I’m at 4 Infinite Loop on the Apple (AAPL) campus in Cupertino this morning, where the company is going to provide a first look at iPhone OS 4.0. The widespread speculation is that they will unveil new multitasking capability, a new online advertising platform, and various other enhancements. I will be blogging the event live; it starts officially at 10 a.m. Pacific. Stay tuned.
- 9:50 We’re in the room – the legendary Town Hall, where Apple does all of its on-campus press events.
- 9:55 Town Hall is about the size of an elementary school auditorium; as usual, there will be an overflow crowd. Not much too see up in front, other than a big screen with the usual white Apple logo.
- 9:57 Full disclosure: unlike most of the people in the room, I’m writing on – brace yourself – an HP laptop.
- 9:58 Tiernan Ray e-mailed me a little while ago to point out that there’s a WSJ iPad app ad running on the Tech Trader Daily home page today, FWIW.
- 10:00 The lights are getting dimmer…the cell phones are on mute…
- 10:01 …and we’re still waiting.
- 10:03 Look’s it’s Steve !
- 10:03 CEO Steve Jobs says we will be hearing about iPhone OS 4.0, but first updates. He’s starting� by quoting all of the great reviews for the iPad. He notes 300,000 iPads on the first day. To date, now 450,000 iPads sold. Best Buy out of stock. We are making them as fast as we can, he says, and they will have to try harder. iBooks: over 250,000 on first day; now iBooks total is over 600,000. Apps now over 3.5 million downloads, after 1 million on day one.
- 10:06 Over 4 billion apps downloads from App Store to date; 185,000 apps available.
- 10:07 Over 3,500 iPads apps in the App Store. Steve is running through some of iPad apps.
- 10:10 Now, on to the iPhone. In market share of U.S. mobile browser usage, now 64% share for iPhone, with Android 19%, BlackBerry 9%. To date, sold over 50 million iPhones. Including iPod Touches, 85 million. A “plum market” for developers, he says.
- 10:11 Today, they will focus on iPhone OS 4. Ships this summer. Developer preview today.
- 10:12 Over 1,500 new APIs. Can now access calendars in programs; still and video images and data; include SMS inside apps.� Over 100 new user features. Play lists. 5x digital zoom in camera app. Tap to focus on video. Every photo geo-tagged. Can change home screen wallpaper. Added spellchecker. Can gift apps – buy app, gift it to someone from the phone.
- 10:14 Will focus on 7 “tent pole” features today. First: the biggest one, multitasking. (As widely expected, and hoped for; mention of it triggered a round of applause.) Steve says focus on not reducing battery performance, or make performance sluggish. He says they have nailed multitasking without causing those issues. He is doing demo on an iPhone tied to projector. Double-click home button to see all apps running at the bottom of the screen. (More clapping.) Then tap on app you want to see.
- 10:18 Jobs turns the mile over to Scott Forstall, SVP iPhone Software. He’s going to talk about how they did it. Seven multitasking services. First, background audio. Pandora has 50 million users, 13 million streaming to iPhones. Pandora can now play music in background while you use other apps; he calls up Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora. Demo: you can buy songs on iTunes while you continue to listen to Pandora, surf the Web, read e-mail, etc. Nice.
- 10:24 Next service: Voice over IP. Forstall says Skype has great app for iPhone; now, on Skype, can switch to another app, and call stays on. Also can still receive calls even when not running the app. David Ponsford, a developer from Skype, is doing a demo. Until today, navigate away from the app, and you can’t get calls or chats. Now, can still receive calls. Receive notification, answer with one click. While on the phone, you can shift to Web, to look up information, etc.
- 10:28 Next, location. With OS 4, can get directions from TomTom, say, while listening to music, or doing other things. GPS tracks in background. For social networking sites, use cell towers to locate positions, rather than GPS, to save on batteries. When you move locations, usually 500-1,000 meters, we can wake up the app and tell people your location. Indication on status bar if app is tracking your location for privacy and security; user can enable/disable location; also will indicate if any app asked for location in last 24 hours.
- 10:31 Next, push notifications. They have already done 10 billion push notifications.
- 10:32 New, local notifications, which do not require a server.
- 10:33 Also, task completion. Some apps take time, like photo uploading. Leave the app, it stops. Now, can upload photos in the background.
- 10:33 Last one, fast app switching. To quickly switch apps, and resume exactly where you left it.
- 10:34 So, those are the multitasking services.
- 10:34 Back to Steve. Second “tent pole,” is folders.
- 10:35 Steve will demonstrate folders, to reduce need to flick from screen to screen. Hold down finger on app; it starts to jiggle; drag it on another app; it creates a folder; it will create a name for the folder based on type of app; but you can re-name the folder. Can move the folder around the screen anywhere you want, and can have as many folder as you want, and can add folder to bottom-of-the-screen dock for active apps. Drag-and-drop, with intelligent naming. Old max was 180 app icons.
- 10:37 Steve is also demonstrating changing the wallpaper. He chose denim. (I presume black turtleneck was not available.)
- 10:38 Tent pole number three: enhanced mail. Unified in-box, from say Exchange, Yahoo, Mobile Me, in one in-box. And can have more than one Exchange account as well. Also fast in-box switching, and ability to organize by thread, to follow conversations much easier. Also, open attachments by tapping withing the program.
- 10:39 Next up, iBooks. There’s iBook reader for iPhone OS 4.0, same as on the iPad. Look Winnie the Pooh. Access to iBookstore. Buy books once, read them on either device. Sync pages and bookmarks between devices. Will include free Winnie book, like on the iPad.
