Blogging Apple Event News

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on September 09

Peter and Cliff are at the event in San Francisco, and I’m tracking developments from New York. Here’s the story so far:

Steve has taken the stage, and looks similar from before. Still thin, but I’d say his color was good. On CNBC he appeared with a slide behind him saying “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” alluding to the obituary that Bloomberg published by mistake recently.

iTunes 8 is being released — confirming what Digg CEO Kevin Rose has been talking about for a few weeks now. It includes a new feature called Genius that automatically builds playlists from songs already in your iTunes library, songs that “go great together,” and will also make recommendations from the iTunes store. There are also some new browsing capabilities, and some interface changes.

NBC shows are coming back to iTunes. Score! That means Battlestar Galactica is back!

Some stats: 160 million iPods sold lifetime; 8.5 million songs available on iTunes; 3,000 iPhone applications (Um, wow?); More than 125,000 podcasts. 2,600 Hollywood movies; 73.4% market share as of July (is that global or US?); Number 2, Jobs says is “other” grouped together; SanDisk is #3 at 8.6%, and Microsoft is fourth at 2.6%.

HDTV shows are being added. They’ll sell for $1.99 in standard def and $2.99 in HD.

New products: iPod classic, 120 gigabytes $249.

New iPod nano. It looks just like the spy shots, with a longer rectangular screen. It includes an accelerometer like the touch and the iPhone. Jobs calls it “the thinnest iPod ever made.” It’s also capable of voice recording when a microphone is detected.

New feature: Shake to shuffle songs. Cool.

24-hour battery life for music. Four hour battery life for video.
Nine colors. $149 for 8 gigabytes, $199 for 16 gigabytes.

Environmental features: Arsenic free glass; BFR-, Mercury-, and PVC-free. Easy to recycle.

iPod touch updates: 16 gigs for $299, 32 gigs for $399. All available starting today.

iPhone 2.1 firmware upgrade: Available for first and second-generation iPhones. Free if you’ve already updated to 2.0 firmware, and $9.99 if you haven’t. Its a big update that is intended to fix a lot of bugs including the dropped calls, the crashes and so on that have been the one big problem clouding the iPhone’s relaunch over the summer.

And after all that? AAPL stock closed down $6.24 or 3.95% at $151.68. What don’t investors like? Maybe that there weren’t any notebook announcements as had been expected. But they may yet appear before the holiday quarter. Or perhaps Apple may hold them back until MacWorld in January, now 17 weeks away.

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