Apple October 23rd Special Event: Live Blog

Engadget 11:13AM:
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"I'd personally like to thank all of the teams at Apple... they've dedicated a huge part of their lives to making the best products on earth."

"These are the most talented and innovative people I know, and it is a privilege and an inspiration for me to be able to work with them."


Verge 11:10AM:
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"We told you earlier this year that you would see incredible innovation, and I think we kept our promise."



iPad mini TV ad.

MacWorld 11:08AM:
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Pre-orders start this Friday. Wi-Fi will ship on November 2nd, to a very large list of countries. 2 weeks later, Wi-Fi + Cellular, first in US, and then around the world.




Starts at 16GB of memory. Wi-Fi configuration starts at $329.

iPad 2 will still be sold at $399.



Showing iPad mini video...

ArsTechnica 11:01AM:
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A5 processor (dual core)
FaceTime HD camera, better than what was in iPad 2
5MP iSight camera on the back
Ultrafast wireless (LTE)
faster WiFi: 802.11 a/b/g/n
Lightning connector
10 hour battery life

it is "every inch" an iPad

Gdgt 10:59AM:
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Phil’s really digging into the huge difference in screen real estate, and now he’s dogging Android about their “scaled up” phone apps on the Nexus 7 / Android tablets vs. native iPad apps on the iPad mini.

Engadget 10:57AM:
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"Others have tried to make tablets smaller than the iPad and they've failed miserably. These are not great experiences."

We're looking at iPad mini vs. the Nexus 7 -- though Phil isn't saying it's the Nexus 7.

The iPad mini has a thinner bezel and metal design, but is thinner and lighter than the Nexus, they say. The .9 inch increase on the diagonal gives 35% more display area, says Phil. "That's a huge difference, and it doesn't stop there."



Verge 10:54AM:
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"What screen size is it?" "Let's look at it side by side with the iPad 2." 7.9 inch display. Same resolution as the iPad 2. 1024x768.



MacWorld 10:53AM:
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7.2mm thin, 23% thinner than the fourth-generation iPad.

Weighs 0.68lbs; 50% lighter than previous iPad.

As light as a pad of paper. "We were going to say a book, but book's are much heavier."

White with silver or black with slate back.









GigaOm 10:51AM:
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What can you do with an iPad mini? You can hold it in one hand. “This is not just a shrunken down iPad.”





ArsTechnica 10:51AM:
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what else can we do to help customers find even more uses for iPad?

iPad mini!

Gdgt 10:51AM:
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Same price as before, no surprise there. “The 4th generation extends the lead” of the 3rd-gen. Yep, can’t really argue with that.

Engadget 10:49AM:
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Also has the new image signal processor in the iPhone 5, still offering 10 hours of battery life.

FaceTime camera is now 720p.

The LTE machine has "greatly expanded coverage" -- adding Sprint in the US and KDDI in Japan.

802.11a/b/g/n dual-band WiFi, and there's a Lightning connector, of course.

Finally, here's the new camera connectors, for SD reading, as well as USB, HDMI and VGA adapters.

And there's the new Retina display, of course.





Verge 10:48AM:
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"This 4th generation is a powerhouse. What's inside it? A new chip, the A6X. It doubles the performance of CPU tasks."

"It also doubles the graphics performance. The competition wasn't even close to us, and now we're just blowing past them some more."

"We're updating the camera, the cellular version has expanded LTE."

We are just getting started. Earlier this year we announced an iPad with a beautiful retina display. This iPad has gone on to be the biggest selling iPad of all time and the top selling tablet in the whole world.

iPad is showing up more and more and doing more and more things. In fact, almost every company in the Fortune 500 is now deploying iPad.

Available today as a free download.

Engadget 10:46AM:
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Multitouch widgets, too, and publishers can push updates more easily than before.



Verge 10:45AM:
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"Today we're announcing the latest iBooks Author. It includes some great new templates."

Portrait templates, you're able to use your own fonts... mathematical expressions dropped into books. Multitouch widgets.

