isn't an airplane, and if they think we're NOT going to liveblog this, they've got another thing coming. But yeah, we'll def switch off our ringers.
9:57am - "Good morning ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this special Apple event. We'd like everyone to take a moment to turn off ALL electronic devices." Apparently this special privilege is reserved for Stevie, and Stevie alone. Well, this isn't an airplane, and if they think we're NOT going to liveblog this, they've got another thing coming. But yeah, we'll def switch off our ringers.
10:01am - Lights are dimming, here we go! Music's over, lights go up, Steve takes the stage!
10:02am - Rounds of applause and cheering. And more. "Thank you." He's grinning. "Today we get to talk about music, so let's start with iTunes." "iTunes is a pretty amazing phenomenon." Facts and figures: 600 million copies of iTunes distributed. Over 3 billion songs bought on iTunes. "We're pretty amazed at this." Giggles. "This is the number one music store in all 21 countries we operate in."
10:06am - Big applause. "We're going to do ringtones in our own special way. Of course these are for the iPhone. What we want: rather than let someone else make ringtones, we people to be able to make their own." Build your own from songs bought in iTunes, 500k participating songs...
10:07am - "Our ringtones are going to cost just $.99 in addition to the song." Psh! You have to pay a second time to use a purchased song as a ringtone?!
10:08am - "Here's how it works... when you plug in your iPhone a new column will pop up with bells -- that shows how many songs you can make ringtones out of." Any segment up to 30s long, fade ins/outs. "When you're ready to buy, push the buy button and for 99c you have a ringtone." Demo time.
10:09am - "I like Aretha Frankin's Respect -- I can just tell this is going to make a great ringtone. I can put it on my iPhone, make it my default ringtone. I'm going to assign this one for when my wife calls..." laughter.
10:10am - Steve's grooving to R-E-S-P-E-C-T on stage. "There we go, that's what I want, and I'm going to just buy this ringtone right now." The clip appears in the ringtones folder along with other clips of music Steve didn't mind buying twice.
10:12am - "You can assign it as your default ringtone, or to your favorite people when they call... custom ringtone maker built in, over half a million participating songs, sync 'em right on your iPhone. We're going to turn this on next week. You'll need the new version of iTunes we're going to ship tonight. So that's the first thing today." Applause.
10:13am - "Let's start out easy... iPod shuffle. Refresh for this product. Holiday 2007 we're going to give it some new colors, when you see these in person you're going to love them. We also have something called the PRODUCT(RED) nano..."
"Games. More storage, and a full metal design. We're introducing a new nano here today... let me show it to you." It's the fatty!
10:16am - "It's incredibly tiny, this is the new nano, it's incredibly thin. It's REALLY nice." Huge applause. "Let me show you some bigger pictures of it... comes in beautiful colors. So what's the video like? New nano: larger 2-inch screen, it's going to look the same as it did on the iPod video, it's the same QVGA resolution. We've achieved this with a screen with the highest pixel density we've ever shipped."
10:17am - "We've also got an enhanced UI. It's going to show you album artwork floating by. When you're on videos... photos... it will even show you what you're going to get when going to extras. And we've got Cover Flow. Take your thumb, roll it around the wheel, it looks really nice. It's pretty stunning, all in such a tiny device. We're really, really happy with this."
10:18am - "We're also including 3 games bundled in with the nano. Let me show you one now, it's called Vortex." Demo time -- it's basically Arkanoid made circular. "We've also done some other games we're selling on iTunes."
Demoing EA's Sudoku game.
10:20am - "Isn't that incredible? All in a product this big. Video, new UI with Cover Flow, games... let's take a look at the new iPod nano." Demo time again, Beatles album artwork in screen. He does this every time!
He's scrolling in Cover Flow -- it looks decent, but a bit choppy and slow. Not super surprising considering the nano doesn't exactly have a lot of horsepower under the hood. Don't expect the iPhone Cover Flow experience, people!
10:21am - "It's that simple to browse your music collection." Doing video now. "I love Jon Stewart, I hope all of you watch his show. It's the best place to get the news every day." Showing the John Hodgman clip on net neutrality, trying to get Hodgman to admit to being a PC. Highlarious.
"These new nanos have left our factories, they've shipped and will be in our stores by this weekend."
10:27am - "A little video for everyone, that's what we set out to do with the new nano. We hope you love it as much as we do... That brings us to the iPod. The iPod... it's got a... it's got a funny name. It's got a funny name. It's time to give it a name: we're calling it the iPod Classic because it's the original iPod." Ha!
