Steve Jobs Keynote: Time Capsule, iPhone, Movie Rentals, Apple TV 2.0

I'm sitting here in a very full room at San Francisco's Moscone Center--crammed between Dylan Tweney of Wired and the Valleywag guys--waiting for Steve Jobs to appear onstage. If connectivity holds up, I'll tell you what he tells us as it happens...

It's now 9:04am, and people are still chatting and listening to the pop music being piped into the room...I'm talking to Paul Boutin of Valleywag and Slate, and hoping that my battery doesn't conk out before Steve Jobs stops talking...

And here are Mac and PC onscreen, celebrating the new year. PC is regretting difficulties with Vista, acknowledging the success of the iPhone, etc....

And here's Steve Jobs. 2007 "was an extraordinary year for Apple." He's thanking everybody. And he has four things he'd like to talk about today.

"The first one is Leopard." Over 5,000,000 copies have been delivered in the first three months. "Unbelievable." The most successful release of Mac OS X. 19 percent of Mac users are running it. "We're really, really thrilled by it." The press has been very kind, too. Quotes from Walt Mossberg, David Pogue, Ed Baig, and Ed Mendelson of PC Magazine (who?).

Developers love it, too. Microsoft is shipping Office 2008 for the Mac--"the last big app to go native on Intel...we're finally there." Thank you Adobe and Microsoft.

Steve just said Tiger has a bunch of great new features, but he meant Leopard--he's touting Time Machine. But pointing out that backing up via it from a notebook involves constant plugging and unplugging of an external hard drive.

Today, Apple is releasing a companion product--Time Capsule. It's an Airport Extreme router with a hard drive built in. "It has a sever-grade hard drive...it's very reliable."

Time Capsule will let you back up a notebook--or as many Macs as you want--wirelessly. "Enable Time Machine on all your Macs, and that's all you have to do."

Steve just said it comes with a 500MB drive, then corrected himself--500GB version is $299, and a 1TB edition is $499. "These are very aggressive prices...we want people backing up their content."

Shipping in February. Here's a Mac/PC ad about Time Machine.

"Thing number two is the iPhone...I have some great news for you." In 200 days, four million iPhones have been sold--20,000 a day. "We're really pleased with this."

What does this mean? We're seeing a market share chart for smart phones. In the first quarter if iPhone shipments, Gartner said, BlackBerries had the highest market share with 39 percent. iPhone was second, with 19.5 percent. Palm, Nokia, Motorola, and everyone else is far behind.

Steve is pointing out that the iPhone (almost) equals the combined market share of Palm, Motorola, and Nokia. Applause from crowd.

"What everyone is really excited about is the software development kit that we're going to release in late February for our developers." But Apple wanted to roll out stuff today.

iPhone can now find your current location in maps. It has Webclips (a la Leopard). You can customize the home screen, SMS multiple people at one, and get chapters, subtitles, and languages in videos. And it has lyrics for songs.

Steve is taking a water break, and now he's demoing...

Maps can now locate your rough location on a map--a feature that other phone versions of the app have had for a little while now. Steve is using this to find his way from Moscone back to Apple. He's routing out a trip that involves a trip to the Apple Store in Union Square. "That's pretty cool."

He's putting a pin on the map and moving it about, showing that he can bookmark locations. "That is the new maps..." He's crediting Google. "They have awesome maps technology, and we write the front end."

Now, he's SMSing multiple people at once--Phil Schiller and other Apple execs, like the iPod's Tony Fadell. "Hi." They all get the message at the same time. iPhone SMS is threaded, and he can continue to send messages to all of them at once.

Webclips: Steve is going to Google, and showing there's a plus button in Safari. He can add a page to the phone's home screen. It becomes an icon on the home screen. Now he's loading the New York Times ("this one takes awhile, but it's a great Web site") and showing that Webclips remember where you've zoomed and panned. So he can zoom to the Times's technology section and add just that to this home screen. "I can just touch that and go right to those Web sites."

Now he's showing home screen customization. Touch and hold an icon and they all jiggle, letting him shuffle icons around into the order he wants. And he can create up to nine home screens and shuffle between them. "So there you have it." Applause.

Now he's explaining how the location finder in Maps uses Wi-Fi triangulation from a company called Skyhook Wireless and Google's cell phone tower triangulation to show where you are. And he's showing the chapters, subtitles, and lyrics.

