08:51AM PDT – We’re currently waiting for the event to start. Today it’ll be Joshua Ho on both text and images. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up. After last night’s experiment it looks like we’ll be using an Android device for photos and the iPad Pro for text.
08:52AM PDT – The iPad Pro is at least comparable to the Razer Blade when it comes to sheer typing speed on the 13 inch variant once you use the keyboard cover
09:43AM PDT – Upload is getting hammered right now for obvious reasons. Depending upon connection stability we may need to fall back to AT&T LTE or text only.
09:44AM PDT – I saw at least 20 people uploading live video using Periscope so it’s probably not a surprise that this is happening. Event WiFi is open presumably to try and eke out every last bit of bandwidth.
09:49AM PDT – The HTC 10 has performed fairly admirably in liveblogs before as seen in the Honor 8 launch event, so hopefully it won’t fall short here.
09:56AM PDT – We’re roughly five minutes out from the start of the event now.
09:59AM PDT – The event is beginning it seems
10:00AM PDT – A lot of applause
10:00AM PDT – Tim Cook in video first
10:02AM PDT – Presumably we will get to announcements soon after the intro ends
10:03AM PDT – This is noticeably less formal than most intro videos that we expect
10:03AM PDT – Tim Cook takes the stage
10:04AM PDT – 17M paid subscribers
10:05AM PDT – Apple music was the launch platform for over 70 different albums
10:06AM PDT – Apple Music Festival will be streamed over Apple Music
10:06AM PDT – Ends Apple Music Updates
10:07AM PDT – 140B app store downloads
10:08AM PDT – Mario for iOS?
10:09AM PDT – Nintendo/Apple partnership
10:09AM PDT – Shigeru Miyamoto on stage
10:11AM PDT – The controls are mobile-focused so they’re fluent and one-handed
10:13AM PDT – Battle mode will also be possible which allows for competing against a ghost that your friend sets
10:14AM PDT – Price will be one time upfront and no microtransactions
10:14AM PDT – Super Mario Run will be available in the holidays of 2016 at the end of the year.
10:14AM PDT – There are also Super Mario stickers for iMessage that will launch with iOS 10
10:15AM PDT – Concludes app store updates
10:15AM PDT – Onto education
10:17AM PDT – ConnectED teachers and students are apparently also attending this event
10:17AM PDT – Mac and iPad to 4500 teachers, Apple TV in every class, 50k iPads to students.
10:18AM PDT – Program called Everyone Can Code uses Swift Playgrounds on iOS to help teach Swift to kids
10:20AM PDT – Real-time collaboration comes to iWork
10:23AM PDT – Time for new products, Apple Watch first
10:24AM PDT – Apple is now the number two watch brand in the world, top selling smartwatch.
10:24AM PDT – Customer satisfaction is top for smartwatch.
10:25AM PDT – I’m not sure overall sales are really all that impressive necessarily but we’ll have to see later
10:25AM PDT – WatchOS 3 recap
10:26AM PDT – I’m waiting for disclosure of GPS, possible cellular, and FinFET. That would be a big deal and FinFET would definitely be a point of differentiation
10:29AM PDT – Pokemon GO for Apple Watch
10:29AM PDT – 4.6B kilometers walked while playing the game Pokemon GO
10:30AM PDT – It’s a companion app to function as a heads-up display of sorts
10:33AM PDT – Apple Watch demo concludes
10:33AM PDT – Shipping on Apple Watch before end of year
10:34AM PDT – “People are absolutely going to love it” on watchOS 3
10:34AM PDT – Next gen Apple Watch begins
10:35AM PDT – Apple Watch Series 2 is swim-proof
10:36AM PDT – 50m water depth resistance
10:37AM PDT – 24 hours a day for weeks at a time to ensure long term water resistance
10:38AM PDT – You can now count calorie burn for swimming using 700 swimmers to create accurate calorie burn tracking
10:38AM PDT – Algorithm tailored to your own stroke efficiency over time
10:39AM PDT – 60 FPS in Night Sky 4
10:39AM PDT – 2nd gen display
10:39AM PDT – 2x max luminance, brightest display ever shipped by Apple. 1000 nits.
10:41AM PDT – Hopefully when Apple says 1000 nits they mean at least 80 APL or this is just marketing fluff
10:41AM PDT – Samsung Note7 would have a comparable display otherwise
10:42AM PDT – HTC 10 holding up amazingly as the camera for this event
10:43AM PDT – We’re now at the 45 minute mark so we’re probably about an hour and 15 minutes from the end
10:44AM PDT – Alu, stainless steel, and ceramic cases for Apple Watch Series 2
10:44AM PDT – Hermes partnership continues as well
10:45AM PDT – Wrapping up Apple Watch 2
10:45AM PDT – Apple is partnering with Nike as well for this watch
10:46AM PDT – Interestingly no finfet disclosure, hopefully either that or FD-SOI
10:46AM PDT – Apple Watch Nike+ is a special band + colors it seems?
