The Apple WWDC: For developers, it's another opportunity to join the thousands of application makers who want to be part of the Apple ecosystem. But for fans and customers, it's another opportunity for Apple to release some cool new toys.
 
Anticipation of a new iPhone is running high; the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg virtually confirmed that he had one in his hot little hands. New rumored capabilities include video recording,  uploading to YouTube, and movie downloads via Wi-Fi; plus improved battery life. ("Rumors roundup" image courtesy of TGRBlog.com; click to enlarge.)
 
It's been just about a year since the release of the iPhone 3G, which solved the problems associated with the first iPhone: namely, lack of a high-speed 3G connection. But as you'll note in our review, some of the first iPhone 3Gs were plagued with reception and delay problems.
 
Sascha Segan and I will be in San Francisco, huddled in line along with the rest of the Apple faithful. Joel Santo Domingo will be following along from the home office in New York, and chiming in with commentary. Sometime before 10 A.M. Pacific, 1 P.M. Eastern, we'll take our places in the Moscone Center auditorium, waiting for the next update to the iPhone, and possibly Apple's lineup of iPods as well. Join us then for our live blog of the event!

8:00 PST: Some photos coming in already from the Moscone Center, courtesy of Sascha Segan. Check them out after the jump.

9:45 PST: We're in and ready to start! Updates will appear at the top of the page, after the jump.

Live blog updates beneath this line. JSD = Joel Santo Domingo; all other updates are Mark Hachman.

JSD: Store and www.apple.com are back up, now with 3G S goodness.

12:05: Lights come up. Looks like that's it. Steve Jobs does not make an appearance.

12:03: Showing the new ad: Cute, and it plays off the iPhone 3G ad.

Is there going to be a "one more thing"? Doesn't look like it. Schiller summarizes the sessions and praises the amazing people at Apple.

12:01: Availability of the iPhone 3GS: June 19. US. Canada, UK, Germany, etc. By July, 28 countries, then a total of 80.

JSD: $99 for "old" iPhone 3G 8GB. Nice price point for those signing AT&T contracts.

12:00: Price: $199. 16 GB version; $299 for a nw 32 GB version. AT&T prices for new customers in U.S. Comes in black and white.

In addition: keep iPhone 3G at $99, a "breakthrough price" at 8 GB. That starts today, Schiller said.

11:58: Improved battery life, 6 hours to 9 hours Internet surfing ; 10 to 12 hours of 2G talk time; 7 to 10 hours of video.

Schiller: "The iPhone 3GS: the fastest, most powerful iPhone yet."

11:57: Accessibility settings: can zoom in display, can invert colors, or pipe mono audio to either headphone. Nike+ support.

11:55: Voice control. It's the simplest thing. Hold down home button, and a wave function shows your voice. A list of commands also scrolls by. Voice dialing: something that other phones have had for years...?

11:53: The best thing about the camera is that it also captures video. It's as easy as can be. Toggle switch flips between film and video. Like the still camera--autofocus, auto white balance, auto exposure. Demo of actual video shot on the iPhone 3GS. Can also edit it with tap of the finger, using the trim feature demoed earlier. Video can be shared as an MMS, on MobileMe, on YouTube. Video API as well, so this can be built into apps.

11:52: There is an API for developers. But the best thing about the camera...

Autofocus, auto white balance, even tap to focus. If you want to focus on foreground, tap the foreground. It autofocuses, and auto-white balances. Even auto-macro, up to 10 cm away. 

11:49: OpenGL ES support for graphics. Support for 7.2 Mbits HSDPA. Amazing features: built-in camera. 3-megapixel autofocus camera.

JSD: iPhone 3GS now official. Yay! APPL stock just took a sharp upturn. (I don't own any stock BTW.)

11:48: Same great design, but what is inside is entirely new. 2.1X times faster launch messages, 2.4 times faster launching games. 3.6 times faster viewing attachments; 2.9 x faster in JavaScript. that's running iPhone 3.0. Loading the NY Times, 2.9X faster. 43 seconds to 15 seconds running SunSpider JavaScrpt benchmark.

11:47: iPhone 3GS! S stands for speed. Most purposeful fastest iPhone ever made.

11:46: Mobile browser usage: Apple claims  two-thirds of Apple iPhone browsing done on an iPhone or an iPhone touch. 50,000 apps on iPhone App store. Android has about 4,900. BlackBerry has 1,000. "There's somebody else; I can't read it, it's small." (He points to Microsoft apps.)

