Let’s Talk iPhone event run down

I wanted to take some time to post a wrap up of today’s news.

Tim Cook was the first to take the stage and welcome everyone to the Apple campus at Town Hall. He spent some time talking about the growth of Apple’s retail locations and how the Mac has grown at 23% & the PC at 4% this past year. Also mentioned was that the iPod has sold 45 million units from July 2010 to June 2011. Tim also shares the two new China retail openings, Hong Kong and Shanghai.As talk of how many iPods have been sold there is anticipation of the news everyone wants hear. The iPhone makes up five percent of the smart phone market and then he makes a statement, “More coming up on iPhone…” With talk about the iPad now, its stated that over 80% of hospitals in the US are now testing or piloting the iPad. With that he says that 92% of fortune 500 companies are deploying iPads.

Then came time for Scott Forstall to take the stage. He begins to talk about iOS and Apps for iPad which 18 billion have been downloaded. His next mention is about a new app called “Cards”. This App allows you to design a personalized greeting card in which Apple will print and mail for you then give you a push notification once it’s delivered and all for only $2.99. Sounds convenient, you no longer have to go to Hallmark or the local Target or Wamart.

The next topic on his list is iOS 5. Talk of the Notifications center, iMessage, Reminders app that’s location aware, Twitter integration and how you will no longer have to sign in multiple times and can share pictures directly from the Photos app. Newsstand is among the many features and some big names have come on board for this app. GQ, Vanity Fair and the New York Times to name a few. There are so many new features and this is not the time for me to list them all. I suggest visiting the Apple site if you want to know all of them.

There are some impressive additions to the new firmware. Like the new camera app which starts in 1.1 seconds and snaps consecutive shots in just .5 seconds and you can use the app straight from the lock screen and even use the volume up button to snap a shot. Now all of these features were announced at the World Wide Developer Conference in June this year. It’s not totally brand new to some of us.

So now on to even better stuff like how iOS 5 will finally be hitting the market on October 12th! and if you get a iPhone 4s you get to take advantage of the new Siri personal assistant feature. If you’re not going to upgrade or get the new device your out of luck as Siri will not work on the iPhone 4. Bummer, I was hoping it would.  Well there are a bunch of other feature that we iPhone 4 owners can take advantage of like Find My Friends. A location-based service that allows you to see the location of  anyone that you know who may have opted in to share their location. This could come in handy if someone gets lost trying to find your house. You can also invite your friends to share their location as well. Don’t worry parents, there are parental controls for this app too.

Now for the fun stuff, new iPod hardware. It looks like the Shuffle is still in the line up. The Nano has a few tricks up its sleeve. It now has a pedometer with no need for a sensor or shoe dongle, they have added a big icons option to navigate with opposed to the four icon array. It also has 16 new clock faces, Mickey Mouse clock face included . So all of you with a Tik Tok or Luna Tik or any other watch band can get a little more personalized with it. Along with the iPod touch the nano also shares a price drop. 8GB Nano is now $129 and the 16GB is $179. As for the iPod touch (now available in white) the 8GB is $199, 32GB $299 and the 64GB is $399.

And now for the main event, the new iPhone 4s. a bit of a let down but not totally. Everyone was hoping for a complete redesign. The new device has some great hardware compliments though. The dual core processor with speeds 2X faster and graphics processing up to 7X faster, new camera hardware capable of 1080P video recording and has a wider aperture with a 8 megapixel rating and a 3264×2448 resolution, it has 60% more pixels than the iPhone 4 with a five element lens that has image stabilization. The camera has integrated face detection and 23%  better white balance. The new device includes a better battery life with the A5 processor as well. 8 Hours talk time on 3G, 6hrs 3G browsing, 9hrs WiFi browsing, 10 hrs video play back, 40 hrs music play back. It also has a dual antennae to improve call quality. The iPhone 4s is capable of 14.4 Mbps download speeds, compared to the iPhone 4 which is 7.2 Mbps. These speeds are compatible to 4G speeds mind you. The iPhone 4s is now a world phone so you can use it on any network. That’s an impressive list of hardware upgrades.

Siri was the main focus of todays event. This personal assistant is a big part of iOS 5. Siri will talk to you as well as display responsive on-screen text. You can say pretty much anything you want to Siri and it will have a response for you. The more you talk to it the better it learns your voice. You can just speak a day, time and event you would like to enter into a calendar and it will mark the event. If you already have an event at that time Siri will tell you and make a suggestion to change it. You can do everything from ask for directions to what will the weather be like today and even voice search for restaurants in the area. Siri will even take dictation for an email or text message. Its; that convenient.

So about the pricing, the iPhone 4s will start at $199 for 16GB, $299 for 32Gb and $399 for the 64 GB models. Yes you read it right I said 64GB model! That is with a two-year agreement of course. I guess I should mention you can now get the iPhone 4 for $99 and the 3GS for free, again with a contract. So with pre-orders starting this Friday Oct 14th let’s hope that Apple servers don’t crash this year like they did the last iPhone launch.

Sorry folks, no iPhone 5. That will have to wait for 2012.