WWDC 2009 live

It's that time again: the annual Apple World Wide Developer's Conference and its highly anticipated keynote address. Phil Schiller ran the show this year, and while he's no Steve Jobs most observers agree that he did a pretty good job. Highlights include a revamping of the MacBook Pro line, the introduction this fall of Snow Leopard, and the announcement of a new, faster iPhone called the iPhone 3GS.

[Now that the keynote is over I've rearranged my updates in chronological order. Enjoy! -Ed]

9:21am: Welcome to live coverage of the 2009 Apple World Wide Developer's Conference (WWDC). I will be your host this morning.

9:25am: WWDC 2009 is being held in Moscone West, the same location as the Google I/O conference.

9:30am: WWDC, of course, is a bit more closely watched.

9:33am: Judging by the posters it looks like the Mac will get some love this time around, in the form of Snow Leopard, 64-bit support, Grand Central, and OpenCL.

9:50am: Ever notice that WiFi becomes useless in a crowded room?

9:57am: Gizmodo live site bites the dust - Ars and Engadget still up.

10:00am: It's showtime!

Continue reading: Phil Schiller takes the stage >

Phil Schiller introduces new MacBooks

10:02am: Phil Schiller takes the stage, says there are 5,200 people in attendance (compared with 4,000 for Google I/O, fyi).

10:04am: There are 75M active OS X users now.

10:05am: Notebooks are great, blah blah blah.

10:06am: New: 15" MacBook Pro with "revolutionary built-in" battery.

10:07am: New batteries will last 5 years between charges (ok, just kidding). 7 hours, with up to 1,000 charges before you have to get it replaced.

10:08am: ExpressCard slot replaced with SD card slot - bet we'll hear some complaints on that.

10:09am: Starts at $1,699. Can be upgraded to 3.06GHz dual core, 8GB RAM.

10:11am: New: 17" MacBook Pro, price reduced to $2,499 for 2.8GHz + 500GB Hard drive. Both shipping today.

10:12am: New MacBook also gets SD Card. 13" MacBook can get up to 8GB RAM too, LED backlit keyboard, FireWire 800.

10:13am: 13" MacBook is now rebadged as: MacBook Pro. Starts at $1,199. 2.26GHz, 2GB, 9400M graphics, 160GB hard drive, SD card slot. Available today.

10:15am: Also refreshing MacBook Air. $700 price reduction for 128GB SSD model ($1,799). $300 reduction for base model ($1,499 1.8GHz).

Snow Leopard

10:17am: Bertrand Serlet to talk about new software, Mac OS X.

10:18am: Vista bashing, blah blah. (When is it time for Win7 bashing? -Ed)

10:19am: Yeah, Win7 bashing now... :)

10:20am: A better Leopard, now with... Exchange support?!

10:20am: Finder rewritten in Cocoa - looks the same. Be still my beating heart.

10:21am: Snow Leopard has a prettier dock. Expose built-in to the doc. 45% faster installation. Uses less disk space (6GB less).

10:23am: Faster smarter PDF viewing. Chinese input through trackpad. Faster mail.

Continue reading: Safari 4, Grand Central >

Safari 4 and more

10:24am: Safari 4 now shipping for Leopard, Tiger, and Windows. Claim faster than Chrome, FF, IE8. Insert IE bashing here.

10:25am: On Snow Leopard, Safari 4 will not be crashed by bad plug-ins. Sounds like Chrome. Also is 50% faster because of 64-bit JavaScript performance. Hey, finally a 64-bit browser, that is an improvement.

10:27am: New Quicktime UI, streaming from any web server. Craig Federighi demoing.

10:28am: Stacks. Play videos from within the finder. Zoom in and out. Thumbnails playing video. And you were wondering how we'd use all those CPU cycles.

10:30am: (from Press release): Snow Leopard will be available in September for $29 (not $129 as most expected).

10:31am: (So how does Apple get such fast Internet speed in Moscone West? Google demos were struggling.)

