Below is a complete transcript of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ keynote address from the 2008 Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Updates are presented in reverse chronological order.
11:50 AM: Seems like he’s wrapping up the event. Thank you, all done.
11:47 AM: Phone is $199 for 8GB $299 for 16GB. The 16GB one comes in white and black colors, the 8GB version only in black. July 11 release date. In 70 countries worldwide. Tony Fadell and Scott Forstall called out for their hard work, with their teams.
11:38 AM: Standby time is 300 hours. 2G talk time is 10H. 3G talk time is 5 hours versus 3-3.5 on competing products. Browsing – 5-6 hours of high-speed. Video 7 hours. Audio: 24 hours. Surprisingly similar to last version on those latter numbers, but with 3G speeds. GPS. Now added into iPhone 3G. Location data from cell towers, Wi-Fi, and GPS.
11:33 AM: Why do you want 3G? For browser and e-mail attachments. Showing how fast it loads National Geographic page. 21 seconds on 3G, 59 on EDGE. 2.8x faster. Next to wi-fi, 3G approaches Wi-Fi. Faster – 36% than Nokia N95 or Treo 750. For readers’ clarification the phone looks exactly like the glossy casing photos posted to iLounge a while back, and again today. The side profiling has the taper shown in our Backstage article.
11:32 AM: So, as we arrive at iPhone’s first birthday. Today iPhone 3G. It’s beautiful. Black back, silver side. glossy back. Full plastic back. Solid metal buttons. Same screen. Camera headphone jack is now flush – audience cheers. Dramatically improved audio.
11:31 AM: Next challenges: 3G networking. Enterprise support. Third party applications. More countries. They’re being used all over the world from stores in USA. More affordable. 56% say it’s too expensive.
11:29 AM: Jobs back on stage. “I think we finally got it right.” iPhone’s first year – June 29, 2007 was first birthday. Amazing intro. iPhone has had tremendous critical acclaim. Widely believed that this is the phone that has changed phones forever. Users love the iPhone, he notes. 90% customer satisfaction. 98% are browsing. 94% using email, 90% are using text messaging. 80% are using 10 or more features. You can’t even begin to figure out 10 or more features on a normal phone. Six million sold so far before running out weeks ago.
11:27 AM: 60-day free trial to be offered in early July along with new iPhone software. What about .Mac? This is a replacement for .Mac. .Mac users can continue to use services and get upgrades to this whenever they want.
11:25 AM: Demos of calendar synchronization etc. People cheering at seeing stuff getting synced from computer to iPhone. Also, you can travel around, take pictures, send to MobileMe, and pick an album to add photos to. Look back at your gallery on the computer and there it is. $99/year. 20GB of online storage.
11:22 AM: Push e-mails arrive on phone instantly. Standard iPhone stuff. You can create contacts on the iPhone, shoot them back over to the iPhone.
11:19 AM: Basically looks like a next-generation .Mac with drag and drop features that are more like Apple’s desktop applications. Wow, Phil has Daiwa Sushi on his contacts list. Wonder which location he’s referring to. Gallery provides iPhoto-style photo library skimming from events list, reorganization. Sharing galleries very easy. iDisk now has a complete online interface – share files by just right-clicking.
11:15 AM: Works with Mac Mail, iCal, Address Book. On the PC, works with Outlook. Also has an “incredible Web experience” using Ajax and web 2.0 to provide interfaces for this stuff. Me.com is the address. Rich e-mail application, photo, calendar, contacts/address book – it looks like a fusion of Apple’s current Mac apps with iPhone. Based upon .Mac services. You can also send photos directly to MobileMe from the iPhone. You can store your favorite documents and content in MobileMe and access it from anywhere.
11:13 AM: MobileMe. Phil Schiller will come up and discuss this. (Actually mobileme) is the way it is written. Brand new service from Apple – Microsoft Exchange for the rest of us. Not all people have Exchange servers, so this lets you do push email, contacts, and calendars directly to devices. Everything is up to date no matter where you are. It’s stored “up in the cloud” of the Internet, so you can retrieve it from Mac, iPhone, or PC. E-mail is pushed automatically to all devices. Or address book contact changed in iPhone gets pushed back to the other devices. Meetings – same things. Everything is up to date. Works wirelessly over the air, with all iPhone apps.