10:52AM PDT – Apple Watch 2 starts at 369. Apple Watch Series 1 updated with S2 SiP and starts at 269
10:53AM PDT – Onto the next hardware launch
10:53AM PDT – IPhone next
11:01AM PDT – Jet Black with high gloss finish for the back cover
11:02AM PDT – Black is bead-blasted aluminum instead of high gloss finish
11:02AM PDT – Gold, silver, and rose gold as well.
11:04AM PDT – Solid state home button that uses taptic engine and force touch to make it capacitive + touchID with the feel of a physical home button
11:04AM PDT – This is actually really neat because home buttons with physical designs break over time
11:04AM PDT – Water and dust resistant
11:04AM PDT – IP67
11:05AM PDT – The home button is going to be like the Macbook trackpad
11:05AM PDT – 7 and 7 Plus have OIS, f/1.8 aperture
11:06AM PDT – 6 element lens, presumably 6P
11:06AM PDT – LED senses flickering in artificial light to compensate with the LED flash
11:07AM PDT – 2x throughput of previous ISPs in iPhones
11:08AM PDT – 25ms to do 100B operations per photo
11:08AM PDT – In case you didn’t know that ISPs are heavy duty
11:10AM PDT – 7MP FFC
11:10AM PDT – We’re getting close to a 4K FFC…
11:10AM PDT – FFC has DTI, wide color P3, auto image stabilization
11:12AM PDT – Corephotonics style dual camera it seems
11:12AM PDT – Two cameras with two focal lengths, wide angle has OIS but not sure of the second camera with zoom
11:13AM PDT – Digital zoom up to 10x but optical zoom is 2x.
11:14AM PDT – I’m guessing that the low light benefits aren’t going to be huge but oversampling should help at least a little bit
11:15AM PDT – Uh oh Apple is talking about background blurring now
11:16AM PDT – Live preview of the blurring effect
11:17AM PDT – I’m trying to keep an open mind, hopefully this is implemented competently
11:18AM PDT – The background blur feature is coming later this year, not at launch
11:19AM PDT – P3 gamut display with full color management
11:19AM PDT – 3D Touch remains
11:22AM PDT – All of instagram now supports P3 for iOS
11:22AM PDT – Launches later this year
11:25AM PDT – Adapter in the box for 3.5mm for iPhone 7.
11:25AM PDT – “The courage to move on” is apparenty the main reason for the move to lightning
11:25AM PDT – For headphones
11:27AM PDT – Main reason though is to make more room for other things. Seems to suggest that we’re looking at digital audio passthrough so DAC and amp is on the headphones
11:27AM PDT – I want to tear down the adapter to see if there’s any logic in it or just wires
11:29AM PDT – Motion + IR sensors so they only work in your ears and Siri. Noise cancellation.
11:29AM PDT – 24 hours of battery life and wireless charging dock
11:30AM PDT – Easy connection to the phone
11:32AM PDT – 5 hours of listening in the earbuds, case will last 24 hours total. Lightning charging
11:33AM PDT – Over 90% of contactless uses Apple Pay
11:34AM PDT – IPhone 7 supports Felica for Japan
11:34AM PDT – Apple Watch Series 2 as well
11:34AM PDT – Transit in Japan as well in late October.
11:34AM PDT – Apple dominates in Japan, this is probably why the coverage in announcement
11:35AM PDT – Wow big little
11:35AM PDT – They did it the absolute madmna
11:36AM PDT – the absolute madman
11:38AM PDT – Apple just validated ARM and Qualcomm with this move
11:38AM PDT – I really want to see what kind of governor they’re doing to manage where apps go where for cores
11:38AM PDT – Adobe Lightroom on a phone for RAW editing using this SoC
11:40AM PDT – I wouldn’t be surprised if the migration is all done in hardware though and we’re only looking at a dual core CPU from a software perspective
11:41AM PDT – That’s probably not quite right, but the kernel handles the core selection, and hardware does thread migration, and from an app dev perspective you just have two cores
11:42AM PDT – Battery life is 20-30% or so improvement over the 6s to keep up with GS7 + HTC 10
11:43AM PDT – LTE-A with 450 Mbps, is this an Intel modem? Have to see a teardown.
11:45AM PDT – Jet black is going to be a huge fingerprint magnet
11:47AM PDT – Finally 16gb dies
11:49AM PDT – Airpods 159 USD
11:51AM PDT – Looks like a concert now. Ending this liveblog. Look out for more coverage soon.