"When we introduced the iPhone in Jan, we said it was the best iPod ever. and iPhone owners agree with us, it's incredible with its multi-touch interface, it is the best iPod ever. People have been asking us when we're going to bring this technology to the iPod. The answer is we're going to do it today. And this is what the product looks like." It's a friggin iPhone!
It's called the iPod Touch.
10:32am - "It's the same size screen as the iPhone, but it's even thinner. It's 8mm thin. Unbelievable. The new iPod touch. It's one of the 7 wonders of the world." Laughter.
10:33am - "It features our revolutionary multi-touch interface that you've come to know and love on the iPhone. If you've used an iPhone you'll feel at home, it's exactly the same. Scroll through the artists with a flick of your finger. Turn it into a landscape position, it goes into Cover Flow, it's just magical."
10:34am - "All on this 8mm device. Let's look at video... all on this gorgeous 3.5-inch widescreen display. And photos... just like the iPhone this is the best way to share photos on a portable device. Ever. Flick through them, pinch them to make them larger or smaller."
Demo time!
Steve's browsing by Cover Flow -- note: it has WiFi! The WiFi meter is up at the top where it would be on the iPhone.
10:37am - Steve's watching, um, Wild Hogs. He's not having a mid-life crisis, too, is he?
10:38am - "Let's take a look at photos here... it's great, let's go into an album... I can just go like this, flick through these photos. There's just never been a better way to share photos with friends on the go. It's sooo nice. Turn it back. Boom." Icons: calendar, contacts, clock, calc, settings, music, videos, photo..."I showed you the clean side... I was keeping a secret. We've built in WiFi to the iPod touch." The antenna looks, um, bad.
10:39am - 802.11b/g -- "Others have done this and it's failed. We understand why it's failed, and we know what to do make it successful. Well, what's the problem with WiFi? Well, part of the problem is getting onto WiFi... you may be fine at home and the office, but anywhere in between can be challenging."
10:40am - "You may log in but you'll get a screen. Even walking through Stanford University you get a login page... so you can build in the hardware but you can't get the network [without the page]. So what do you do about that? We're going to add an application to the touch: the Safari web browser."
10:41am - This really is the phone-less iPhone. "But besides being able to log into WiFi, you get an incredible web browser! It is the best web browser on any mobile device, and it's built in to the iPod touch."
10:42am - "We're very, very excited about this. First time EVER on a music player to have a browser built in." Uh, totally not true: look at Archos. "Why stop there?" YouTube's on the Touch as well.
Looking on the NYT. "We can go over here... boom." Aw, it was a little boom that time.
10:45am - Bookmarked videos... "You get the idea, this gives you a feeling for what Safari and YouTube are like on the new iPod touch. We've built WiFi in and we've made it USABLE. We're REALLY excited about this."
10:46am - Connector on the bottom, but no speakers. "This is a worldwide product, the first touch product Apple's going to ship outside the US, it's going to be shipping all around the world."
"The battery life is fantastic: 22 hours audio, 5 hours video playback. All in something this thin. It's... it's... amazing to me. The new iPod touch."
10:48am - So, 8GB is $299... the price for the 16GB is $399." Less applause on the second one. "Both models are available in just a few weeks... they'll be shipping this month."
10:49am - Not shabby -- and thankfully no more Orba Squara iPhone music. But there is one more thing... if you'll bear with us for a few more minutes.
Four buttons: featured, top tens, search, downloads... "If you see something you like, tap it, free preview of the song." "You are now downloading the song... when it's done you can listen to it on your iPod touch, and it syncs back up to iTunes." Applause.
10:52am - "You can search for anything in the entire iTunes store. You can search for any artist, any song name, any album name, preview it, and if you love it go buy it. This is the new iTunes WiFi music store. Let me show it to you now."
10:53am - "Demo time: This is live coming over WiFi. I love John Lennon... so I'm going to buy this. It's now downloading... it takes a few seconds and once it's downloaded I can go to the downloads playlist and I can play it with album art and everything else. This is all live."
"Isn't this incredible?" Applause and cheers.
10:54am - He plays a wacky R&B track: "Ooook." Chuckles. Now he's listening to Coco -- "That's now being bought, as you can see. I want to search for something, so of course I'm going to search for Dylan. Live search comes back from the store...
10:55am - "WiFi, as you may know, is faster than any 3G cellular network, so it's really fast." Zing!
10:56am - "So, not so bad for the new iTunes WiFi music store." Applause. "The new music store will be available internationally in every one of those 22 countries Apple operates in. We're gonna do something else, too: we're gonna bring it to the iPhone." Big applause.
10:58am - "I can't tell you how much pleasure it brings me... we have a GREAT partnership with Starbucks we're announcing today. We love Starbucks. It's an incredible phenomenon in our culture. We want to combine our great iPods and our love of music and their great coffee and their great love of music."
