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1:13 Due to chat difficulties, we're updating the page manually. Please leave any questions below and we'll do our best to answer them. As expected, Tim Cook appeared on stage to kick off the event. The first focus is China, a market where China saw sixfold growth last quarter and has racked up $8.8 billion in sales through the first nine months of the year.
1:18 Focus shifts to the iPod. The iPod now represents only 5% of Apple's sales (compared to the iPhone's 46%), so there has been quite a bit of speculation Apple might even discontinue the classic model. Will be interesting to see what they have planned.
1:22 Taking a look at the iPhone/iPad and corporations testing. "94% of Fortune 500 companies testing the iPhone." Also, highlighting the iPad within companies. Now comes the usual round of mind blowing stats about engagement. 500,000 apps with 140,000 for iPad. At this point, the raw number isn't as important. What is important is that Apple has consumers who have been more willing to spend as well as more uniform hardware to develop on. This has helped drive its enormous developer support even while Android eclipsed it in market share.
1:31 Running down all the software features. With all the talk of hardware not being a major update, it was expected software would become the the main focus. Some of the iOS 5 upgrades have been known, like tighter Twitter support.
1:34 Tabbed browsing finally arrives on the iPhone. Nothing really unexpected so far. We've seen a lot of iOS 5 before. Also, all these features will be available back to the 3GS, which should be key if Apple keeps manufacturing that model to sell at ultralow (IE- Free) price points.
1:41 (Yawn). Still a lot of old information. Apple discussed document synching in iCloud and introduced a "My Friends" feature that's a lot like Google's Latitude. Nothing new here, just locked into iOS.
1:47 The wraps are off iCloud's release date. October 12th. Pandora and Spotify are showing that people will pay for music services like iTunes Match, but the services they offer are much different.
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