11:45: Phil Schiller is back on stage. "To cal the iPhone 3G a hit is the understatement of the year. It has caused people to rethink how they think about their phones."

11:44: All developers get the GM Seed today. Devs needs to assign age ratings and download iPhone OS 3.0.

JSD: Reality Check: store.apple.com is still down, shuffle is still on Apple home page. AAPL stock is still about 4 points down from open...

11:42: iPhone 3.0 will be free for all existing customers. $9.99 for all iPod touch customers. It will be available worldwide June 17.

11:40: Line 6 and Planet Waves team up, controlling both guitar and amp via iPhone (Marcus Ryle). Not bad. Amp configured. Supposedly the guitar can be configured differently too, but the demo has some problems. Even can supposedly tune the guitar. You'll have to check this one out for yourself.

JSD: Zipcar app is decidedly cool for urban dwellers who have access to them, it's a great product that will generate interest. Now we need to talk about hardware, Apple.

11: 35: Zipcar (Luke Schneider): New Zipcar iPhone app. App automatically finds Zipcar locations near by, as well what types of cars are available. Data: what it will cost, its specs, can favorite it. The car can also reserve. Can even tap the horn icon to make the car signal you! A nifty little little feature. Even better: remote control unlock (a security risk?) Loud applause.

11:31: Pasco (Wayne Grant). Science-experiment app. Have 70 real-time sensors that they can hook up to computer. Spark app for iPhone. Demo: pressure changes over time in terms of a bursting balloon.Demo fails, but there's applause.

11:29: ngmoco (Neil Young): "We created our company with the belief that the iPhone will revolutionize gaming." Star Defense: 3D tower defense app that takes place on planets, Mario Galaxy-style. Expansions: new content and feature packs. The woman demonstrating this is trying way too hard, but it looks rather nice. Launching today, available now for $5.99.

11:26: TomTom (Peter-Frans Pauwels): Optimized and succeeded in delivering true TomTom navigation to the iPhone. Uses IQ technology to plan the route. Turn-by-turn navigation, and the screen flips over into landscape mode.

Optional accessory: TomTom car kit. It will securely dock iPhone. And will hold in either landscape or portrait. Can enhance GPS signal with additional antenna. Mic will provide hands-free calling. And it will charge the iPhone as well. The app and the car kit will be available this summer, with a range of maps. No price given, though.

JSD: Medical app, games, eBooks, and TomTom. Now please, Phil, can we hear about the new Phones?

11:22: ScrollMotion (Josh Koppel): E-book seller. In-app bookstore. Have over 500 books in app store, now have added 50 magazines, 170 daily papers, and over 1 million books to the App Store. Books download directly to the app. Can copy and paste directly from the text (great for citations, we're told.) Partnered with Wiley, McGraw-Hill, and others to bring textbooks to the App Store. Coming soon.

11:20: Airstrip Technologies (Cameron Powell): Medical app. All about patient safety. Medical community flocking to the iPhone. Demo of Airstrip Critical Care: Alert: patient's labs are out of balance. Doctor can view the test, and then access the records. Impressive: can access real-time waveform data with blood pressure, pulse rate. We have to figure out ways to bring the data to the mobile physician. Can rewind real-time data, can pinch and zoom on wave form, even measure the scope of a medical event.

This demo drew oohs and aahs from the audience. A surprising highlight.

11:14: Developers brought on stage for endorsements and demo. Gameloft (Mark Hickey): Asphalt 5, new iteration of racing franchise. 27 licensed cars, 4 bikes, including Ferrari, Audi R8, and others. Media-player access in game. Advanced lighting effects, worldwide online multiplayer with voice chat, 99-cent content packs upgrades. Shipping later this summer.

11:13: Push notifications: generic push notification service, for scoring alerts, and instant messages. Text alerts, numerical badges, and customized alert sounds can be pushed. Forstall: iPhone SDK is an incredible SDK.

11:12: No peering needed for multiplayer games. One iPhone finds the other, and the game is off and running.

11:09: Phenomenal developer release. 1,000 new APIs. In-app purchase to make financial transactions right from within the app. Things like magazine sunbscriptions . Things like game packs. Business terms just the same as on the App Store. But free apps can't use paid hooks. Free apps will remain free, Forstall says.

11:08: If you lose your iPhone, Mobile Me will show you on a Web browser where your phone is. Send it a message. Force it to make an alert sound, even if you left it in silent mode. If you're like Forstall, the alert tone plays, even if it's in silent mode. Ah -- remote kill command will wipe data: contacts and mail. If you ever find the iPhone, just plug it in and restore it from backup.

