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FORTUNE — If you don’t have access to Apple’s (AAPL) live stream, there are any number of live blogs from which to choose, including my colleague JP Mangalindan‘s.
If you’re still here, I’m going to assume you’ve been to Apple.com, clicked on the October Event 2013 link and are watching the same presentation I am.
The action is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern.
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OK. Here we are. Opening music is up to the usual Jobsian standards. Whatever they choose, it’s always catchy and new to me.
An ominous silence, then a replay of the WWDC mission statement video. “There are a thousand nos…” etc.
Tim Cook will never be a great public speaker. But he can do nuts and bolts — quoting positive views, running down the numbers, introducing speakers and videos — competently.
Nobody does product introduction videos like Apple’s. Then again, nobody else draws crowds like that.
Most of the iOS 7 numbers are old. The fact that 64% of the installed base of iOS devices have upgraded as of today is new.
Also new: 1 billion songs listened to on iTunes radio in first month.
Belittling quote about Apple’s PC competitors: Now they’re trying to turn tablets into notebooks and notebooks into tablets.
What Craig Federighi is doing is a recap of his June OS X Mavericks presentation. The improvements in the Mac OS are all the sustaining kind and mostly under the hood. It’s harder and harder to get PC owners to trade up to a new model, and the Mac is no exception.
That iBooks is only now coming to the Mac — how many years after Amazon released Kindle for the Mac? — is just embarrassing.
The password management feature could be a godsend. We’ll have to see how well it works. You can imagine a day when it migrates to iOS and gets accessed with Touch ID.
Satellite view is nice, if you live in a big city. What’s lacking is subways, bike paths, and, god knows, street views.
He’s stretching out the punchline: Mavericks is free and available today.
Works back to iMac 2007 and one-step update from Snow Leopard.
Phil Schiller, as usual, is introducing Mac hardware. “Mind. Blown.”
Updates to both MacBook Pros. Lighter. Thinner. Intel Haswell chip (13-inch) and Crystallwell in 15-inch). Better battery life (up to 9 hour). Faster Wi-Fi. Thunderbolt 2. More sustaining improvements. Not enough to force an upgrade for most Macbook Pro users, I suspect.
- 13-inch $1,299 is $200 cheaper. Shipping today.
- 15-inch $1,999 is $200 cheaper. Shipping today.
“Shipping today” is the way Apple likes to introduce products, which raises the question of why Apple previewed the next machine — the Mac Pro — in June.
So Schiller is left repeating all the stuff he said nearly four months ago. What we want to know is price and availability.
- Mac Pro $2,999 for 256 GB due before the end of the year.
The price feels about right. The people who need this machine will pay whatever it takes.
The video of those robots building it is impressive. And helps explain why they can afford to build it in the U.S., not China. There is some human assembly, but not at the scale of a Foxconn factory.
Eddy Cue, who was missing at the iPhone event, is here to do Apps, starting with iLife, now all rewritten for 64 bits on iOS.
Coffee table books, really? Only the front rows — filled with Apple employees — could applaud that.
Cue is reading the cue cards unapologetically. Did he miss the rehearsals? And what’s going on with the sleeves of his shirt?
Heavy emphasis on how the Mac and iOS versions share features, especially in Garage Band for the Mac, which had fallen far behind the elaborate iOS version that Apple made to show off the iPad.
Cue calls the iWorks updates “the biggest ever.” Except for Keynote, these apps badly needed an update.
Apparently “object based” is an Apple buzz word this fall. Also “collaborate.”
Free versions of iLife and iWorks for iOS and Mac doesn’t leave any price umbrella for Microsoft. Although Google already basically commoditized a lot of this business with Google Docs.
Cook calls it “turning the industry on its ear.”
Finally, an hour into the presentation, we get to iPad, which Cook introduces with some classic “claim chowder” quotes.
New number: 170 millionth iPad sold earlier this month.
Pulls out the accolades: 81%/19% usage pie chart (with citing source),
475,000 apps for iPad. Is that new?
Very cool video.
Schiller, the marketing chief for all Apple hardware, is going to do the new iPads as well.
Surprise: The 9.7-inch iPad has a new name: iPad Air.
This kind of re-naming is something Apple doesn’t do lightly. In this case it creates an equivalency between the Macbook Air line and the iPad Air line. It’s a little weird, because the Macbook Air is the cheaper Macbook and the iPad Air is the more expensive.
As some had predicted, this iPad gets the latest chips — A7 processor, M7 motion detector — and is 64-bit, like the iPhone 5S. Did it get also get Touch ID? If so, I didn’t hear it.
Keeping the iPad 2 around at $399, new iPad Air at the same $499 as last year’s.
Jony Ive explains in video that the A7 chips energy efficiency allowed him to reduce the size of the battery, thus thinner and lighter.
- $399 for 16 GB. Available later in November.
- Old iPad mini: $299.
Tim Cook wrapping up. I’m still trying to understand why the new iPads don’t have Touch ID. I would have thought Apple would have wanted to roll that out into every new Apple product.
The pencil joke in the iPad Air ad is going to wear thin fast.
Cook thanks the staff and invites the press to the hands on. And that’s a wrap.
- Apple Announces iPad Air—Dramatically Thinner, Lighter & More Powerful iPad
- OS X Mavericks Available Today Free from the Mac App Store
- Introducing the All New Mac Pro—The Most Radical Mac Ever
- MacBook Pro with Retina Display Updated with Latest Processors, Faster Graphics & Longer Battery Life
- Apple Introduces Next Generation iWork and iLife Apps for OS X and iOS