- 10:43 Number five, enterprise features. Scott is back on stage. Better data protection; encrypt all data including all attachments. Can encrypt data within apps as well. Mobile device management. (Clapping on that one.) Wireless app distribution. More clapping. Also, adding multiple exchange accounts. And support for Exchange Server 2010. Also SSL VPN support from Juniper and Cisco added.
- 10:45 Six, Game Center, social gaming center.� So far more than 50,000 game and entertainment titles on App Store. On Sony PSP there are 2,477. On Nintendo DS, 4,321 titles. Software will do automatic matchmaking for playing game on the network. Leader boards for score comparisons. Available later this year.
- 10:47 Back to Steve. Tent pole seven is, iAd, for mobile advertising. Steve says most mobile advertising “really sucks.” He says they want to help developers keep free apps free. On desktop, the money is in search, he says. But on mobile device, he says, they are spending their time in apps. They are using Yelp to find places to eat, not generalized search. He says apps are where the advertising opportunity is on mobile. Average user spends 30 minutes a day in apps. One add every 3 minutes would be 10 ads for day. We will soon have 100 million devices, which is 1 billion ad opportunities a day in iPad/iPod/iPhone. He says they want to change quality of ads as well. He says most current ads can’t deliver emotional message through current mobile ads. Steve says they want to deliver interaction – but also emotion.
- 10:51 Steve says people don’t click on ads because they get yanked away from apps. He says they can do interactive and video content without taking you away from your app. He thinks people will then be more willing to click on them. Steve says it is simple for developers to add ads. Apple will host the ads; 60% of revenue to the developer. He’s doing a demo, with fake ads. He’s showing app with entertainment news, and Toy Story 3 ad at the bottom – “I’ve seen it, it’s really good,” he says – he notes that click on the add pops up an advertising app; written in HTML5, he notes. The movie ad/app includes various movie clips, audio clips of characters; video can be watched in portrait mode. The demo ad also includes a simple game. Posters for phone wallpaper. “Users like free stuff,” he says. Can also tie in theater times, with locations, and games you can buy in the ad.
- 10:56 Another example, a Nike ad for Air Jordan shoes – Steve stresses that Nike did not actually make the ad, Apple did for demo purposes. This time the demo ad launches into a video; you can see pictures of shoes, history of Air Jordan shoes, make-your-own shoe program. Find stores to buy the shoes.
- 10:58 Another example: A Target ad, which starts with video; build your own dorm room, with all sorts of school-branded gear to buy, and can buy it on the phone, or find a store either near me, or near school. He says all of these ads are easy to make – and 100s of thousands of app developers who can make them. And with one click can go back to your original app. Easy for developers.
- 11:01 Developer preview today at developer.apple.com. Summer for iPhone 3GS and iPod third generation this summer. They will run everything. For iPhone 3G and second generation iPod Touch, will not support multi-tasking due to hardware limitations. Comes to the iPad this fall.
And that’s if for the formal presentation; picks up in Q&A mode in a few minutes.
Stock update: AAPL is down $1.02, or 0.4%, to $239.58.
Some tidbits from the Q&A:
- Steve says international launch for iPad is on track for late April.
- He says there is no advantage for other companies to provide competitive gaming social networks; a questioner notes that some developers have already developer their own social networks.
- Steve says there will need to be some boundaries on what ads can run; but says it should not be anything other than a light touch.
- No change in lack of support for Java or Flash.
- Steve says developers can use any tools for ads as long as they use HTML5.
- (Not from the Q&A, but in answer to one of the commenters below, there was nothing on an iPhone for Verizon today.)
- Steve says the company has no plans to be a worldwide ad agency. Tried to buy AdMob, but Google bought them, so bought Quattro instead. He says they are “babes in the woods” when it comes to advertising. But he says they won’t be an ad agency.
- Scott Forstall says app developers will be able to tell what device you are using, to shift performance to reflect capabilities of the older devices. Phil Schiller says he thinks they have created app store where apps run on the largest number of possible devices.
- On concerns about distracted driving, Steve says the company does more than others to connect into car control systems; he says they have added hands free calling, controls on steering wheels.
- On revenue opportunity for iAd for Apple, Steve says majority goes to developers; not a get rich quick scheme for Apple; its a help our developers make money scheme, he says.
- Steve says they do not intend to offer unsigned apps – or porn apps.
- On the initial response to the iPad, Steve says they had “butterflies” heading into the launch, since you never really know until you get a product into customers’ hands. He thinks “people get it.” It is, he says, “a profound game changer,” a major event in the history of personal computational devices. Steve says he has gotten few thousand emails from people telling him how much this product will change their lives. “People are getting it very quickly,” Jobs says. Schiller adds that “the pace of this is beyond belief.” Jobs says competitors would be hoping to get 3,500 apps after the first year. He notes that it stands on top of a lot of things, including 85 million people who know how to use an iPhone or Touch.
- On people finding the right apps, Jobs says the App Store is not part of the iPhone OS, but is actually a service programmed on the server side; they can improve it without OS release. He says they are constantly interested in improving it. Added Genius recommendations. But he says more is being done from Web sites and publications on App discovery; lot of infrastructure building up outside and around the iPhone to provide some of those recommendations for users. Forstall adds that Game Center will add some of that kind of discovery; gifting should also spread them as well.
- Schiller says the company is doing more to promote software than any company in history; tremendous marketing support to help developers get attention.
- It will be possible to use alternative ad platforms/game social networks, Steve says.
And that’s it!
No comments:
Post a Comment