It’s been rumoured for years now, but it’s finally coming. Apple’s about to announce their entry into the wearables market with the so-called “iWatch”, along with the eagerly anticipated iPhone 6. Join us here for live coverage of the event.
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Apple’s iPhone and iWatch Event Live Blog
Cook’s thanking all the Apple employees. There are a lot of them there.
Right, I think we’re done.
I like this new-yet-old direction Apple is going in.
The iTunes silhouettes are back in this new ad!
It’s in your music library in iTunes. Right now.
Oh, and in true Apple fashion that was the largest album release of all time.
Everyone has this now. That album is now there. For everyone. Clever marketing trick.
Going out for free in 5 seconds time.
Apple is about to launch the next U2 album right now.
U2 have finished their song now. Good bye U2.
I think this concert is more for the Apple employees than everyone else.
So U2 are playing Tim Cook out. What a press conference.
Yup, U2!
Talking about London’s awesome iTunes Festival.
Talking about music now. Think this is U2’s performance.
The foundation of Apple is the best computers. The best tablets. The best phones. HomeKit. HealthKit. And the Apple Watch. That’s a damn strong product lineup.
The Watch working with Pay is awesome. So cool.
6 and 6 Plus. Nothing drastic, but improved. Apple Pay. Gamechanging. Works with the Watch too.
And I think that’s it! This has been the best Apple keynote in YEARS.
That’s around £200. I think it’s a bit too steep. Keeps it as a premium product though.
Available early 2015.
Starting price is $349. Which is…a bit much.
Works with Handoff too. Nice!
Works with the iPhone 5, 5C, 5S, 6 and 6 Plus.
Oh god. Time for the price. Please don’t be too high.
Controls your Apple TV, Viewfinder for your camera. Walkie Talkie.
I love how at this point, we’ve completely forgotten about the iPhone 6.
The health implications are huge if it sells well.
Suggests personal, realistic and achievable goals.
“Apple Watch is going to change the way we look at fitness.”
Dedicated workout app. Lets you set some desired goals, and it’ll help you – tracks how long you’ve been doing it and how well you’re doing. And shares it with the iPhone’s Health App.
Makes sure you stand up every now and then too. Small, but goes a long way.
The Activity app wants you to sit less and do more. Shows you calories burnt. You can set a goal for the day.
Accelerometer. Grabs your heartbeat. GPS from iPhone.
Two applications – the Fitness app and the Workout app.
Apple Watch can motivate you to be more healthy, apparently.
Health and Fitness in detail with Tim Cook now.
Not much more advanced than Android Wear, but much more seamless.
BMW lets you find your car and check your charge level. MLB lets you see scores. Honeywell lets you control your thermostat. Nike is for fitness stuff. Very cool.
You can check in and unlock your hotel door from your watch at Starwood Hotels. NICE.
WatchKit lets developers create actionable notifications for the Watch. Twitter shows you tweets – super rich, with buttons to fav and RT straight away. Custom apps for the Watch too.
A pretty good API for developers, of course.
A communication app which lets you draw sketches, or “tap” your friend’s wrist. super cool.
The vibrations will be seriously useful and very safe for driving.
Every turn, you get a wrist vibration so you know which way to go. Different vibrations for left and right. Very clever.
There’s maps on it, of course. You can zoom in and out, pan around etc. And it has search and directions.
“All of the photos that you favorite will just show up on your Apple Watch.”
There’s a photo app, which shows you a massive collage then you can zoom in to look in detail.
Siri’s totally integrated. Which is to be expected, but a good addition.
It can analyse the messages you get and work out what you might want to send back. So if you’re asked whether you want “Love Shack or Wild Thing”, Love Shack and Wild Thing are automatic reply options. And there’s really advanced animated emoji support.
You feel the vibration, you raise your wrist, the screen turns on and you see the notification.
You get a subtle vibration on your wrist when you get a notification.
Yeah, those aforementioned “glances” are basically Google Now cards. You swipe up from the bottom of the watch face, and you’ll get little digests of information. Like a calendar appointment, or music widgets.
You can see the whole solar system on one of the watch faces. If that’s your jam.
There’s something called “force touch” which is basically tapping harder than normal, and that’s the new right click, I think.
You can pan around a circular grid of your apps. It’s sleek.
This UI is very hard to explain in words, but looks really nice.
The iPhone is required for Apple Watch. Obviously.
VP Kevin Lynch is doing a live demo.
Basically this watch is a huge deal and I think it’s gonna be a very very big success.
I want the gold one. I’ll probably get the steel one.
Sport Collection has an aluminium casing – light and durable. And “Apple Watch Edition”. Made of 18 karat gold.