"All this is available today as a free software upgrade for every iPhone." Applause. "The iPhone is not standing still--we keep making it better and better and better"

"What about the iPod Touch?" It's getting mail. stocks, maps with locations, and notes--in other words, more iPhone features. New iPhones have this; for existing owners, it's a $20 upgrade.

Thing number three: iTunes. They've sold four billions songs (20 million on Christmas), and a ton of video. But the 7 million movies they've sold have been disappointing. "We think there's a better way."

They've never rented music because you want to own your favorites. But people watch a movie once or twice. Touchstone New Line, Lions Gate, Miramax will be part of it. And so will Fox, WB, Disney, Paramount, Universal, and Sony--"We have every major studio." Whoops and hoots from audience. "And we're going to have all the great first-run films." Ratatouille, for instance. Or Away From Her, which Steve missed.

There are 1000 movies, available 30 days after DVD. They work on PCs, Macs, iPods, and iPhones, and start less than 30 minutes after purchase. You can transfer them between devices and have 30 days to start watching, and then a day before the rental ends.

$3.99 for new releases; $2.99 for older stuff.

Steve is showing how you can rent Ratatouille and move it to your iPod. "iTunes Movie Rentals...launches today...it's a free software upgrade." In the U.S. today; internationally, later this year.

But what about this? We're seeing a picture of a flat screen. "I'd like to watch movies there too." Steve is saying that Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, Blockbuster, and Vudu have all tried to figure out how to put Internet movies on the TV. "We've all missed." He's acknowledging that Apple TV "was not what people wanted."

What people really wanted was "movies, movies, movies."

"So we're back...with Apple TV 2.0." Which syncs with a computer if you want, but doesn't require a computer. You can rent movies directly and watch them on your widescreen--in DVD or HD quality. Applause and whistles.

You can also grab 125,000 video and audio podcasts, and view photos from Flickr and .Mac. "As you know, photos are stunning on an HDTV because modern cameras are all HD." Over 50,000,000 YouTube videos are available, and you can buy TV shows and music. And play iTunes content and photos from a Mac or PC.

HD movies are $4.99, a buck more than standard def; 100 movies are available. Steve is now demoing the new interface. It's less flashy and animated than the old one. He's previewing Blades of Glory.

"If I want to buy this--excuse me, rent it--I just go over here and push one button." It's downloading. Now it's ready to play. And here it is, in DVD quality.

Now we're watching Live Free or Die Hard in HD. Here's Bruce Willis. Exploding cars and helicopters. etc., etc. "So you get the idea...it's very strong...it's very strong."

Steve is browsing different genres. Here are Westerns--The Sons of Katie Elder, The Magnificent Seven. He's searching for Shakespeare in Love.

Now he's checking out TV shows--"We've got over 600 TV shows in iTunes." Buy one on Apple TV, and it will sync back to your PC or Mac.

Now he's browsing music. He's searching for a Linkin Park music video and previewing it.

Now he's looking at podcasts. Here's something with HD footage of mountains. "This streaming off their servers--it's free."

Now he's looking at photos on .Mac. "You can go to your own sites or other people's sites."

Now he's talking about that anonymous "chief architect of iMovie" and showing one of his vacation movies with underwater stuff. Now he's looking at Flickr photos and browsing around.

He's trying to do a Flickr slideshow, and getting music but not pictures. "I'm afraid Flickr isn't serving up the photos today."

"That's what I wanted to show you today...isn't it incredible?" Recap of the news. So far.

The new software is a free upgrade for current owners. And they're knocking the price of Apple TV from $299 to $229. Upgrade and new Apple TV start shipping in two weeks.

Fox was first studio to sign up for rentls. Here's Jim Gianopulous, the president and CEO of Fox. He says he's excited by the news even though he already knew about it.

He's talking about all the models and complexity of movies. "It all boils down to two things...make great movies, and give them to people in as many ways as you can. That's all there is."

"It's basic enough that even a studio guy can get it."

Fox's tech guys and futurists looked at all this. "I think we have a slide with the results."

The slide is a iPod ad with Homer Simpson clutching a donut-shaped iPod.

He's explaining that Fox Blu-Ray titles will come with iPod-ready copies of the movies.

Jobs is back, and I'm going to start a new blog post...

Comments

Post a comment Post a comment

0 / 1000 max characters