Live Blog: Apple Announces iPad2
Apple's invitation to its announcement teased recipients with the number "2," causing many to anoint the next iPad the "iPad2." Nothing like a little cockiness to usher in a new product.
By Fritz Nelson, InformationWeek
March 2, 2011
URL: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=229300026
We are live blogging during the Apple announcement. You may need to re-fresh this page to see the up-to-the-second posts as they come in.
The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts was host to the original iPad launch. We are now on site, checked in, huge crowds forming, TV trucks, and a buzz of expectation is inescapable. Next door is the Game Developer Conference (GDC), a massive event produced by our parent company, TechWeb. We understand Nintendo is keynoting right about now. All eyes on Howard Street in San Francisco right now. Soon, we'll be on the inside, showing photos and giving play-by-play right here.
9:40 PST: it's rainy in San Francisco so we are inside the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts a little early, but not inside the auditorium. It is jam-packed, and there is very little additional buzz about what's to be announced here this morning but if we don't get in soon I might have to start making things up out of boredom.
9:55 PST: Apple is playing the typical Beatles music as the crowd settles in, as if to say "we now have the Beatles catalog on iTunes. Right now, "Revolution" is playing but I'm not trying to take too much from that. Maybe if they played "All You Need is Flash" or something, then I'd be impressed. (Wasn't that on the White Album?)
10:03 PST: Steve Jobs. Standing ovation. "We've got something great to announce today, and I didn't want to miss it."
10:04 PST: Jobs: "Random House is bringing its books to iBook store. Over 2500 publishers now a part of iBook store. We just crossed 200 million accounts across all the stores. iTunes, app store, iBook store. Apple recently paid out over $2b to developers for selling apps on app store. The emphasis here on the volume of apps and the money being made."
10:06 PST: Jobs: "Apple recently shipped 100 millions iPhone. A majority of Apple revenues come from post PC products. iPod, iPhone, iPad."
10:08 PST: Jobs says that at the time of the launch of the iPad, people weren't so sure the price was "magical," and now, he says, "just ask our competitors." Big laughs on that one. They are all trying to figure out how to price their tablets, and are all waiting on what Apple will announce today. 15 million iPads sold in 2010, 9 months. More than every tablet PC ever sold (of course) and $9.5b in 2010. 90% market share.
"Competitors flummoxed." The cocky Steve Jobs. You gotta love it.
10:15 PST: Jobs is showing a video about 2010, the year of the iPad. The big emphasis of this video and what Jobs has been talking about so far is on the consumer -- the retail store, showing videos of children using it to play games and draw on it, vacationers, senior citizens. But they are also showing their use in schools, particularly highlighting schools in Chicago and how it has assisted in raising test scores. Also showing the use of the iPad in hospitals -- the claim they are making is that it is allowing doctors to be more engaged with their patients, that it will "change how doctors practice medicine."
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Now Marc Beniof, CEO of Salesforce.com in the video talking about how the future of the enterprise will be run . . . of course, it'll be on a tablet.
10:16 PST: In this video, they are also showing how the iPad has been improving the potential of children with Autism. The doctor in this video calls the iPad a "game changer."
10:18 PST: What about 2011? Jobs asks. "Everyone's got a tablet." Is 2011 the year of the
Jobs announces iPad 2. All new design, he says. Not marginal improvements. Dramatically faster. A5 chip -- "our chip wizards have come out with it." Dual core. 2x faster CPU, 9x faster on graphics. Same low power as A4 chip.
10:21 PST: Built in cameras. More on that in a second. A built in gyroscope. From 13.4 mm thick to 8.8 mm thick. Thinner than an iPhone 4. Also lighter. From 1.5 pounds to 1.3 pounds. He says it feels a lot lighter.
10:22 PST: Jobs is really stressing how thin it is. Like him. Shipping both black and white from day 1. Big applause on that.
Both AT&T and Verizon on day 1. No applause on that. We're already there, of course.
10:23 PST: What about battery life. The same 10 hour battery life as the original iPad. Over one month of stand by.
10:24 PST: Jobs says that as they have added more, and made it better and lighter and thinner, they are sticking to standards like great battery life. They've also "preserved the price." Exact same prices
10:25 PST: 2011 is the year of iPad 2. It will ship March 11. In one week. That's a surprise. That's in the US. 26 more countries by March 25.
10:27 PST: Now onto accessories. HDMI video out. Thank goodness for that. HDMI mirrored video output -- what you see on the iPad is what you see out. Up to 1080p. Works with all apps. Supports rotation, no setup and you can charge your iPad while you're using it. $39.
10:28 PST: Also, "smart covers." Before, we went through all the trouble of designing something great, and covered it with a case, which also made it harder to use. They designed the case (a cover) with the design of the product.
10:29 PST: It wakes up the iPad from sleep when you open the cover. It uses magnets. Grasp and auto-aligns it.
