David Gallagher/The New York Times
The Bits blog on the iPad
Update | 1:16 p.m. Mr. Jobs is giving an overview: it’s very thin, with customizable background images. “You can browse the Web with it. It’s the best browsing experience you’ve ever had.”
I’m cutting out all of Mr. Jobs’s “phenomenals” and “amazings” and “incredibles,” folks. Just assume they are there.
The iPad works in both landscape and portrait mode, like the iPhone. It has a virtual keyboard, access to photo collections, direct access to iTunes’ surfeit of content.
“It’s awesome to watch TV shows and movies,” Mr. Jobs says. “It’s so much more intimate than a laptop and it’s so much more capable than a smartphone with its gorgeous screen.”
He’s now displaying the New York Times site, NYTimes.com. If he shows the Bits blog, the space-time continuum may rip. Oh, jeez, he just did. I just saw my own name on the screen. Audience is chuckling as they see our tech headlines.
He’s now going to Time magazine, thank God. “Did you see what’s going on today?” he quips as the audience looks at Time’s tech headlines. “A whole Web site in the palm of your hands.”
The New iPad Looks Like a Big iPhone
Update | 1:10 p.m. All of us use laptops and smartphones now. The question has arisen lately: is there room for a third category of device in the middle?
The new device will have to be far better than the laptop and smartphone at doing important things: browsing the Web, doing e-mail, enjoying and sharing photographs, watching videos, enjoying your music collection, playing games, reading e-books. Otherwise, “it has no reason for being.”
Apple’s answer: the iPad.
It looks like, well, a big iPhone, pretty much as anticipated.
Apple is a Mobile Device Company
Update | 1:05 p.m. Mr. Jobs says there are 284 retail stores. At the online App Store, there are more than 140,000 applications, which have been downloaded a total of 3 billion times.
Apple is now a $50-billion-a-year company, Mr. Jobs crows. The revenue comes from iPod, iPhone and of course Mac sales — a majority of which are laptops. All are mobile devices. “Apple is a mobile devices company. This is what we do,” he says. He calls Apple the number one mobile devices company in the world.
Now let’s get the main event, he says.
Steve Jobs Appears
Update | 1:03 p.m. Apple’s chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, has taken the stage. He looks disturbingly thin, much as as he did when he took the same stage in September to introduce new iPods. But there’s a sparkle in his eye and a smile on his face as he gets a big standing ovation.
“We want to kick off 2010 by introducing a truly magical and revolutionary product,” he says. But first, there are some updates: a few weeks ago Apple sold its 250 millionth iPod.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Workers apply the Apple logo to the exterior of the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco.
The Event Begins
Update | 1:01 p.m. The lights are darkening here at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. The Wi-Fi is unstable, endangering the tweeting and blogging of hundreds of journalists.
After remaining mum during more than two years of rumors and thousands of speculative articles and blog posts, Apple is finally ready to unveil its “latest creation” on Wednesday at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco.
All signs point to the introduction of a tablet computer. Analysts and high-tech companies have long thought that such a device, at the right price and with the right technology and connections to content, could establish a new category of computing and change how people consume media. It could also bring further disruptive changes (some positive) to all sorts of industries. But tablets have flopped before. On Wednesday we’ll see if the Apple tablet is a game-changer.
I’ll be chronicling the morning’s events here as they happen, with contributions from John Markoff, veteran technology reporter, and David Carr, the Times’s media columnist. We’d like to hear any and all questions from readers and will try to answer them in our coverage.
Steve Jobs is expected on stage at 10 a.m. local time, 1 p.m. New York time, so watch this space for updates.
Apple. Yes, thank you, we'd love one.
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