11:12 AM: If you’re teaching a class on making apps, Ad Hoc distribution will let a professor register up to 100 iPhones, letting apps created by one person run on up to 100 iPhones. So these needn’t go through iTunes/App Stores either.
11:11 AM: Enterprises wanted another way to distribute apps. Today, Enterprises will be given a way to distribute apps – you can authorize iPhones within your own enterprise, and create apps that only runs on those phones. You can distribute via your own Intranet any way you want with any security you want. Sync will take place via iTunes. So no need to push all enterprise apps through iTunes Store. A new way to add apps: Ad Hoc.
11:10 AM: The App Store was going to be in 22 countries. Now it will be in 62 countries. Almost anywhere in the world where there is an iPhone, you can get apps. If app is 10MB or less, you can get via cellular or Wi-Fi or iTunes, if over 10MB, only via Wi-Fi or iTunes.
11:08 AM: Early July release for all iPhone owners. $9.95 for iPod touch. Intimately linked to this is the App Store. Users can wirelessly download apps, plus automatic updates. Devs set price, Apple takes 30%, no fees for hosting or credit cards. FairPlay DRM, and no charge for free apps.
11:04 AM: So now Steve Jobs is back. New Features are next. A few new ones in 2.0. First is Contact Search, so you can now search for a person’s name. Second is full iWork document support to let you view all the docs on iPhone. Completed support of MS Office documents – now PowerPoint on iPhone along with Word and Excel. Bulk delete and move of email messages too, as well as saving images directly to your library from email. Calculator improved to scientific mode. Parental Controls. Also language support for many around world, including Asian languages – two forms of entry for Japanese and Chinese as well with a drawing character feature. Sophisticated character rec. He knocks plastic keys for the keyboard.
11:02 AM: When user quits app, there will be a persistent IP connection right to the phone so that services can push 3 types of notifications – badges (how many messages), custom alert sounds, and custom textual alerts. You can provide buttons to reload the app on the text message. It scales to many third party services, but only uses one persistent connection – one to Apple. A unified push notif service for all developers, preserving battery life and performance, all works over the wi-fi and cellular networks. Available in September but devs will get it next month. End of SDK update.
11:00 AM: Clearly, an incredible SDK. There has been one feature request: developers of IM and eBay clients want notifications even when users aren’t currently running the app. Background processes are allowed on some platforms. Bad for a number of reasons – it drains battery life. Also hurts performance. Shows Samsung giving you a task manger for their apps. People laugh, as like a game it challenges the user to manage all of the memory. This is nuts, he says. Loud cheering. Far better solution: Push Notification Service for all developers.
10:57 AM: Digital Legends Entertainment. Based in Barcelona Spain, started only two weeks ago on a game. Xavier Carrillo Costa to discuss. The game looks and sounds like a medieval version of Ninja Gaiden for Xbox 360. Cinematic effects, full 3-D polygon art. Seems like a mix of Ninja Gaiden and Tomb Raider – Krull is the name? Ready by September of this year, he says.
10:55 AM: MimVista, another medical app. Mark Cain. Medical imaging. Interface is key to making it possible. Now you can look at animated radiological imaging data – slides of a fusion study showing photo data you can scroll through using finger sweeps, showing multiplanar reconstructions of the body, and also switch from various angles. You can zoom into the images and look at how parts of the body change in recorded realtime. You can also do measurements. MIP movie is a 3-D reconstruction for PET images, letting you change colors, contrast, etc. Will be at launch of App Store.
10:51 AM: Modality. Medical community – Forstall notes that 1/3 of Epocrates’ community plans to buy iPhone if any phone. Modality is about creating more physicians – S. Mark Williams to explain. Medical students typically use flash cards and atluses. They are going to use the Netter Collection’s gold standard anatomy photos to help people learn all the regions of the body. You can scan all of the parts of the body with map-style pins that note what you’re seeing. You can do quizzes based on the parts you see. People can learn on the go, instantly. A dozen apps within weeks of App Store launch, more by end of year.
10:48 AM: MLB.com. Official web site of Major League Baseball. Their app for iPhone – Jeremy Schoenherr to talk about it. MLB.com At Bat has all today’s games, with details on who is currently on base, pitching, and what the line score is. You can’t find anywhere else: video. Realtime video highlights. Clips live during the game, not after it – via WiFi or EDGE. No price – in App Store at launch.
