San Francisco — Steve Jobs announced the new 3G iPhone at Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference today.
After a long presentation of the new development tools and corporate features that the phone’s updated operating system, "iPhone 2.0," will support, Jobs finally got to the details about the next-generation phone that has been rumored for months. To wit:
- According to Jobs the new handset’s 3G data capabilities will enable it to access the Internet 2.8 times faster than the current iPhone can.
- The price has dropped too. The 8GB version will be available for $199 while a 16GB model will be offered at $299. The 16GB model will also be available in white.
- The 3G iPhone will be offered in more countries over the next few months. Apple plans on rolling it out to a total of 25 different nations including Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Denmark, Australia, and Japan.
- The shape will be slightly different; according to Jobs it’s "a bit thinner and more rounded at the edges than the previous version." It will also sport a molded plastic back.
- Battery life is also supposed to be improved with a standby time of 300 hours and 10 hours of talk time.
- It will also have GPS, which will work in conjunction with the iPhone’s existing ability to triangulate via Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers to track a user’s location.
For a head-to-head comparison of the old iPhone, new iPhone 3G, and the forthcoming BlackBerry 9000, check out our sister publication, Portfolio, for its BlackBerry vs. iPhone chart.
In a break with Apple custom, the 3G iPhone is not immediately available. It will be rolling out in the US and 22 other countries on July 11th.
Jobs and Apple executives also showed a demo of Apple’s new MobileMe service, which will includes web-based email, contact management, calendars, photo sharing and file storage/sharing, plus tools for automatically keeping that information in sync between multiple computers, an iPhone and the web. And the company reiterated details of its software development kit (SDK) and support for corporate customers, which it first showed in March.
Scroll down to read the rest of today’s keynote as it happened on our liveblog.
Wired.com is covering the Steve Jobs keynote live from the MosconeCenter West in San Francisco. Refresh this page for the latest updatesfrom the conference center, since we’ll be updating it frequentlythroughout Jobs’ presentation.
We’re in! Here we go:
9:56: The Wired crew is in the Moscone auditoriumnow, where Apple is rocking old-school rock’n’roll — Chuck Berryinstead of Coldplay, Bo Diddley instead of U2.
No Beatles today.
The auditorium is filling up with broadcast media, bloggers,journalists, and — oh yeah — developers. It’s a capacity crowd, andthe buzz is building.
It’s 10 a.m., and there’s no sign of Steve yet. There’s a cheer from back in the crowd, though — who could it be?
Unclear what’s going on but everyone is standing up, looking toward the back.
We just got word that there’s a shipment of boxes at the local Apple store — with the word "Jaguar" printed on them.
Here they are:
Back to the Keynote…
Jerry Lee Lewis’ "Great Balls of Fire" ends and Jobs comes on stage to applause.
He’s dressed in his trademark black mock-turtleneck and blue jeans.
We’ve got a record 5,200 attendees here, Jobs says, mentioning thatthe conference is sold out. There are 147 sessions, 62 of which are dedicated tothe iPhone.
"So. Let’s get started," Jobs says.
There are 3 parts to Apple, he says: the Mac, the music business and the iPhone, showing a picture of a 3-legged stool.
Scott Forstall and Phil Schiller are going to talk this morning.
Bertrand Serlet will give a peek at Snow Leopard — the next OS X — after lunch. (We’re not invited to that, sadly.)
iPhone 2.0: "A giant leap forward for the iPhone."
In the 95 days since the SDK was launch, more than 250,000 people have downloaded the kit.
More than 25,000 people have applied to the paid developer program,which lets you actually test & debug on an iPhone. Four thousand have been accepted into the program.
iPhone 2.0 software has 3 parts: enterprise support, the SDK and some new end-user features.
Enterprise stuff first: Will let iPhone users connect wirelessly to Microsoft Exchange.
10:12AM
Will push e-mail, calendars, contacts, global discovery of newExchange servers, remote address book lookup, and the iPhone can beremotely wiped if you lose it.
Plus security support, including Cisco IPsec, WPA 2 and more.
35 percent of the Fortune 500 has participated in the beta program, Jobs says.
Including the top 5 commercial banks, 6 of the top 7 airlines, 8 of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies….
And lots of universities.
Jobs rolls a video touting the iPhone’s enterprise features.
It’s got chief tech guys from Walt Disney, Genentech and the Army, talking about how they’re using the 2.0 beta.
"Release 2.0 of the iPhone software is very well integrated with Microsoft Exchange using ActiveSync," the Disney guy says.
