Live Post: Apple’s October 23rd Press Event

That’s the end folks. Come back later for a recap post of the event. Also, why not tell us what you think about the announcement in the comments?

“This has been a truly prolific year of innovation for Apple” Tim Cook says.

Cook is one stage again, “We told you earlier this year that you’d see some incredible innovation from Apple across the year, innovation only Apple can deliver. We think we kept our promise and we hope you agree,”

A good little ad for it though, I must admit - someone playing piano on the full-size iPad, then someone else joining in on an iPad mini, both on Garageband.

Looks like the iPad Mini is 30 dollars more than the entry level iPod Touch.

32GB  will be 9 and 9. LTE at 9, 9 and 9. You can pre-order the iPad Mini on Friday, with the Wi-Fi version being shipped a wekk later, and the LTE version two weeks later.

For a wi-fi, 16GB version it is 9…More than the Nexus 7.

For those wondering why the iPad Mini has got the A5 processor and not the A6, it probably has something to do with cost. The cost would be considerably larger if they were to put an A6 processor in the device.

Videos over – price time?

Looks like the iPad Mini is getting LTE and the lightning port!

Just some promotional videos now.

Does the comparison with the Nexus 7 show Apple are worried by Android? Tell me in the comments.

The iPad Mini will have an A5 chip, LTE, 5MP iSight camera, HD front-facing iPad, 10 hour battery life and of course a lightning connector. Sort of the same as a 5th gen iPod Touch.

He’s really knocking “the other platform” down, app by app. (In my opinion Android will always be better but…). Also, “video” was used instead of “YouTube”.

They are just comparing the two now – we’ll have more on this in a later post.

Ooh, they now have the Nexus 7 and iPad Mini side-by-side!

The resolution is the same as the iPad 2 - 1024 pixels by 768 pixels. All apps designed for the iPad will work on the iPad Mini. Good news for developers.

Same colours as iPhone 5, the screen size is….7.9″.

Specs: “thin as a pencil” (7.2mm thick), 0.68 lbs (63% lighter).

It looks similar to the iPhone 5/5th Gen iPod Touch.

It will be called the iPad Mini.

Here it is – a smaller iPad!

The 16GB version will be sold at 9  or with LTE 9. Sorry to anyone who has a 3rd gen iPad.

Also a lightning connector, but that’s not a surprise.

A6X processor, 2x graphics improvement, 10 hour battery life – same as the 3rd gen. New front facing camera, and the more expensive version will support LTE.

A fourth generation iPad has been announced!

Schiller is back on stage.

Cook says the third-gen iPad has been the fastest selling iPad of all time, “but we’re not taking our foot off the gas. We’ve got some really cool stuff to show you.”

We re now talking about iPad in the business world.

iBooks will also be able to simply update for new versions.

A new version of iBooks Author will be released with new templates etc.

On to education now – Cook says “One of the things that is so rewarding and so amazing to us is how quickly the iPad has been embraced in education. Admins, teachers and students have found iPad to be an incredible learning tool.”

“People love their iPads. They love the big, beautiful, multitouch display, the fast fluid responsiveness of Apple’s hardware and software working together…”

90% of tablet web traffic comes from an iPad.

100m iPads sold 2 weeks ago.

“Each time we get together there’s a new number or statistic to illustrate the growth of this product,” he says.

Cook is now on stage talking about the iPad.

They will ship in November/December depending on which version you want – 99/99 respectively. An external optical driver will also be available.

New technology: Fusion Drive. This is available on both the Mac Mini and new iMacs, and will allow a SSD and HDD to be shown as one logical drive in the OS, allowing you to have your documents on the HDD and software on the SSD. This will all be done automatically by this new technology though. E.G if you use iMovie mor than iPhoto, iMovie will be on the SSD.

An i5 or i& Ivy Bridge processor will be available, with up to 32GB of RAM. On the back there is:  headphone, SD card, 4x USB 3.0, Thunderbolt, and Gigabyte ethernet

Quite a big HDD is available; up to 768GB flash storage, NVIDIA Kepler graphics, up to 3TB HDD.

“The graphics will look like they’re right on top of the glass,” he says. There is also an anti glare layer.

It will be available in two sizes 21.5 inch @ 1920 x 1080 or 27-inch at 2560×1440.

One downside to this though – it doesn’t look as though there is a optical drive.

It is just 5mm thick! That’s incredible.

the new iMac is super thin, but it looks like a normal iMac other than that.

“The next generation of iMac”

We are onto iMacs now, with Schiller talking about the design.

A server edition will also be available. Both will ship today.

Some really quick Mini specs - USB 3 now, with dual or quad-intel Core i5 or i7 Ivy Bridge, Intel HD Graphics 4000, and up to 16GB of RAM. Starts at 2.5Ghz dual-core i5 w/4GB of RAM and 500GB HDD for 9.

Mac Mini next. Schiler says “you knew there would be something with ‘mini’ in this presentation, right?”, to a big laugh.

It will ship today, and will cost ,699 for a dual core i5, 8GB RAM and a 128GB SSD. It will have an up to 7 hour battery life.

The battery life may be good. The battery is massive!

Other possibly less interesting figures - 29% higher contrast ratio, 75% reduced reflection, IPS w/178 degrees viewing angle  than the last 13″ MacBook pro.

It will also have a retina display.

The new 13″ MacBook pro is only 0.75″ thick (20% thinner), it also weighs in at 3.75 lbs. It will feature magsafe, two Thunderbolt ports, USB 3, a headphone port and dual microphones. On the right, USB 3, HDMI, and an SD card reader.

The best selling Mac is the 13-inch Pro…

There will be a new MacBook.

New macs by the sound of it. Phil Schiller is on the stage.

Mac time now, currently going over some figures. Apparently Macs are the #1 desktop and notebook in the US. That must have been some feat.

There will be some new features like reading in sepia or night mode, continuous scrolling, new languages, and the update is available today.

A new version of iBooks will be released today – 400 million books have been downloaded since it’s release.

Just figures on the app store so far, nothing too interesting. Apart from the 35 billion apps that have been downloaded. Nothing on maps so far though…

And there is now 125m documents in the cloud from the past year. There is 28,000 iMessages sent a second, with 300 BILLION sent so far!

Quite impressive, that figure I think.

iOS 6 now. 200m devices are running iOS 6 already!

iPods now. Tim is just going over the media’s reaction about the new iPods that were announced at their last event.

Video’s over now, Tim’s back on stage.

We’re just seeing a video of the iPhone 5 launch….

Apparently iPhone 5 is doing tremendous…

Tim Cook is on stage…

It’s Time by Imagine Dragons is playing…

Just to clarify a few things before the event starts. I believe this event is a first for Apple – they’ve never streamed an event live before. If you want to watch the live stream, go here. http://www.apple.com/apple-events/october-2012/

Interesting fact: The last time Apple held an event in this (awesome, in my opinion) building was way back in 2005.

15 minutes to go guys….

Hello, and welcome to Geeks Hut’s coverage of Apple’s iPad mini event!

I’m here folks. Tune in at 10am PT/5pm GMT for the event!

At this event, it is expected that Apple which be showing off the iPad Mini, new iPad, new MacBooks and iBook 3.0.

Welcome to the Apple Press Event, at the time of posting this message there is around 38 hours until the event starts. Matthew will be hosting the event, giving you up to the minute updates on what is going on at the event.

On this blog, the time is based on New Zealand time, so you will find that while Matthew is posting the updates the time will be very random.