10:46 AM: Cow Music. This is an England-based insurance industry developer who created a different sort of app – it’s Mark Terry. He develops in his spare time. App is called Band, virtual instruments that let you create music on your iPhone from scratch. Two octave piano, with touch keys. Funky drummer is a touch-based drum set. Lets you make beats. The sound quality is surprisingly good – realistic. 12 bar blues simplifies blues guitar and other instruments, like a synthesizer. Finally – bass guitar for backing tracks called Bassist. You can record, overdub, mix together into a song. Band – no pricing announced, in a few weeks time.
10:42 AM: Pangea Software. Long time Mac game developer. Has ported two games – Brian Greenstone to show off the games. Both games have been improved. Enigmo is a physics based puzzle game to drop water into buckets. 15 levels. Entirely touch based with particle animations in the visuals. Better than the original. Cro-Mag Rally is a 3-D caveman racing game. Nine different tracks, 11 cars. iPhone is the steering wheel. The graphics are fine – not exactly 30 frames per second (maybe 15-20) but textures are interesting. Uses polygon art with sprites. $9.99 per game at launch of Store.
10:39 AM: Associated Press. 5,000 news organizations cooperate together. They provide news to over 1/2 of world pop every day. They are creating a native app from their prior web pp. Benjamin Mosse to speak. Will combine sources from thousands of news organizations. They’ve created a mobile news network, with information from locations you set, as well as from current location. There is now a way to display thumbnail style photos from gallery on the iPhone screen via the app, as wel as having access to videos and translucent overlays on top of photos. You can also send in reports from remote locations directly from your iPhone. MNN will be a free download from App Store.
10:36 AM: TypePad. A great mobile blogging application native for the iPhone. Michael Sippey of TypePad on stage. Photoblogging one of the most popular features. TypePad on iPhone is simplified to create post editor, photo taking, or adding a photo. It basically streamlines the e-mailing, camera use, and adding of photos from collection processes direct over to TypePad. You can now add multiple photos to an e-mail to send to TypePad – looks like this is a feature available to standard Mail too. Appears on your blog web site. App will be free at App Store launch.
10:33 AM: Loopt. Core location for social networking. Sam Altman from Loopt will show how you can connect with people on the go – show where people are, what they’re doing, and what’s available nearby. You can look at what people have entered in as their entries, click on photos they’ve taken, and use calling, text messaging, or pinging to contact them – you can also leave a comment. Loopt will be free at launch of App Store.
10:31 AM: eBay on stage, building native app – Ken Sun from eBay. Auctions on the iPhone – #1 mobile device being used on eBay. 5 weeks ago they started development. Now you can see whatever’s on the site – they are showing Wii Fit auctions. You can watch items, look for more details on a given item, and bid from the iPhone. It’s fully integrated with eBay’s servers. He looks at Wii Fit, a Canon camera lens, and now a $12.5m home. Photos are easy to see on the iPhone; free on iPhone when App Store launches.
10:30 AM: This game will be available at launch of App Store for $9.99.A slide was just shown accidentally with eBay.
10:27 AM: Developers. Sega is first. Sega blew us away with what they accomplished in 2 weeks with Super Monkey Ball – polish and readying for market is astounding. Ethan Einhorn on stage. Another Sega producer on stage to drive the phone. Other Ocean is named as the developer that made some stages – finished game has 110 stages. Also all four of the classic monkeys. This game, for those not familiar, is based on an old Nintendo GameCube title. 3-D graphics look good for the iPhone – the polygon counts aren’t high but they’re kept the frame right up very high and it looks smooth.
10:26 AM: This has been out for 3 months – thousands of developers are using it. They have been unbelievably positive. A quote from Disney praising the SDK: “a breath of fresh air.” InfoWorld: “I have coded with (other platforms), iPhone just blows them away.” Pogue at NYT praising as well, as a new platform.
10:23 AM: The app runs on the simulator. Now it is running on his iPhone. Demo done at 10:25.
10:21 AM: (Readers: Remember, this is a _developers conference_ and the audience here is largely developers, which should explain why the discussion here is so technical and slow.)
10:19 AM: NearbyFriends application is being coded. It will use Address Book APIs to access Contacts Database on the phone, as well as Core Location – a location-based service. This will show only contacts within 10 miles of current location. He drags code into the Interface Builder and is going to show how to build the interface.
