FORTUNE — Can Apple continue to “wow”? We’ll find out.
This year’s San Francisco-based WWDC already promises to be bigger than most. The company’s executive bench, from Tim Cook to Senior VP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue, are here, as are Al Gore, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, super angel Ron Conway, Path CEO Dave Morin, and Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel.
As is customary with anything from Cupertino, rumors have been zipping around the Web of refreshed MacBook Airs, MacBook Pro Retinas, and the unveiling of iOS7, developed under the watchful supervision of Jony Ive. But of course, it’s anyone’s guess until 10 AM PST / 1 PM EST, when the keynote kicks off.
Tune back in to this live blog, which we’ll update throughout the event. (Just remember to refresh.) Also, check back in to Fortune.com afterwards for our hands-on impressions.
12:01: Cook: “Have a great rest of the conference, and thank you.” That’s all, folks!
12:00 p.m.: Montage shots of people around the world: people in a third-world country, a huge rock concert, audience-goers at a presentation. “You may rarely look at it, but you’ll always feel it. This is our signature, and it means everything: Designed by Apple in California.” The ad begins airing this evening.
11:58: Cook: “I’d like to close with a reminder: That our goal is to make products our customers love and enrich their lives. … You’ll continue to see these in the products we do in the future.” Apple has created an ad to show how “deeply” they feel about this.”
11:57: Cook retakes the stage to summarize everything they’ve unveiled: the black, cylindrical Mac Pro, the new MacBook Airs with all-day battery life, OSX Mavericks, iOS7, and iTunes Radio.
11:56: The Beta version of iOS for iPhone will be available for developers today; the final consumer version will hit some time “this fall.”
11:54: Federighi introduces a new security feature. With Activation Lock, if a thief tries to wipe your phone or hack into your phone, they won’t be able to reactivate it.
11:53: Here’s an incentive: if you’re an iTunes Match subscriber, the iTunes Radio experience will be ad-free.
11:52: There’s an “iTunes Radio” history for users to go through songs and albums they recently jammed to.
11:52: Cue rocks out for a second to Led Zeppelin.
11:51: Here’s what iTunes Radio looks like:
11:50: iTunes Radio is here, and it’s built right into the Music app.
11:49: A refreshed Music app where you can scroll endlessly through album images.
11:48: No more pesky app update notifications. The App Store will update your apps automatically.
11:47: At least 12 auto makers will have iOS integration by end of 2014.
11:46: Now there’s “iOS” for the car. You can play music, get your maps, make phone calls, or access Siri “eyes-free.”
11:44: SVP Eddy Cue is onstage now to talk about Siri. Sir has a new interface and a new voice: male or female. S/he sounds much more natural. Certainly no one will mistake it for an actual human, but the improvement is welcome.
11:41: Other people can also share into your photo stream. Doing so resembles dashing off a quick email on the iPhone.
11:40: “Moments” are organized into albums. Federighi tabs and scrubs from a birds-eye view of all your images, which he credits to the high resolution of the Retina screen.
11:40: Federighi introduces a new photo organization feature. It organizes your photos into “moments.”
11:39: Switching between camera features and new live photo filters is also easy.
11:39: A little ditty about AirDrop. (It’s exactly what you think.)
11:38: Another look at the new Control Center in iOS7:
11:35: The same fundamental concept found in OSX Mavericks of a reading pane with infinite scrolling to hop from one story to another will be in Safari for iOS 7.
11:31: Better multitasking, which includes different panes. Multitasking now available for ALL apps now. All apps will update in the background without battery life taking a big hit.
11:30: 10 new features Federighi wants to show us: including Control Center. Swipe up from the bottom of the device to access those new translucent controls.
11:28: Oh, and iOS folder now offer multiple pages for users to put more apps in.
11:26: More iOS7:
11:26: There’s a big emphasis on cleaner typography and translucent panes.
11:23: Federighi will walk us through iOS7.
11:22: Here is iOS7:
11:19: “It’s about bringing simplicity to design,” says Ive.
11:18: Ive is narrating the beginning of the iOS video, which focuses on hardware industrial design for now. “Ultimately, design defines so much of our experience,” Ive Says.
11:17: iOS will be the biggest change ever, says Cook. Video now.
11:14: 73% of iOS users are “very satisfied.” Android? Just over half, or 53%, are “very satisfied.”
11:14: Cook: iOS users were responsible for substantially more Black Friday purchases than Android users.
11:13: Cook cites an Experia study stating iPhone users use their devices 50% more than Android users. “This is incredible, but maybe not surprising.”
11:12: Aight. It’s iOS time! Cook back to the front.