JSD: FindMyiPhone: Now THIS is a killer app.

11:07: New feature: FindMyiPhone. Clip shows of "30 Rock," where Tina Fey's character loses an iPhone with an adult picture on it.

JSD: Funny that T-Mobile was on the list of systems that support tethering. Of course, that is likely T-Mobile UK or Germany

11: 06: Adding support for audio and video tags in HTML 5.

11:05: Three times faster JavaScript support. HTTP streaming audio and video, with bitrate and data quality picked automatically, though firewalls. Automatic sage of passwords and autofill. and HTML 5 support.

JSD: No tethering and no MMS on AT&T. At least MMS will appear at "end of summer". LAME on both counts.

11:03: Lots of carrier support: T-Mobile, Rogers...but where is AT&T? Crowd laughs again, even more cynically. This is not good news for an AT&T exclusive contract.

11:01: Tethering: allowing you to share with iPhone 3G connection with your MacBook as well as PCs. Wired over USB or Bluetooth. No need to run any app -- it is seamless. Very nice.

1:00: Can search email. Can search thousands old messages back on mail server, and download message and attachments. Also adding Spotlight: a single location on home screen that can search across phone, even apps. Looks very much like the Google search bar on the Google phone.

Rent and purchase movies right from the phone! Plus movies, videos, audiobooks! and iTunes support, to boot. Standard prices, I assume.

Parental controls: for movies, TV shows, and apps. (PG movies, or limit kids to age-appropriate apps from the App Store).

JSD: MMS send AND receive on the iPhone. Can anyone say, "It's about frickin' time?"

10:58: Speaking of messages: Big news is here is MMS. Contacts, images over the network. Twenty-nine carriers will support MMS. AT&T will be ready to support later this summer. Crowd cynically laughs.

10:57: Works across all apps, and undo support with  a simple shape gesture. Developer APIs, of course, so it can be ported to APIs. Landscape mode already in there, but now landscape keyboard extends to Mail, Notes, and Messages.

JSD: Note on that "40 million" iPhones number: To put that into context, there were 110 million Moto RAZRs sold over its 4-year life cycle (according to wikiality).

10:55: Emphasis on iPhone 3,0 software, with new features such as new streaming API highlighted. and shots of people from around the world picking their favorite apps. The crowd goes wild.

Next: iPhone OS 3.0, a major update to iPhone operating system, with 100 new features, including cut, copy and paste. Tepid applause.

10:50: Scott Forstall, senior vice president of iPhone software, shows tribute video to iPhone apps developers.

10:49: Now it's the iPhone's turn. iPhgone SDK downloaded more than a million times. More than 50K apps on the App Store. Apps from the App Store rus on the iPhone and iPod touches. Sold more than 40 million iPhones and iPhone touches. On April 23, sold 1 billion apps, in just 9 months.

10:48:Available for all of Intel Macs past and present. Priced Snow Leopard at $129. Apple wants all of them to upgrade, and for existing users, it will be just $29. Yes, $29. Wow, For several users there will be a family pack of $49. It will be available in September. There will be a developer preview released today.

10:46: Serlet returns., and summarizes. Lots of refinements, updates, and Exchange.

10:45: Drag and drop contacts to the calendar to schedule a meeting. Availability demo for buildings and contacts.  Ask iCal to find the next available time, with one-click, and it reschedules the meeting automatically. Again, rather nice.

10:43: Craig Federighi comes back on stage to demonstrate. All Exchange emails, to-dos, notes, all available immediately. But Mac OI X features apply to Exchange: Spotlight even previews a document if Office is not installed. Again, pretty slick.

JSD: Quick recap: New MacBooks across the line from White MacBook to Air to Pros, no more removable batteries (except the legacy White MacBook), New MacBook Pros start cheaper ($1.199), New Quicktime X. Snow Leopard 10.6 is a $29 upgrade for 10.5 users, Exchange support for Mac Apps (Mail, iCal, Address), Mac OS X is going 64-bit full-bore.

10:41: This power is for us to innovate, and for developers to give a competitive edge. Now.,moving to the office, where MS Office is the de facto standard. Exchange now is Mail, iCal, and the address book. Just enter your email server and password, and you're set up for all three apps.

10 :40: Graphics: 1 GigaFlop graphics cards. best way to use it is OpenGL, Serlet said. For computing, Apple has helped to develop OpenCL, which uses a C-based language. It's an open standard, and many companies are participating.