"Publishers can update their books."

MacWorld 10:44AM:
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Apple announced iBooks Author earlier this year to make it easy to create rich, engaging multi-touch textbooks.

iBooks textbooks now available for 80% of the U.S. high school core curriculum.

Biology, physics, chemistry, math, history, environmental science. "Enough to make you want to be a kid again."

The textbooks are now in over 2500 U.S. classrooms.

GigaOm 10:43AM:
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One of the things that’s ‘so rewarding and so amazing to us is how quickly iPad has been embraced by education,” Cook says.

ArsTechnica 10:41AM:
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Pad accounts for over 90% of the web traffic for tablets

you might ask, so why is iPad so phenomenally successful? It turns out there's a simple reason for this. people love their iPads.

"Now to put this in perspective we sold more iPads in the June quarter than any PC manufacturers sold of their entire PC line."

Two weeks ago we sold our hundred millionth iPad.

Tim Cook is back...

$1799 for the 27-inch version...





Engadget 10:37AM:
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Aperture imports are 3.5x faster using flash vs. HDD. In this FusionDrive it's very nearly as fast as a pure SSD system.

Base is $1,299 with a 2.7GHz i5 with 1TB HDD and 8GB of RAM.

These ship next month, coming in November.





Verge 10:34AM:
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"I want to talk about storage a little bit more. Customers can choose what they want, a hard drive for storage, or an SSD for speed. But we have a new option. It's called the Apple Fusion Drive."

128 SDD and a 1TB or 3TB HDD, "Fused together with software." "You order it and get a single drive."

Core applications and OS stays on the SSD, documents stay on the HDD. Apple has some logic which figures out which apps you use the most and will shift those to the SSD.



MacWorld 10:34AM:
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FaceTime HD camera 720p, dual microphones, stereo system that sounds even better than previous generation, hard to achieve with 40% less volume. Also, 8lbs lighter.

There is a serious computer in here. Core i5 or Core i7, NVIDIA Kepler graphics, up to 768GB of flash or 3TB HD, up to 32GB RAM.

GigaOm 10:33AM:
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Comes in 21.5 and 27 inch models.

The laminating process is called “Plasma deposition process” and he claims the display has 75 percent less reflection.





ArsTechnica 10:32AM:
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if you looked closely at previous generation, there's a thin air gap between the display and front glass, but we've removed that

by laminating the display directly to the glass

The benefits are huge, the entire display system is 45% thinner







Gdgt 10:31AM:
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This is pretty stunning, but the thinness of the edge is kind of an optical illusion -- it gets much thicker towards the middle.

The edge is 5mm, 80% thinner. They moved welding technology from laser welding to "friction stir welding" in order to get it this thin. Okay.

Oh, and the optical drive is done. Duh.

The display is super thin with edge-to-edge glass.

Verge 10:28AM:
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"We said this is a big day for the Mac, and I have one more I'd like to talk about. And that's the iMac."

"We've had 7 generations of the iMac, all better than the last."

"Here's the next generation of the iMac."







Engadget 10:27AM:
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Four USB 3.0 ports, SD card reader, HDMI... and now we're looking inside. Core i5 or i7 ivy Bridge chips, up to 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB HDD or 256GB of SSD.

2.5GHz spec with 4GB of RAM and 500GB HDD for $599.

There's a server model, 2.3GHz Core i7 with 4GB of RAM and dual 1TB HDDs for $999.

Shipping today as well! Consumes 11 watts at idle, which Apple says is the most efficient ever.

MacWorld 10:26AM:
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Next up is the Mac mini.

"You knew there'd be something called 'mini' in this presentation."



GigaOm 10:26AM:
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The older MacBook Pro is hanging around. Still starts at $1199.

Video ad for the new notebook being shown...

ArsTechnica 10:24AM:
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EnergyStar 5.2, EPEAT Gold, Arsenic-free display glass, mercury-free, BFR-free, PVC-free



Gdgt 10:23AM:
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Base model starts at $1699. That’s not too shabby -- $500 less than the 15-inch. Ships today.