New feature alert: Contact search!
The Army guy is talking about being able to reach any of 2 millionusers in his domain, and while he’s talking, the video shows someoneusing the iPhone’s contact search feature.
That’s a long-awaited enhancement.
10:15 AM
The Disney guy was especially enthusiastic — he better be, considering that Jobs owns 20 percent of his company.
Scott Forstall comes onstage to talk about the SDK.
"You, as a developer, can build applications for the iPHone the same way we do," Forstall says.
Core OS: the iPhone uses the exact same OS X kernel as the Mac, he says.
Core services: includes a database API (using SQL Lite), location services and more.
A Media layer, including support for fast 3-D graphics.
And Cocoa Touch, a multitouch user interface.
All of these details were explained 3 months ago at the SDK launch.
Forstall is going on to tout the wide range of developer tools the company offers.
Now he’s showing a demo of how to create an iPhone application.
This is one of those demos that are set up the way TV cooking showsare: It looks super-easy because someone has already done all the hardwork of setting things up ahead of time.
Still, it seems that the interface building tool is fairly drag-and-drop.
Forstall has now built an interface and wired it to his contactsdatabase, creating a new contact browser that includes people’s facesas thumbnail images alongside their names.
Now he’s going to test it on the iPhone plugged into his computer.
With one click, he compiles the app, packages it, and sends it to the phone.
Forstall is reading a bunch of quotes from developers who really, really like the development platform.
And a quote from David Pogue of the NYTimes, who says we’rewitnessing the birth of a third major platform, after Windows and OS X.
Now Forstall is going to introduce some developers. The first, itappears, will be Sega, who showed an early version of Super Monkey Ballat the SDK event in March.
Ethan Einhorn of Sega takes the stage.
The new version of Super Monkey Ball for the iPhone will have all 4monkeys: AiAi, Mimi, Baby and GonGon — and over 100 stages.
My daughter will be so excited. I may never get my iPhone back.
There’s a nifty demo of how you can roll the monkey around the stages just by tilting the phone.
"The tilt control just works," Einhorn says.
The game will be available when the App Store launches, for $10.
"I know that all my QA folks love the game," says Forstall, who jokes that productivity will drop immediately.
Next up: eBay’s Ken Sun, to show auctions on the iPhone.
iPhone is already the No. 1 mobile device for accessing eBay auctions,Sun says, which is amazing to me, given how horrible the experiencecurrently is.
With the new eBay app, it’s easier to search, with an easily browsable search summary as well as full details.
The "My eBay" view lets you see which auctions you’re winning (greenprices) and losing (prices appear in read), and you can update yourbids with a single click.
One of the items he’s watching is a $12.5 million golf course in Mexico. He browses through photos, but doesn’t place a bid.
Next: Loopt, which is a kind of location-sensitive social network service.
Sam Altman of Loopt takes the stage. "We show you where people are, what they’re doing, and what cool places are around."
On the map, an orange pin shows his current location, and severalblue pins show the location of his friends. The interface works justlike the standard iPhone map app.
"This is the best version of Loopt," Altman says, "and the iPhone is the best mobile development platform."
10:35 AM
He uses the demo to spot a nearby friend, find a nearby cafe, and ask her to lunch.
"You never have to eat lunch alone again," Altman promises. (Of course, that presumes you already have friends.)
The app will be free, he says.
Michael Sippey of Six Apart comes onstage to demo Movable Type for the iPhone.
You can create a post, take a photo and post it immediately, or adda photo that you’ve already taken. The app even includes rudimentarysizing/cropping options for photos.
Tap to choose the blog, add categories, and then type to add text.The app uploads the new post to your blog while you go do other things,including creating a new post.
Sippey says the app will be available for free "at the launch of the iPhone App Store" — which is becoming a popular refrain.
A surprise here: The Associated Press has an iPhone app?
Benjamin Mosse of the AP says the iPhone will help them create a "mobile news network" combining news from thousands of sources.
10:40 AM
The location API automatically retrieveslocal news from wherever you are. It caches stories locally so you canread them even when you’re in a subway.
There’s a nice photo gallery, so you can see all the AP’s latest Fergie photos in full-color glory.
There’s even video.
The AP is inviting people to send photos and tips directly to themright from their iPhones. That’s clever — if it works, it could makeiPhone users into an army of stringers.
The app will also be free, when the App Store launches.
Next up: Pangea Software’s Brian Greenstone, who is going to talk about two games they’ve ported from OS X to the iPhone.