10:38: Multicore: as processors hit 3 GHz or something like that, instead we see more and more cores. How to program them. Multithreaded programming: Never fully efficient. Have a solution for this: Grand Central Dispatch: multicore support for all of Snow Leopard. From lop-level libraries to high-level libraries, to integration with system APIs to tools.

Leopard Mail threads: same number of threads used when buys and idle. In Snow Leopard, it gives back threads, or resources, to the system.

10:36: Serlet is back. He describes new technologies that take advantage of power of silicon. Modern Macintosh incredible levels of performance. Processor expressed in gigahertz. GP with enormous power. To take advantage of all this: 64-bit OS. If app runs in 32-bit mode inherent limit in addressing space. In 64-bit, 16 billion Gbytes. Hmmm, this sounds a little 1999.

Aha--up to 2X faster in 64-bit math. All apps are now run in 64-bit mode.

10:33: QuickTime demo again, with controls that fade in and fade out. Ah, editing features! Video timeline allows editing. Sharing options to YouTube, MobileMe, or iTunes. A really nice demo, that.

10:32: Google Maps rendering demos. Snaps up, and zooms in smoothly. "Top Sites" page lays sites out in slick, panoramic mode. Full History Search: click in search history filter and get a Cover Flow view of browsing history. Yep, 3D windows and all. Full spotlight search of the content.

10:31: Another demo for Expose to reduce clutter. To get a window inside a preview, just click and hold. Email doesn't even have to be opened, just zoomed right in. Nifty drag-and-drop demo with the Finder, Expose, and Mail. Well done: It just works.

10:30: Stacks make it easy to get downloads to desktop. Can scroll through large stack. Can drill right in without leaving stacks. In Finder, there is a new magnification control for live previews (such as JPEGs, movies and PDFs.) Look like the Bing movie preview feature.

10:28: Craig Federighi, VP Mac OS engineering takes the stage for a demo.

10: 27: Quick Time 10: all new in Snow Leopard. Leverages hardware acceleration, color correct. HTTP streaming (this is new). Works with any Web server, like an Apache server. New user interface for QuickTime player, with fade-away controls.

10:26: Passes Acid3 test 100 percent, IE 8 passes 21 percent. Much faster SunSpider rendering, too.

Better handling of browser plugins. If a plugin crashes a window, the page crashes, but now the browser.(This was first in Chrome, I believe.) 50 percent faster in JavaScript.

JSD: Exchange support for Mac OS X 10.6 is huge! Enterprises can now support Macs along with the iPhones their CEOs carry. (Exec assistants and SVPs will likely still carry BlackBerries)

10:24:Chinese input: It uses the touchpad as a stylus to input Chinese characters! Pretty cool. Mail is faster. Safari4: been in beta for a few months,

10: 22: Snow Leopard: Challenge: Build a better Leopard: The design goals: Refinements, technologies, exchange. Snow Leopard refines over 90 percent of the ongoing projects. Serlet: Apple rewrote Finder for better position for the future, which brings lots of little benefits. Next: the dock. We've had a feature for the longest time of how we deal with clutter, with Expose. Built into dock. Click and hold, and then select the window you want. Up to 45 percent faster installation.

After you install Snow Leopard, actually recover 6GB of disk space, thanks to technologies like file compression. It's faster, too. Used a little bit of AI to make copying and pasting easier: handles columns and formatting more intelligently.

10:20: Underlying Windows 7 you have old technologies, DLLs, the registry, disk defragmentation -- no users should ever have to know about that! User Account Control, even more complexity in front of the user. Same old technology of Vista -- fundamentally, just another version of Vista. Technologically, Apple comes fro such a different place, Serlet says.

10:19: Mac OS X. Bertrand Serlet takes the stage.

JSD: 13" is now a MacBook Pro as well. So no more backlit-keyboard envy from the cheap seats.

10:17: Updates to MacBook Air: 2.13-GHz version for $1499, 9400 M graphics, 120-GB SSD.

10:16:Channel config: $1199, and $1499 SKUs.Schiller: It's the most affordable configuration we've ever had.