10:33am: Quicktime X lets you do limited editing - copy and past a selection of a clip. Nice. Previously you had to buy the Pro version for that.

10:35am: Bertrand back on stage, talking about 64-bit applications.

10:36am: In Snow Leopard all "major system applications" are in 64-bit mode. This is one advantage they're going to have over Microsoft for a while.

Grand Central

10:37am: New technology: Grand Central Dispatch across all of Snow Leopard. This includes language extension, multicore engine, OO framework, new APIs, and tools. Now we're cooking.

10:38am: GCD still based on threads, but threads are dynamic so they come and go when needed.

10:39am: OpenCL: using GPU power for non-graphical applications. Open standard. (I'm still waiting on Windows drivers but have been told they're coming). Hardware abstraction, C-based language, automatic optimization, numerical accuracy suitable for scientific calculations.

10:41am: Snow Leopard will support Exchange integration in Mail, iCal, and Address Book. Including Spotlight search for Exchange messages.

10:44am: Can now show availability of people and rooms. (That was always one of my favorite features of Outlook). Requires MS Exchange Server 2007.

10:47am: Confirmation of $29 pricing. That got a big cheer from the audience. Family Pack is $49 if you have several machines.

10:47am: Ok that's all for Mac and Mac OS. Scott Forstall is up, will talk about the iPhone.

iPhone

10:48am: 1 million downloads so far for the iPhone SDK. 50K apps on the App Store. (I wonder if that download number counts people like me who've downloaded the thing 20 times). 1 billion apps downloaded as of April. 40M iPhones/iPod Touches sold.

10:50am: Time for a nap (video interview rolling).

10:51am: Joshua @Engadget says: "This is pretty emotional stuff. We're getting some tissue out, just in case." Ha!

Continue reading: iPhone OS 3.0 >

iPhone OS 3.0

10:55am: Ok enough of that. Next up: iPhone OS 3.0. Now with cut-n-paste. Whee!

10:55am: (I mean, really, cut-n-paste is useful and all. But does it really deserve top billing?)

10:57am: Landscape mode - yawn. MMS - supported in 76 countries by 29 carriers. AT&T will support MMS "later this summer". Booing from the audience - SJ never got booed.

10:59am: Spotlight search - now this one is really useful. Android is copying that in the next release (Donut).

10:59am: iTunes with OTA purchase and download for music, TV shows, audiobooks, etc.

11:00am: Parental control for apps.

11:01am: Tethering - share your internet connection over USB or Bluetooth. That would be handy at keynotes like this one. 22 carriers supporting it but not AT&T.

11:02am: Browser improvements: 3x faster JavaScript on iPhone OS 3.0. HTTP streaming with auto-rate selection. Autofill. HTML5.0 support.

11:04am: Audio and video tag support. That means you can play Flash-like video in web pages without Flash.

11:05am: iPhone OS 3.0 supports over 30 languages. Find my iPhone (log onto MobileMe and it will show you where your phone is).

11:07am: Alert rings on your phone even if it's silenced and hiding in the sofa. If it's stolen you can send it a remote wipe command, and then if you get it back you can restore from backup in iTunes. Nice.

11:08am: Now talking about new pricing models for App Store. In-app purchase sounds really cool. Monthly subscriptions (70% revenue to devs). "Free apps remain free". No credit card fees. Nice; expect it to be copied by others soon.

11:09am: Peer to peer networking. Apple is ahead of the pack on this one. Well, Nintendo DS does it, but no other phones do.

11:11am: Accessory support. Devices plug in through standard iPhone/iPod dock, are controlled by software running on the phone. This is something that is going to be hard for other mobile devices to emulate. Maybe via Bluetooth, but there is no standard dock for other phones.

11:12am: Push notifications for instant messages, breaking news, scoring, twitter, etc.. This saves battery power over the alternatives (polling, pulling). Incoming calls are like push notices if you think about it, and the phone doesn't have to burn out the radio polling for them. Same idea.

iPhone OS 3.0 demos

11:14am: Time for more cool demos! First Mark Hickey from Gameloft. Asphalt 5, 3D racing game.