A couple more traditional leather ones. And a sexy stainless steel one. And a gorgeous totally unique one that I can’t spell the name of. Two sizes of the watch, and 3 models. Apple Watch, which is a polished case in a stainless steel alloy.
A sexy leather loop. with magnets in it.
Six different straps. And a proprietary mechanism for adding them. Obviously. A sports band, which completely changes the look of the device.
Multiple watchfaces. Some traditional, some more modern.
Wireless inductive charging. And sort of haptic feedback. And loadsss of sensors.
It has a Google-Now style cards interface for “glances”
You can draw on the screen and send the image to your friend. Cool. Display is flexible and retina.
Ah, this is the device with the sapphire screen!
The OS is very well designed here.
Touchscreens aren’t exactly precise at this size.
Confirmed that it’s a touchscreen. But you can use the crown as an additional input device. Which is clever.
Has a microphone in for dictation.
The display turns on when you raise your wrist. Also, this is a very good looking watch.
There are loadssss of sensors on the back.
Jony Ive video time!
The digital crown acts as a scroll wheel. Or to zoom in or out of a map. And as a home button.
There’s a dial on the side that’s just like that on a normal watch. Called the “digital crown”.
The UI is radically different. And very nice.
Let’s you connect and communicate “intimately”. And works with iPhone. And a health and fitness device.
It’s a super accurate watch. Customizable.
This is it. The day Cook claimed Apple as his own.
Apple employees in the audience, along with everyone else, have gone wild.
well that’s an insta buy.
Jony Ive. You are my hero.
It is seriously pretty.
Dirrent colours. Loads of different straps. Circular knob on the side. An 18 karat gold version. A stainless steel version. Apple Watch. It’s HEREEEE
Oh jesus it’s beautiful. It’s amazing.
Oh boy. This looks very nice.
Which was on the screen of the watch.
We open on a shot of the earth from space.
Video. It’s a watch.
“We believe this product will redefine what people expect from its category.”
Time for an entirely new product. Oh boy. Apple’s fate rests on this.
WATCH TIME BABY
HELL YES
SAID ONE MORE THING
TIM COOK
ONE MORE THING
HE SAID
ONE MORE THING
This is gamechanging, in case you hadn’t realised.
Apple is “working hard” to bring it to the rest of the world. Launches in the US in October. Very cool.
Starbucks. Open Table (lets you pay the bill from your phone). MLB. So cool. I can’t wait for this to come to the UK.
He’s showing off the integration in Target’s app by buying some Beats headphones. Groupon are also signed up. As is Uber.
One touch checkout online too – no card number entry, no need for addresses and no card information shared.
All Disney Stores AND the Disney Parks will support it.
Macy’s. Walgreens. Staples. Subway. McDonalds. Who are adding it to the drive through. SO COOL. And Whole Foods. And Disney. And Apple Retail Stores. This support from the offset will make it work.
Starting in the US with Amex, MasterCard and Visa. Most US banks are signed up already. Can use it anywhere with a contactless terminal.
It’s totally private. “Apple doesn’t know what you bought, where you bought it, and how much you paid for it.”
Security is important. Of course. The number is never stored or shared. There’s a device only account number, with a 1 time payment number and a dynamic security code. Very clever. And you can suspend all your cards on the device from iCloud, in case your phone gets stolen or lost.
Your existing iTunes credit card on file can be used automatically. Or just take a picture of your credit card, they’ll do a security check, and you can use that.
Google have tried it. And failed. Phone carriers have tried it. And failed. Apple will try it. And succeed.
Oh god this is such a good idea.
There’s an NFC chip in the phone. Eddie Cue’s gonna explain this to us.
You hold your phone up a sensor. Scan your fingerprint. DONE.
New payment process. It’s because Apple can design a user experience that works. It’s called Apple Pay. This is gonna be revolutionary.
Apple rightly pointing out that a successful mobile wallet does not yet exist.
That tweet. That is a funny tweet. Good job Denny’s.
— Denny's (@DennysDiner) September 9, 2014
A lighthearted video to show how complicated credit cards are. I mean, they’re not that bad.
Right. Calm. They’re explaining that this’ll make them loads of money.
I AM SO EXCITED FOR THIS I REALLY CAN’T EXAGGERATE HOW MUCH I WANT MY WALLET TO BE MY PHONE
GOTTA GET THOSE NFC CREDIT CARDS YO
WALLET MONEY TIME
Actually they’re mildly funny. Sort of a “Mac vs PC” vibe to them.
The singers were Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon. That makes more sense.
As people keep pointing out, the Apple Stream engineer is going to be so fired in the morning. They’re now playing an ad for iPhone 6. It’s awful. Acappella music. I hate it.