10:15: 13-inch refresh: same built in battery. Also gets up to 7 hours of battery life. Same incredible high-color display, and SD card. Did not have ExpressCard, so designers challenged to add SD card. What other things can we add? Also can expand up to 8GB of memory, 500GB of storage. LED backlit keyboard now standard as well. And FireWire 800, too. With all of those features, it deserves the macBook Pro. But it starts at $1199. That's less expensive than the standard 13-inch aluminum

10:10: Specs: 3.06 GHz Dual Core, up to 8GB of DRAM, 500GB of storage, or 256GB of SSD. Starts at $1699, an even lower price. That's $300 less expensive than before. Config: 2.53-GHz, 4GB DR 3256 HD, Nvidia 9400M $1699. $1999 2.66-GHz, 4GB, 320 GB 9400+9600. 2.8-GHz, 4GB  higher price, $2299. $2499: 17-inch refresh. All shipping today

JSD: Another new version of the 15" MacBook Pro: built in battery like the 17".  Planned obscelecence reaches a tipping point. Interesting that we start with hardware. And a built-in SD card reader, finally!

10:08: Extended 13-inch MacBook Pro, 17-inch MacBook Pro. Even through we have huge lead with incredible gorgeous designs, extend the design.

New 15-inch MacBook Pro! Built in battery, amazing up to 7 hours of  battery life, two hours longer than before. More environmentally friendly. Other batteries get 300 recharges. Now, they get over 1,000 recharge cycles.

Typical user will get five years of  life for this notebook, and won';t nee to swap notebook batretie. And if they want to, Apple has great battery recycling. Wen you open it up, have a gorgeous display, 60 percent color display. Still insanely thin. If you zoom in, replaced ExpresCard slot with SD slot. Why? Most customers have digital cameras and pop in and out cards. Pop in card, and import photos into Aperture and PhotoShop.

10:06:We'll begin with Mac products ,the best products at Apple, which began a year and a half ago with the MacBook Air. Unibody, packed with features, insanely light. Extended t13-inch MacBook Pro, 17-inch MacBool Pro. Even through we have huge lead with incredible grogeious designes, extend the design

10:05: Scales changes in graph. iPhone triples the number of users of OS X. "No wonder there's so much excitement about what's happening." Continuing to give you technologies to give you the world's coolest tech.

10:04: Phil Schiller walks on stage. We have an amazing week for you: 5,200 developers from  54 countries around the world, Can you feel the love in the room? Chart: of OS X readers of first five years of Mac OS X. up to 25 million in 2007.

10:01 : Light dim. Applause! From Mac versus PC commercial, John Hodgeman welcomes us. Take 2:  Hodgeman  stumbles tries again: I wish you well with some innovation, but not too much.

Take 60: Mac: What the PC is trying to say is have a great conference.

10:00: Apple.com home page still advertising the iPod shuffle.

9:59: Background tracks used during iPhone commercials are playing.

9:57: Hmm, on one side I'd say we have twenty-five broadcast cameras. Aha! "Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome!" Here we go!

Doh! Too soon. Things will start in a few minutes, we're told.

JSD: I'll be chiming in from the NY office, keeping vigil with nine(!) other liveblogs open. I have Ars, Wired, AppleTell, Engadget, Gizmodo, Connectreviews, Macsoda, Slashgear,macrumors, gdgt, and of course gearlog.com open. Strange, live.macnn.com goes to last January's Macworld coverage, oh well.

9:53: Inside the show, there's not much of note. The standard blue-draped stage, an Apple icon projected on the screen, and a number of journalists killing time. An early estimate? Thirty rows of 12... 360, maybe?

9:50: The gentleman next to me (an analyst)  is actually using pen and paper to take notes. An iLegalPad? Revolutionary!

9:49: Sascha is embedded up close to the stage, the better to take photos of the proceedings.

9:47: The ambiance? Random pop techno, all probably featured on the iPhone store. The show banners advertise Snow Leopard and in-app purchases, so the early money says those will be highlights of the keynote, which starts in oh, twelve minutes or so.

9:46: The big pre-show story: The iPorn girls, dressed in skimpy black bikinis that are completely inappropriate for the chilly San Francisco weather.  Sascah Segan has photos of the girls [scroll down for one], who are offering free admission to a local skin joint. Unfortunately, the need for a quick, timely story means I will be unable to partake.

9:45 PST: It's a foggy morning in San Francisco. Walking from the Ziff-Davis headquarters, all was quiet. Around Moscone, however, is a caffeine-fueled buzz.



Look, it's Walt Mossberg.



AT&T's network here is totally hosed. I'm sending this to you using Verizon
Wireless.



The waiting is the hardest part.





Is that Apple crumb cake?







The wall of LCDs is an awesome trick. It's showing the cons for 20,000 iPhone
apps, and they pulse as each one is purchased. It was mesmerizing.





The half-naked girls are from a company called iPorn, promoting their iPhone
optimized porn site.



Media check-in.



The media lined up early.