11:15am: (Looks like the time for developers working out of their garage on little or no budget has come and gone (again). Games like Asphalt 5 are highly polished, very expensive to make. We're talking millions of dollars here, folks.)

11:17am: Airstrip Critical Care, lets doctors monitor patient medical data. Can get a real-time stream of a patient's heart monitor data. Lots of applause on this one.

11:20am: ScrollMotion - digital books on the App Store. 50 magazines, 70 newspapers, 1 million books. In-app purchase. Including textbooks.

11:23am: TomTom navigation - turn-by-turn driving directions. Is he really saying you should use this app in your car while driving? Hmmm... Ok, they have an optional accessory that lets you attach the iPhone to the widshield. That makes more sense.

11:26am: TomTom accessory provides more accurate GPS, handsfree calling, plays iPhone music over car stereo, even charges the phone. Nice.

11:27am: Next is ngmoco:) - pureplay iPhone games company. (check them out at @ngmoco on twitter). Demoing Star Defense. Think tower defense meets Mario Galaxy. Optional content and featurepacks can be bought inside the app. (I'm a little jealous that you can't do this on Android yet). Head-to-head play. Available now with 3.0 features added when 3.0 comes out.

11:30am: Pasco - teaching sciences to children. Attach sensors to collect and analyze science data during experiments. Demo blowing up a balloon. Or not - some demo gremlins show up.

11:32am: Zipcar - car sharing service. Over 300K members in US and UK. Uses iPhone OS 3.0 MapKit to embed a Google map with pins showing where the cars are. Cute feature: tap horn icon on the application and it will make the real car horn beep. Also has remote unlock.

11:37am: Line6 and Planet Waves -- control your guitar and amplifier from your iPhone. Looks cool but more demo gremlins are preventing it from working right.

11:38am: (The time for 'one more thing' is running out :) )

11:42am: That's it for iPhone OS 3.0 demos. iPhone OS 3.0 is free for all iPhone customers. $9.95 for iPod touch customers. Available June 17. "GM seed" available for developers now.

11:43am: Devs pick their own age rating for applications.

Continue reading: One more thing... >

One more thing... iPhone 3GS

11:44am: Phil Schiller back on stage. iPhone makes up 65% of all mobile web usage today. Yay, some Android bashing. And Novi and Pre.

11:45am: New iPhone version: iPhone 3GS. S for speed.

11:47am: 2.1x faster to launch Messages, 2.9x faster to launch a big web page. OpenGL|ES 2.0. Builtin 7.2MBps HSDPA, New camera (3.0Mpix autofocus).

11:50am: Tap-to-focus feature - tap an item in the photo to focus on it. Resets the light balance too. Improved low-light sensitivity. Automatic macro photographs (10cm). Video capture.

11:51am: 30fps video capture, VGA resolution, with audio, auto focus, auto white balance, auto exposure. Videos show up in photo library. You can trim them, share via emal, MMS, YouTube, MobileMe. New APIs for developers to take advantage of all this.

11:53am: Another new feature: Voice control, voice dialing, hold down the home button for a few seconds in any application. Commands that you can say start floating around on the screen. Say one of them and it happens. Oooh.

11:54am: Examples: "Dial scott forestall", "play the killers", "play more songs like this", "what's playing now".

11:56am: Apple copies something from Android: built-in digital compass.

11:56am: New accessibility settings. Nike+ support. Hardware data encryption.

11:58am: Same size as iPhone 3G, but has improved battery life. 9 hours on WiFi, 10 hours watching video, 30 hours audio, 12 hours 2G talk, 5 hours 3G talk. Greener materials, packaging.

Price and availability

11:59am: iPhone 3GS price $199 for 16GB model, $299 for 32GB. Both come in black and white. Prices for AT&T new and qualifying customers. Old 3G available today for $99 with 8GB. New models available on June 19th.

12:01am: First available in US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, UK. Then a week later, 6 more countries. Many more this summer.

12:05am: Wrapping up, big applause. That's all folks!