Demo time. "So they just built a Starbucks back stage." Laughter. "They're playing a KT Tunstall song... I can go in here and preview it."
11:03am - "Who would have thought that a coffee company could win a Grammy? Let alone 8, when we co-produced with Concord Ray Charles's last album."
11:04am - He's going on about how this is going to transform the marketplace. Dude, let's not delude ourselves here. It's big, but it's not that big.
11:07am - It's exclusive with iTunes -- we wonder how T-Mobile feels about partnering indirectly with Apple. Ok, rollout plan: 5800 WiFi-enabled stores nationwide. Starting October 2nd: New York and Seattle. 600 stores, followed up in November with 350 stores in SF.
"We think this is going to set a lot of peoples' worlds on fire. And I'm going to include the iPhone, because as we've said, it's the best iPod ever."
11:12am - "But we want to get even more aggressive with this. Take a look at the iPhone. You know, the surveys are in: the customer satisfaction numbers on the iPhone are off the charts. They're higher from iPhone owners than any Apple product. Ever. They LOVE them. We want to make the iPhone even MORE affordable for even more people."
"So we're going to do something about that today. We're on track to ship our 1 millionth iPhone this month -- to get ready for the holidays here's what we're going to do. It's clear customers want the 8GB model -- it's not going to sell for 599 anymore.
"We want to put iPhones in a lot of stockings." But what about the 4GB? Does that mean it's being discontinued?
11:13am - Applause... "A lot of people at Apple have worked on these products. Some are here today, some are watching from our campus in Cupertino. I'd like those folks to stand up..." Wow, this is like half the audience.
11:16am - Her drum machine messes up: "Technology, eh?"
11:19am - KT's performing on stage.
11:21am - KT: "I'm very much looking forward to the 'iLoop pedal'." Waaah. "It's fantastic that Steve Jobs is making it more fun to pay for music than steal it!"
11:22am - Looks like that's it! We're out of here!
When will they give us the ability to CUSTOMIZE what meta data from the song is displayed on the 'now playing' screen???
it annoys me to death that i can't see what a song is rated by simply glancing at the screen.
being able to display the song's year, etc on the 'Now Playing' screen would be fantastic too.
come'on already!!!
Wow, Wow, Wow.
Apple just keep pulling it out of the bag, with one amazing product after another, year on year. It is just amazing to think that some years ago that they were an almost failing company. And in the space of less than a year they release some of the most revolutionary products they have ever done. Fair enough the iPod Touch is just an iPhone without the phone, but who cares, its gorgeous, and I want one!!!!
I wouldn't have minded one with the touchscreen and 160 GB... at 16GB max it's storage is really limited for those of us with 200GB+ music/video collections. Why not make a thicker touch version with a hard drive? I guess that's coming eventually - I just want it now!
The iPod Touch disappoints me because his poor 16 GB space. It should be 30 GB
Uh..did Steve just say Starbucks make great coffee? That's not just stretching the RDF, that's breaking it into pieces and pissing all over it
Wifi Store for iPhone yay!
Really weak... I mean, I've got 60GB on my G5 and about 150GB of music alone. I wanted to buy two of the ipod touch, one for me, one for my fiance... Maybe I'll buy her the new classic, but there's no way I'd waste my money on 16GB of storage... Talk about useless.
160GB of music??? im sorry, i dont believe you
160GB of music??? im sorry, i dont believe you
I've got nearly 130gig on my G4, its around 18,000 songs. I tend to rip at 320kbps - big music collections aren't usually at 128 ya know ...
Screw you, my namesake. 150GB of music isn't hard to achieve, especially if you prefer mp3 format.
"160GB of music??? im sorry, i dont believe you"
Well, believe away, buddy. I encode everything at 256, and haven't even ripped all my CD's. I'd be willing to bet that there are more than a few poeple here that clock in waaaay over 160GB. Add video to that, and 160 isn't much at all. Since I spend roughly 12 hours a week on a plane, and a good portion of the rest of the week in my office, I want as much as possible with me. I guess Archos will be getting my money. Then I won't have to convert everything to Apple's lame formats either...
My Archos 605 fits just fine in my front jeans pocket, granted I don't wear hipster huggies, but I don't wear totally baggy either.
so does it have the same touch keyboard as the iphone too?
Awww wtf. I was hoping free WiFi access at Starbucks for those with the Touch. This blows chunks.
I realise it was a long shot, but when SJ said "we've been working on this for two "years I thought... wow a far-off tangent but... Logic Pro Studio.
Instead, we got a shitty cup of coffee.