10:18 AM: Xcode used to write code + debug. Interface Builder is to create interface + connect to code. iPhone simulator lets you debug and run apps on Mac. Last tool is Instruments, for measuring and optimizing app for best performance. Demo of the tools. He is going to concentrate on structuring a user interface in Interface Builder.
10:16 AM: The power of a laptop in the size of a smartphone, says one person. Video’s over – all this stuff built right in. Next up is the SDK with Scott Forstall. He’s on stage: we’re opening up the same native APIs and tools we use internally to build apps that ship as part of the iPhone. APIs and frameworks on iPhone share extensively with Mac OS X. Same OS X kernel is used between Mac and iPhone. (For what it’s worth, the image of the iPhone on screen right now looks identical to the current iPhone; they’ve given away nothing on the new model yet.) They’re repeating the same features that were mentioned at the SDK event in March.
10:12 AM: Testimonials about employees of the enterprises using the iPhone. This video isn’t going to be of much interest to consumers, basically just an educational video to help businesses learn what the iPhone can do from relaxed real people rather than a spec sheet.
10:11 AM: 35% of the Fortune 500 is now in the Beta program. Top five commercial banks, 5 securities firms, 6 of 7 top airlines, 8 of top 10 pharma, 8 of top 10 entertainment. Also higher education participation for major universities. Video of enterprise customers. Disney’s SVP is first. Then law firm Sonnenshein, then Genentech, then the guy from the army we saw outside.
10:10 AM: Enterprise, SDK, and new End User features. Enterprise: Microsoft Exchange has push email, push contacts, push calendars, auto discovery of your Exchange servers, global address lookup, and remote wipe. All built into iPhone 2.0. Cisco has built in secure VPN services, and other network security demanded by Enterprise – everything asked for has been built in.
10:09 AM: New software – iPhone 2.0 platform. Dev program started Mar 6, 95 days ago. 250,000 developers have downloaded the SDK. 25,000 applied to the paid developer program. 4,000 people admitted to the program.
10:08 AM: Three parts to Apple now – Mac, Music Businesses (iPod/iTunes), iPhone. This morning – talk about the iPhone. Scott Forstall SVP iPhone Software and Phil Schiller SVP Product Marketing to talk. After lunch, Bertrand Serlet SVP OS X Software for peek of next OSX – Snow Leopard.
10:07 AM: WWDC 2008 – record 5200 attendees. Wish we could have had more – sold out. We can’t find a bigger venue than this. 147 sessions – 85 on Mac, 62 iPhone. 1000 Apple engineers on site. Sessions on iFund and Intel on Friday morning.
10:06 AM: And so it begins. Steve takes the stage. Really glad to be here this morning.
10:03 AM: Despite Apple having billed this as a packed media event, there are plenty of empty chairs in the media section at the moment. From outside the hall, the crowd did not seem as heavy as it was at last Macworld Expo. The standard contingent of international media is here. They’re still playing classic rock – now Jerry Lee Lewis’ Great Balls of Fire.
10:01 AM: Here’s the announcement; turn off all cell phones, iPhones, paging devices, etc. There was a giggle in the crowd.
10:00 AM: The classic rock continues. Two iMacs are on stage – no announcement yet to have people sit down.
9:56AM: Unlike virtually every other Apple event we’ve attended, the music they’re playing before the event is classic rock. Roll Over Beethoven at the moment. Wonder if The Beatles are on tap?
9:52AM: AT&T’s network appears to be straining under the pressure of so many iPhone users on site here. This is the second time this has happened at an Apple event—will AT&T’s 3G network be able to better handle local data demand?
9:47AM: Media and VIPs are now sitting inside the convention hall. There weren’t many crazy sightings outside the hall, as there were with the introduction of the iPhone last year – Steve Jobs’ family was spotted walking into that event. Here, the biggest surprise was a member of the U.S. Army, dressed in fatigues and toting an iPhone – could Apple be planning to tout government-friendly iPhone apps today? You’ll find a photo in our Flickr photostream.
8:05AM: We’re in the door at the Moscone Center in San Francisco for Apple’s 2008 Worldwide Developers Conference. Developers began to line up hours ago for first-come, first-served seating to Steve Jobs’ keynote speech, which will begin at 10:00am. They were let in around 7:30, with media registration starting at a couple of minutes after 8:00. A massive crowd of developers filed into the convention center in a snaking line. TV crews from the United States and Japan were outside the hall, taping and sending live feeds from outside the center.