Andddddd onto the next thing!
iOS 8 is out next Wednesday (17th).
Preorders start Friday.
5S is $99. 5C is free. And this all ships on September 19th. Done.
6 Plus is $100 more.
You can get a 128gb one. Cool.
Prices for the 6 are the same as always.
Normally they haven’t even *announced* the product by now, let alone finished talking about it.
Environmentally friendly phones, etc etc. This is moving very, very quickly.
Whirlwind tour of iOS 8 now. We’ve seen this before.
Continuous autofocus in video. Sweet.
Stream is down. Again. This is shambolic.
Video is now 1080p at 30fps OR 60fps. Impressive. And 240 fps slow-mo.
I think the Sony and Nokia phones have optical image stabilization. It’s a really neat feature – moving the lens around to compensate for a longer aperture.
The 6 Plus also has optical image stabilization. Which should be good. But why would you use a phone that big as a camera…..I still think it’s way too big.
Their “face detection is faster, and blink / smile detection is better too.” (The Verge)
ISP is designed by Apple now. Interesting….
The pictures are very pretty. And panoramas can be 43 megapixels now. Nice.
Focus pixels does phase detection autofocus – basically super fast autofocus. it’s cool tech.
An all-new sensor. Something called “focus pixels”.
From The Verge: “8MP camera, true-tone flash. 1.5 micron pixels, 2.2 aperture.”
Camerassss
EE are supported in the UK. Cool.
Oh, the call seamlessly transfers between WiFi and your mobile network. Clever.
Lots of US carriers. Verizon, ATT and T Mobile all on there. WiFi is AC now. And there’s WiFi calling (isn’t that just FaceTime audio sort of?)
Voice over LTE is a thing now. Some carriers will support it. Probably.
The LTE is fast and has excellent support: 20 bands, which is the most in the world.
The motion co-processor can tell if you’re climbing up stairs. Clever.
The battery is much, much better on the 6 Plus. 16 hours standby vs 10.
Equal or better battery life on these phones than on the 5S. Which is good.
Since the event started, Apple stock is down by $1.10. In case you were interested. That’s normal though.
Running at 60fps. Impressive.
People at the event are saying it’s a very pretty game.
The game’s called Vain Glory. Looks interesting.
Game demo!
That Metal game engine they talked about last year is present, as you’d expect. Games will be real nice on these phones.
New A8 processor, of course. Faster. Smaller. The usual.
It is worth noting that Apple’s website has completely died. The stream is inaccessible.
These are nice but underwhelming phones, in my opinion.
All apps are compatible (they scale up), which is good news for developers/everyone.
Power button is on the side. And if you double touch the home button, the display slides down so the top buttons are in reach. Weird.
I love the idea of a curved display. Super-cool.
The UI has been tweaked to take advantage of the Plus’ big screen. Works a lot like the iPad.
6.8mm is thin. Very, very thin.
From The Verge: “The 6 is 6.8mm thin, the 6 Plus is 7.1mm. That’s compared to 7.6 on the 5S. These are THIN phones.”
The Plus is true 1080p. The “normal” 6 is just shy (1334 x 750)
Confirmed that they’re 4.7″ and 5.5″. As far as I’m concerned, the 6 Plus is way too big.
The glass is “ion strengthened” I don’t think it’s sapphire.
Schiller is the one talking at the moment, by the way.
Display is “Retina HD”. Whatever that means.
The screen curves on the side. Which is nice.
iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are the official names.
Actually, nice is an understatement. Very sleek. Like an iPod Touch. And it’s actually black, rather than slate gray.
iPhone 6! And a bigger one! It looks exactly like the leaks does. Nice though. Very nice.
The stream is seriously, seriously broken. People will lose their jobs over this.
Starting with iPhone – the #1 phone in the world now for sales, apparently.
A Japanese translation is being played on the stream. No idea why.
The usual history lesson of the Mac being introduced here a while back.
Tim Cook’s out, after that motivational and very Apple-y video finished. Lots of quotes about being different and moving things forward.
Some 3D video is being played. Not sure why.
And we’re off…although the stream is extremely laggy.
We’ll, can’t deny it any more. I’m in Cupertino, CA. At the Flint where the iMac was launched and today … ? We’ll soon see!
— Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) September 9, 2014
My predictions: iPhone 6 4.7 inch and 5.5 inch, an updated 5C with the 5S’ specs, and a couple of different watch designs.
Right, we’re about to start! Hearing reports that celebrities are attending the event (such as Stephen Fry and Gwen Stefani) – and we all know that celeb endorsements are rather useful when launching a fashion accessory….
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So that’s it! We’re done! Thanks for joining us for this, and we’ll see you…in a few months time at their next event.