The first one: Enigmo — a "physics based puzzle game" where you tryto get falling dropletes of water into a target, using touch / pinchgestures to move, size, and rotate objects.
"This is extremely CPU intensive stuff to do" — 100s of thousands of collision-detection tests per second," he says.
Second game: Cro-Mag Rally, a "3D caveman racing game."
Wired say: Oook! Racing good! Og smash!
In this game, the iPhone itself becomes the steering wheel.
10:45 AM
The games will be available for $10 each when the App Store launches.
Are you ready for yet another developer? Because here comes one.
This is Cow Music’s Mark Terry, who Forstall says is actually adeveloper in the insurance industry. He’s been developing an iPhone appcalled "Band" in his spare time.
The game has several instruments: a 2-octave piano, a drum kit, a"12 bar blues" instrument that "contains all the instruments you needto play the blues in one simple interface" — including, it seems, abottle of beer.
And a bass guitar, which does Pink Floyd’s "Money" riff quite nicely.
I’d love to see a whole band comprised of iPhone players.
"Look for Band in the App Store in a few weeks’ time." That’s the first hint of an ETA for the App Store that we’ve heard today.
Jeezus help us, we’ve got more developers.
Jeremy Schoenherr of MLB.com is going to show his company’s app.
The Royals and Yankees are scoreless in the top of the 3rd.
Real-time stats, OK — plus "real time video highlights."
10:50 AM
Video clips that are available within minutes after something happens on the field.
"Provides a great experience, whether you’re on Wi-Fi or on EDGE."
What about 3G, Mr. Schoenherr??
Next: Modality. The first of not one, but *two* medical apps they’re going to show today.
Dr. S. Mark Williams is going to show his app, which provides accessto high-res images from Netter’s Anatomy, a medical student textbook.
If your doctor pulls out an iPhone and starts dragging and pinching, she’s probably looking up some body part…
"Within weeks of the app store launching, we’ll have a dozenapplications available, and many more by the end of the year," Dr.Williams promises.
MIMvista’s Mark Cain steps up.
10:55 AM
Looks like this app is going to give doctorsaccess to high-res medical images. Onscreen, he’s showing a CT scan andPET scan that you can view from different angles, moving forward andback through various slices using a finger touch.
"They built this app in just a few weeks with tremendous ease," Cain says.
Zoom and pan using the usual gestures.
Plus a 2-finger slide for changing contrast, which is apparently an important feature for docs.
You can tap to insert a yellow line that measures the size ofanything in the image: Just tap on one end, tap on the other, and theapp tells you how big the line is that you just drew. The line staysthere until you erase it — by shaking the iPhone.
"Every radiologist in America just bought an iPhone," Wired’s Mark McClusky says to me.
Our last developer is Digital Legends’ Javier Carrillo Costa.
He shows a 3-D fantasy action adventure game, which has impressive rendered backgrounds and animation.
Uh oh, here comes a bad-ass looking giant.
This game — Kroll — is expected to be available in September.
11:00 AM
The video quality was amazing — think PS2 quality graphics. Excepton a tiny screen, which lets you control it via the accelerometer.
"There has been one feature request that developers have been asking for," Forstall says.
That’s real-time notification — for, say, IM apps or eBay.
Apple is not going to provide that by letting applications run in the background, Forstall says.
That’s because background apps suck up battery life and CPU cycles."Other platforms have recognized that this is an issue," he says,showing Windows Mobile’s solution: the Task Manager.
"Like a game, it challenges the end user to brush up their computerscience skills, figure out which of those processes are eating up theCPU, and kill it — but don’t kill the wrong one, because if you do,you’re in trouble."
"This is nuts," Forstall says.
Instead, Apple is providing a "push notification service" to all developers.
When an app is running, it has a real-time connection to the developer’s server.
When it’s not running, Apple maintains its own connection to theuser’s iPhone — and developers can push messages to users via the Appleservice.
Developers can push badges, sounds or text messages. The messagesinclude buttons that, when the user pushes them, will launch thecorresponding app.
"This solution scales" — because it’s just a single connection forall developers, without requiring background processes or multipleconnections.
This will be available starting in September, but selecteddevelopers will have access to the feature so they can start developingfor it next month.
That’s it for the SDK.
Jobs is back onstage. "Isn’t that fantastic?" he says. "This is going to be great."
11:05 AM
Now he’s going to talk about new features for the iPhone 2.0 operating system.
The first is contact search: Just type the first few letters of a name to jump to it.
The second is support for viewing iWork documents.
