ABC7 Tech Blog

More to do

The event is winding up, and this blog is wrapping up.  Time now to hear from analysts who follow Apple and an opportunity to touch and play with the new devices.  For those of you in the Bay Area, we'll have more later today online and a full report this evening on ABC7 News at 6:00.  Thanks for following our live blog coverage of the Apple Media Event. 

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Coldplay

Chris Martin is taking the stage.  He's joking that he has no new products to reveal and that it's one of the hardest closings he's ever had to do.  

While Martin performs, let's wrap up this live blog with a couple of observations.  It's clear that Apple has a great lineup of products to propel sales for the all-important holiday shopping season.  Music and now video remain a central focus of the company.  Apple dropped the "computer" part of its name several years ago.  It needs continued support of content generators to push their intellectual property out to consumers.  For some traditional media, Apple's dominance will seem like a threat; for others, an opportunity.  The future for Apple is clearly defined.  It listens to its customers, and it tries to come up with smaller, better devices that people want to spend their money on, even during a recession.  

Next door at Moscone Convention Center, a major conference is underway that's all about cloud computing. Apple's next frontier may well be the cloud -- storing and managing content for users.  It bought a cloud-based music service a few months ago, and Apple no doubt has plans for that acquisition in the near future. Stay tuned!

Starting to wrap up

Jobs is now reviewing all of the news he has announced this morning.  All new iPods for the holiday season, iTunes 10, Ping - social networking for music, the iOS 4.1 and 4.2 mobile operating system, and AppleTV.  

"We love music," Jobs is saying.  He's about to introduce an artist to perform -- four albums out so far.  It's Coldplay.  Over 50 million albums worldwide sold.

Transportable

There will be seamless integration of streaming content across Apple devices.  You can start watching a movie on your iPhone, then switch on your AppleTV and finish watching it on your big screen TV.

$229 was the cost of the original AppleTV.  The new one will be priced at $99.  Available in four weeks.  You can pre-order it today.  

More on new AppleTV

You can stream movies from Netflix, videos from YouTube, photos from Flickr, and stream content from your computer onto the new AppleTV.  Interface has been redesigned for renting movies and TV shows.  It has a small remote control.  

Jobs is now doing a demo of the new AppleTV.  

One More Thing...

Jobs is now turning to AppleTV.  AppleTV was introduced four years ago, but it was not a big hit.  Nothing has hit in the living room yet.  Users love them and use them a lot.  So what have we learned?  Users want Hollywood movies & TV shows whenever they want them.  They don't want amateur hour.  They want everything in HD.  They want to pay lower prices for content.  They don't want a computer on their TV.  They go to their big screen TV's for entertainment.  (This last comment is a jab at Google.)

They don't want to manage storage.  And they don't want to sync to a computer.  It's too complicated.  And they want the hardware to be silent, cool and small.  

Introducing second generation of AppleTV is which about one-fourth the size of the original.  You can hold it in the palm of your hand.  It has a power supply built-in (no power brick), one HDMI connector, and built-in wi-fi.  All rentals, no purchases now.  You stream content from your computer.  

$4.99 for first run HD movie rentals.  HD TV show rentals will be 99 cents (commercial free).  A big step for the studios.  ABC and Fox are offering their shows.  Think rest of studios will get on board later.  

More on Ping

Ping will be available on the iPod, the iPhone and your computer.  Ping = A social network for music, built into iTunes 10, which is available for download today.  

Social music discovery

Jobs is describing privacy features for Ping so you can control who follows you or whom you follow.  You can be as private or as public as you want.  You can post your thoughts & opinions about music.  Over 17,000 concert listings. Ping is open to all 160 million iTunes users in 23 countries immediately.  

Jobs is demonstrating how Ping works.  

Turning now to iTunes

11.7 billion songs downloaded from iTunes.  450 million TV episodes have been downloaded.  100 million movies.  35 million books.  160 million accounts with credit cards and 1-click in 23 countries.  #1 online media store in the world.  Today, Jobs says they're proud to launch iTunes 10 today. It gets a new logo, ditching the CD that was part of the logo.  Jobs anticipates downloads from iTunes will exceed CD sales next year, hence the need to update the logo.

In iTunes 10, Apple is debuting Ping - sort of like Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes (in Jobs' words).  A social network just about music.  You can follow your favorite artists and friends and find out what they're downloading.  You will see what songs your friends have purchased.  

Music players

This means the iPod touch, the Shuffle and the Nano are all newly designed and have new features for the holiday season. 

Jobs is now showing some new ads for these new products that will be hitting the TV airwaves soon.