11:10: How does it work on Windows? Rosner shows us how from Google Chrome on Windows 8.
11:09: Keynote in the cloud now. Rosner assembles a quick presentation about the History of Pigments. Indeed, it does all look quick and painless. “This is all happening in a browser. It’s pretty incredible.”
11:07: Now there’s iWorks in the cloud. Users can create and modify documents right in their desktop Web browsers.
11:04: Cook is introduces Roger Rosner [TBD on spelling] onto the stage to talk more about how iCloud will be more fully integrated.
11:04: Onto iCloud.
11:02: Here is the new Mac Pro:
10:56: A sneak peak at the new Mac Pro desktop: lots of close-ups of black curves and perforations. It’s cylindrical: like Harman Kardon’s subwoofer, but black and opaque. Schiller: “Can’t innovate, my ass!!”
10:54: The MacBook Airs start shipping today.
10:52: The new MacBook Airs also sport 45% faster Flash-based memory, which it uses to store all your information. WiFi Internet performance will also be much faster.
10:51: Phil Schiller onstage now. He’s talking about the MacBook Air. NEW MacBook Airs! All-day battery life.
10:47: Now’s we’re looking at iBooks on the desktop. It’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect.
10:46: He’s going through the revamped Calendar, which will show him projected weather and travel time is for his next appointment. (The travel time can be added right into the Calendar.)
10:45: He’s adding a site to his Bookmarks, and this bookmark will sync across all of his devices.
10:44: iBooks is finally coming to desktop.
10:42: Maps. A new feature allows you to send routes you’ve looked up on your desktop to your iPhone. A Maps software tool set will also be made available to developers so they can integrate Maps into their apps.
10:42: Up next: Calendar. “We have a great new inspector that recognizes travel time and weather.”
10:40: New notifications improvements. So when you get an iMessage notification, you can respond to that person directly within the notification.
10:37: Federighi is showing off his own reading list in Safari’s new sidebar, and one-click bookmarking. There’s auto-scrolling now, so users can just keep scrolling down to hop from one story in their list to the next.
10:35: Nearly 60 frames-per-second when scrolling through Apple Mail in Mavericks. “It’s … epic.” Epic!!
10:34: The new Safari is smarter about using your computer’s memory and laptop’s juice.
10:33: Big improvements to JavaScript. A synthetic benchmark like Sunscript supposedly offers faster performance compared with Chrome and Firefox. “The results are really incredible.”
10:31: A new feature, called Compressed Memory, will “almost instantaneously” offer up memory for apps use to use. 1.4x faster wake-up from Standby for instance.
10:30: What Apple can control is the use of the CPU. With Maverick, new optimizations reduce CPU activity by up to 72%. “It’s pretty awesome.”
10:29: “I’d like to talk about the advanced technologies in Mavericks…” There are many features customers want, but we also apparently want great battery life. (Yep, truth.)
10:27: He’s showing how you can move windows across displays like you’d expect, but you can also summon the dock and menu bars onto that second display. (Side note: This is something I’d use a lot.)
10:24: Demo time, y’all. He’s showing off a lot of windows on his desktop and how they quickly and snazzily merge into one.
10:23: Tagging for “really powerful search.”
10:22: First new feature: Finder Tabs. You can work in the Finder. You can draw all those Finder Windows into tabs. Hover across tabs, go full-screen.
10:20: OSX Sea Lion? Nope. *cue crowd chuckling* “The answer was really obvious to us.” California-themed release. OSX Mavericks.
10:19: Onto their latest desktop OS release, Mountain Lion. 28 million downloads. He’s comparing the Mountain Lion adoption rate to Windows 8. (Hint: They’re not even close.)
10:18: The Mac is up 100% in growth. The PC? A paltry 18% or so.
10:17: 72 million installed base of Mac.
10:15: Two of the cars “get knocked” off-course. You can apparently do this too with “Anki Drive” on your iPhone or iPod touches…
10:14: Those cars sure know how to keep up…
10:11: He’s introducing us to Anki, a startup taking the stage that’s “bringing artificial intellience into our daily lives.”
10:10: 575 million App Store accounts. “We have more accounts with credit cards than another other online store we know of.” They’ve paid developers $10 billion dollars, $5 billion paid out just over the last year. “That’s 3x more than the other major platforms combined.”
10:08: 5th anniversary of the App Store, and 50 billion apps downloaded. Impressive, no?
10:02: A video is playing now: “Abundance with choice.”
10:01: The WiFi here is really spotty all-around. We’re going to keep it focus on text with some images.
10:00: People are settling down.