And they’ve added PowerPoint to their support of Microsoft Office document viewing (they already had Word and Excel).
We’ve also added bulk delete and move (of messages).
And the ability to save image attachments to your photo library.
The calculator has been enhanced: Turn the iPhone sideways, and it turns into a scientific calculator.
And they’ve added parental controls, to turn off explicit content, YouTube, iTunes purchasing, or the App Store.
They’ve added support for a variety of languages too, with 2 formsof entry for Japanese and 2 forms of entry for Chinese, including onewhere you just draw the character onscreen and it recognizes the oneyou want.
"It’s one of the great advantages of not having a bunch of plastickeys for your keyboard," Jobs says, spitting out the word "plastic"like it was a dirty word.
iPhone 2.0 software is going to be out in early July. It’ll be afree software update for all iPhone users, and will cost $10 for iPodTouch users.
App Store: This will be on every iPhone, and will let you wirelessly download new apps right to your phone.
It will also notify you and let you download updates to apps you already have.
As promised, developers will keep 70 percent of revenues; no other charges (even if you want to give away your apps for free).
We’re guessing that the 3G iPhone won’t be available until that early July date.
But Jobs hasn’t addressed that specifically yet.
Apps < 10MB in size can be downloaded via cellular, Wi-Fi oriTunes; apps bigger than 10MB won’t be available via the cellularnetwork.
Enterprise users will have their own way of distributing appsinternally, which will run only on authorized iPhones. iTunes will bethe vehicle for distributing these apps within a company.
There’s a third way to distribute apps: "Ad Hoc." (joining the App Store and the enterprise iTunes methods)
As a developer, you can get certified to run apps on up to 100registered iPhones. This will be useful mostly to development testingor small companies.
"Now we’ve got something entirely new, and we’re very excited about it. It’s called MobileMe."
Phil Schiller is going to talk about it.
Schiller says how great the iPhone works with Exchange via "ActiveStink — I mean ActiveSync."
(Who’s getting it? Show of hands?)
No, he loves Microsoft, really!
Now folks who don’t have an Exchange server can use MobileMe to get push e-mail/calendars/contacts.
So everything is always up to date.
When you receive an e-mail, it’s pushed to all of your computers andyour iPhone(s). Ditto when a contact gets updated, or an appointment.
It works wirelessly, so you don’t need to connect to sync.
We’re spotting e-mail addresses that end with "@me.com" in the screenshots.
It also works with PC users who have Outlook.
They also have a suite of Ajax applications that give you a "desktop-like experience" at Me.com
(We just checked, and it doesn’t appear that the site is up yet.)
Me.com’s applications include a photo gallery that you can view and manage online.
Photos also sync over the air with your iPhone via a new "Send to MobileMe" button.
There’s also document storage and sharing in the service.
Phil goes to a demo, starting on an iMac and Safari.
The e-mail application has drag-and-drop for moving messages into folders.
And a handy "quick reply" function that pops up a little box for sending quick acknowledgments.
The e-mail application has drag-and-drop for moving messages into folders.
11:20 AM
In the contact app, the search tool narrows down the field as you type letters in the search box.
Calendar app supports multiple calendars, drag-and-drop to move meetings, multiple views — much like iCal.
Photo gallery app has the "skim" thumbnail app so you can scoll through thumbnails quickly before going into a gallery.
Pretty impressive responsiveness for a web app!
Now he’s showing how e-mail gets "pushed" to the iPhone, which pings as soon as the e-mail arrives.
Some of the commenter’s are complaining that this is a reallyslow-moving keynote, and I have to agree. But let’s be realistic: Thisis a keynote at a developer conference, not a product parade. Butstill: We’ve been here for an hour and a half and no 3G iPhone? I’mstarting to doubt that it even exists.
11:25 AM
Everyone is waiting with bated breath as Schiller waits for a calendar he created on his desktop to show up on the iPhone.
Looks like the iPhone will now support multiple calendars — that’s something I’m really looking forward to.
Now he’s sending a photo from his iPhone to his MobileMe — and look, there it is.
OK, so how much is all this Ajax magic going to cost?
$99 a year, with 20GB of online storage, Schiller says. They’re offering a 60-day free trial, all of it available in early July.
MobileMe replaces .mac, Schiller says, to scattered applause.
You can continue to use .mac services and .mac addresses, but you’ll be automatically upgraded to .me in early July.
Jobs is back now.
"Now I’d like to talk about something that’s near and dear to my heart, and that’s the iPhone."