Engadget 10:22AM:
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Facetime HD camera with 720p recording, stereo mics and speakers, backlit keyboard and of course that patented glass multitouch trackpad.

Up to 768GB of flash, 8GB of RAM, Core i5 or i7 Ivy Bridge chips, 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth 4. HD 4000 graphics.

Phil says you can expect up to 7 hours of battery life.



Verge 10:20AM:
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75% reduction in glare. IPS panel.

"Your apps look fantastic on it. Reading email the text is so beautiful you can't see the pixels."

"There's never been a small notebook that gave pro photographers this capability."

"If you're looking for Retina apps, just go to our App Store. There's a lot of great software to support the display."







MacWorld 10:17AM:
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So in typical Apple fashion, they're going to take their best product and introduce something better. So here comes the 13-inch retina MacBook Pro!

0.75 inches thin. 20% thinner than the previous MBP. Weighs just 3.57 lbs. Almost a full pound lighter than previous generation. Lightest MacBook Pro ever.

GigaOm 10:17AM:
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Schiller is going over the reviews of the MacBook Pro with Retina display. Good reviews. But he says the 13-inch MacBook Pro is actually the company’s best-selling computer.

ArsTechnica 10:16AM:
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the Mac is the #1 desktop in the US and the #1 notebook in the US

we're really pleased, but we're not standing still

we're going to continue innnovating with the Mac and we've got some really great stuff to show you this morning

to do that, I'm inviting Phil Schiller up to take you through it



Gdgt 10:14AM:
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1.5 million books in the iBook store, with 400 million book downloads. iBooks features night and… Sepia modes. Sepia? Okay, well, I’ve been looking for a better way to read all my old timey e-books.

It's out today! But it doesn't seem like that big an upgrade, so, you know, you don’t really need to go RUN to grab that or anything.





Verge 10:12AM:
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"Now one of the most popular apps on the store is iBooks."

"It has an elegant bookshelf, you can put hundreds of books on it and carry them with you where ever you go."

"One tap and you get to the iBookstore."

Engadget 10:11AM:
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"Customers absolutely love the selection in the App Store and we've reached another milestone." 35 million apps have been downloaded!

"This is great for customers. They get the choice of some fantastic apps, but it's also great for developers." $6.5 billion paid out.

MacWorld 10:10AM:
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Game Center gets a little love. Over 160 million Game Center accounts.
Shared Photo Streams gets a shout-out too. Launched with iOS 6 a month ago, already shared over 70 million photos.
On to App Store. Last month over 700,000 apps in the App Store; 275,000 iPad apps. These numbers are both growing.



Engadget 10:09AM:
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There are now 125 million Documents in the Cloud already.
Tim's talking iMessage too. 300 billion iMessages have been sent since the platform launched!
"We are currently sending them at 28,000 per second, maybe even more by now!"

ArsTechnica 10:07AM:
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In just one month, we have 200 million devices running iOS 6
this is the fastest upgrade rate in history
iOS 6 and Montain Lion have been designed to make Macs & ioS devices work together
over the past year, we've announced some great new features that make your life easier

Gdgt 10:06AM:
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Tim’s chatting up the enormous efforts of Apple to ship all these products. iPod touch and the new nano are “off to a fantastic start.” Tim quoted the Verge, and Nilay, who’s sitting a couple rows in front of me, chuckled loudly.

Video being shown...

Engadget 10:03AM:
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Tim Cook:

We're going to start with talking iPhone. It's off to a "tremendous start."

"We sold out the first weekend, selling more than 5 million units. This was fantastic. This is the most iPhones ever sold in the opening weekend, and the most phones ever sold in the opening weekend."





We will be providing coverage of Apple's special event that begins October 23rd at 10:00am PST / 1:00pm EST...

The event takes place at the California Theatre in San Jose

Apple is widely expected to unveil an iPad mini, 13-inch Retina Display MacBook Pro, and updated iMacs and Mac minis.

Check back in soon!!