10:32 PST: It also has a micro fiber liniing that cleans it. All of this is helpful, especially as you take it with you. Of course, I've been seeing many more cases that include Bluetooth keyboards built in, and that isn't covered here. But they just showed a video of the cover and it is really really nifty. The video reminds Jobs of a "Pixar short or something." Hehe. Of course they come in colors: polyurethane are $39 and the leather ones are $69.
Now we're onto iOS 4.3. Scott Forstall, the iOS VP is on to talk about this.
10:33 PST: Increased Safari performance, using Nitro JavaScript engine from MacOS X. It runs javascript twice as fast. iTunes home sharing is also part of this -- wireless stream over your home Wifi network to your iPad, iPhone, iPod touch.
10:35 PST: Airplay improvements are a part of iOS 4.3. iOS automatically finds your Apple TV. Apps from the app store, and web sites can be played via Airplay.
10:36 PST: Customers have asked, Forstall says, a slider switch that locks the device so it won't rotate. OK, big whoop. To go along with the new cameras, Photobooth, now for the iPad.
That was expected, of course.
10:37 PST: He is showing Photobooth with 9 live video streams at one time. Thanks to the new processor.
10:39 PST: Also FaceTime on the iPad2. Again, not a huge surprise. Between any Apple products that run FaceTime.
10:40 PST: So far, there haven't been any big surprises, except for maybe how thin it is and the cover accessory. So far I think it gives Apple-inclined people a reason NOT to buy a higher performing tablet.
10:41 PST: iOS 4.3 will be available March 11, supporting all iPads and 4th generation iPhones & iPod Touch.
10:43 PST: Jobs is back on stage, talking about a couple new apps, and saying that the reason they do that is to help set the bar for developers. The first one is iMovie. It comes with an editor, multi-track auto recording, new themes, you can Airplay to Apple. This will be a big hit with consumers, I think. Or perhaps even for some limited enterprise uses as well.
10:45 PST: There's the timeline, and you can create clips, pick clips and place them on the timeline. And you can also do this with more precision, with transition affects. You can add and subtract frames from the timeline.
10:46 PST: In the timeline, you can see audio wave forms. It also comes with about 50 sound affects.
10:47 PST: There's also a voice over recording system, which you can put right over your movie in the timeline. There are title tools, so you can add text & graphics. Also, there is face recognition within the video.
10:48 PST:You can choose tunes from the iTunes library (let's hope people don't publish that to YouTube . . . all kinds of copyright issues, no?). You can do direct sharing -- Vimeo, YouTube, CNN iReports, Facebook and so on.
10:50 PST: You can also send these movies to iTunes. $4.99, on the app store on March 11. "Awesome." Jobs says, to chuckles.
10:51 PST: Next, GarageBand. Touch instruments. You can play real instruments, of course, but also the touch insttruments. Compatible with the Mac version.
10:53 PST: They are showing the GarageBand app, where you can choose specific instruments. Buttons to add "sustain" and there are ways to add key dynamics, so for instance you can tap keys soft or hard, and it can actually play back the difference. Uses accelerometer to detect this.
10:54 PST: I have to say, it's pretty realistic. It changes entirely when you choose a rock organ.
10:55 PST: This also includes expressions, like vibratto and slides on the keyboard. Wow, very innovative.
10:58 PST: They have also added smart instruments, for those who don't know how to play music. They even put guitar chords together (in the same key) so you can have fun with this without being a musician.
11:00 PST: GarageBand supports up to 8 tracks.
11:02 PST: All of these songs can be sent to iTunes, can be e-mailed. As an AAC file.
11:03 PST: Jobs keeps saying these are not toys. They are for real work. (Don't I wish.) Also $4.99. Jobs is wrapping up. Let's see what the "one more thing" is.
11:05 PST: It's like Kirk Douglas now, stringing us along. Now a video, summarizing it all. Jony Ive, the head of design in his fab British accent.
11:09 PST: If I may summarize while this video tries to inspire me: Where others were like the iPad only faster and with cameras, the iPad2 is faster and has cameras and is way thinner. That's probably about it. I don't mean to underplay it. It's great. It makes a great device that much better; hell, tons better. Maybe that's OK. Maybe expecting something just as revolutionary as the original is unfair, and since they got it right the first time, this is exactly what Apple is supposed to do.
11:10 PST: I wish it had an SD card slot, USB connectivity. HDMI out is good, but as always, it's everything OUT, and absolutely nothing IN. Some people won't love that -- mostly the people who don't like it now.
11:11 PST: I wish there was a way to hard wire it to the network, even through USB.
11:12 PST: Jobs is saying, as he often does, that it's about more than just technology. That it's about technology and liberal arts, "the humanities."
11:13 PST: He is talking about how many think this is a lot like the next PC. He says this isn't right. These are "post PC devices," that must be easier to use, more intuitive than the PC, and the applications must intertwine and be more seamless than PC apps are today. That is both self-serving, and also correct, by the way.
Roughly two dozen people are here from Apple -- the people, precisely, who worked on iPad2.
11:14 PST: There will be hands on. Not 'one more thing.'
And there it is, folks. I'll try to go get some hands on, maybe some video and report back later. Thanks for joining us.
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