Lame
Actually, I work at a Starbucks, and you'd be damn surprised how many times people will walk up to the counter to ask what song was playing.
He lost me at the ringtones.
400? I'll spend my 400 on a 605. 10x the storage and codecs. Even if there was no 605, 16GB for 400 is no go, no matter the interface.
Totally agree.
Most important thing is to keep vomiting up comments no one ever is going to read
I dont need a Starbucks store button, ipod users need free wifi in starbucks
that kinda sucks, but i guess even the radio rumor was sort of right in the end, good device, but SSD capacity needs to catch up, lol
wow!!! starbucks songs!!! next they need to add this feature for all elevator music!!!
dont all starbucks only play that paul mccartney album?
not that an impressive feature then
haha
is there any firmware update for ipod video? I want the new UI with cover flow
how does the iTouch compare in size (physically) to the old Nano? Because at that storage size, it's basically an old Nano with video.
Separate note - what are the possibilities of streaming your iTunes collection from home over WiFi onto the iTouch? If you could do that, easily, it might alleviate some of the storage capacity concerns.
yea because a majority of my time spent listening to my ipod is in my own home
maybe you didn't get my question - it wasn't "can you sit on your couch and listen to your iTunes collection through your iTouch over WiFi." It was "Can I sit in some cafe' that has free WiFi and listen to my iTunes collection that is sitting on a computer in my house, connected to the net, through the iTouch's WiFi feature." Basically, can I shoutcast my iTunes collection over the web so I can access it anywhere, anytime, through the iTouch (assuming I have WiFi access)? That would be a nice-to-have.
GREAT Starbucks feature, despite the snarky Engadget editorializing.
Agreed.
People with small minds that don't see the implications of the feature.
I wish I could get a direct video feed without all the commentary.
Buy the song playing in Starbucks? That's about stupid. Why not give me unlimited iPhone/iPod wireless while I sit in Starbucks? That might entice me.
How about starbucks offers free wifi to any iphone or ipod touch owner? I mean who wants to buy the friggin music they play in starbucks?
God NO, this is terrible ! I really hoped for the iPod Touch, but damn, why is it only 16 Gb I wanted 30 gig for that money
Um - despite what you think about the Starbucks feature (which I personally would never use) - Apple just created a new advertising segment: sponsorships pushed wirelessly to your digital device as variable product "feature." Genius. Won't be long before you can download and install similar apps from McD's or anything else and wirelessly pay for something direct from Paypal via your iPod.
CRAP! Is anyone else as annoyed as I am at the stupid commentary this a-hole of a "blogger" keeps injecting into his coverage???
I think you don't understand what a "blog" is for
Go find another blog then.....or start your own and STFU and GBTW.
I couldn't care less about the touch, but I'm drooling over the 160 gb ipod. And I'm glad they chose to keep the "classic" form factor with the scroll wheel. Wouldn't want to fuss with a touchscreen at all.
So.... anybody want to buy a 5.5 gen 80 gig ipod?
hmm... maybe.. so now, at the end of the day, what exactly is the diff between your 80gb 5.5 gen ipod and the new 80gb 6th gen ipod classic? And what's a fair price with the 80gb 6th gen ipod classic costing $250?
starbucks is for yuppies. pinkberry too. bitches all.
How about
"Free WiFi access at all Starbucks!"
??!
"CRAP! Is anyone else as annoyed as I am at the stupid commentary this a-hole of a "blogger" keeps injecting into his coverage???"
This is why I still don't hold bloggers at the same level as journalists, despite whatever puffed-up delusions they have about themselves. I hope this isn't the future of journalism.
Can't stand the editorializing of Ryan Block - I'm exiting your live feed and going on over to SlashGear. Adios!
Big props to NetStumbler.com for getting the Starbucks deal and iTunes for Wi-Fi rumors correct! I didn't see that on any rumor site.
Don't care about Starbucks but love this idea of micro marketing. Walk into a store, show you iPod digital discount. Boom...Save money and time at the checkout.
How crap is that Starbucks thing. I was thinking it was going to be like, when you popped into starbucks with you ipod touch then you got free wifi access or simething like that - christ even a starbucks branded ipod would be better than "ooh, whats the tune???"
Pointless.
I was considering buying an iPod Touch until he announced it only went up to 16GB. That seems very limited.
Furthermore, the YouTube application? Starbucks music connection? I never use YouTube, I don't like Starbucks. I know this is justmy opinion, but talk about niche marketing.
I'll be surprised if the iPod Touch becomes more popular than the iPod Classic.
The new iPod Nano (aka fatty) comes out the winner IMO.
Thats a terrible winner indeed.
Disappointment for everyone.