In a few weeks — June 29 — the iPhone will be 1 year old, he says,showing a birthday cake — and then some photos of crowd hysteria fromlast year.
"This is the phone that’s changed phones forever," he says.
He cites 90 percent customer satisfaction.
(Says who?)
98 percent are browsing the web on their iPhones. 94 percent using e-mail, 90 percentusing text messaging, and 80 percent are using 10 or more features. "You can’teven begin to figure out how to use 10 features on a normal phone,"says Jobs.
11:30 AM
They’ve sold 6 million iPhones in the first year "until we ran out a few weeks ago."
Next??
3G. (The crowd whoops). Enterprise support. 3rd party applications. More countries.
(He acknowledges that iPhones are being used all over the world, even in unauthorized markets.)
And affordability.
"Today we’re introducing the iPhone 3G," Jobs says, and the crowd cheers.
It’s a bit thinner and more rounded at the edges than the previous version.
It’s got a molded plastic back. (And this time, he caresses the word "plastic" instead of spitting it out.)
A flush headphone jack, instead of that crappy recessed one.
Details, man, details!
Here we go: 3G support means faster data downloads.
He’s going to show a video of a side-by-side demo, EDGE vs 3G,downloading the fat National Geographic website. The 3G site appears in21 seconds versus (long pause … damn this is a boring demo) (thecrowd is getting restless … scattered laughter and whistling) 59seconds on EDGE.
It’s 2.8X faster, he says.
11:35 AM
And only slightly slower than Wi-Fi speeds (17 seconds for the same site over Wi-Fi).
And, he says, it’s faster than the Nokia N95 (33 sec) and the Treo 750 (35 sec), both of which also have 3G.
Now a similar demo, viewing a 408KB email attachment, which takes 5 seconds on 3G and 18 seconds on the EDGE version.
(The same attachment takes 3 seconds on Wi-Fi, he says.)
Battery life claims: standby time is 300 hours, 10 hours of 2G talktime (2 hours more), 5 hours of 3G talk time (versus 3-3.5 for otherphones), 5-6 hours of 3G browsing, 7 hours of video, and 24 hours ofaudio playback.
They’ve built GPS into the phone too.
This is a big bet on location-based services.
Will augment the location data they already get from cell towers and Wi-Fi hotspots.
And they’ll be able to do location tracking, so you can trace outyour path on a map. He’s showing a dot zigging and zagging down curvyLombard Street in San Francisco, sending off cute little blue radar beamsas it goes.
11:40 AM
#2: Enterprise support. He recaps the Exchange and Cisco VPN support detailed in the iPhone OS 2.0 presentation earlier.
#3: Third party applications. Jobs reprises the SDK, tools and app distribution.
#4: More countries. Currently distributed in 6 countries today; thiswill jump to 12 countries for the iPhone 3G and 25 countries over thenext several months as a "stretch goal."
They’ve added a bunch of countries in Europe, Central America andSouth America. As a map shows these countries appearing, he plays "It’sa Small World" from Disney.
The Denmark delegation in the back is STOKED.
Romania??
Here comes Africa: Egypt, Nigeria, Senegal, Kenya, South Africa, …
India …
Australia …
I think the Australians win for the most vocal group in the crowd.
And of course Japan.
In a total of 70 countries over the next several months, Jobs promises.
He shows a bunch of telecom logos for various international deals.
#5 is affordability.
The iPhone started at $600 for 8GB, now sells for $400.
The iPhone 3G will sell for $200 in the 8GB model.
$300 for the 16GB model
… which will also be available in white.
There’s no 32GB model, which surprises me.
Availability: They’ll start with the 22 biggest countries, starting July 11.
Maximum price of $200 for the 8GB model will apply throughout the world, Jobs says.
Now he’s going to show us their new ad.
It’s very Men in Black. Two serious looking guys walking through security doors, carrying a high-tech metal carrying case.
Out of which pops the new iPhone.
Yes, I think that gets the "security" message across very well.
It’s a bit scary in fact. Will I have to carry a gun with my new iPhone?
Now Jobs has everyone cheering for Scott Forstall.
It looks like we’re wrapping up here: Jobs is encouraging the developers in the audience to "wade in" to WWDC.
11:50 AM
And with that, "Maybelline" comes over the loudspeakers … and that’s a keynote.
Liveblogging team: Dylan Tweney and Danny Dumas, Wired.com. Photos by Jim Merithew/Wired.com.
Link: WWDC Keynote: Steve Jobs Announces a $200, 3G iPhone
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