If you missed our live blog from WWDC yesterday, here’s the transcript from our reporter on the scene.
9:31AM Thanks for tuning in! This is a bit of history for Scoopertino — our first time at a live Apple event. Butterflies in the stomach…
9:34AM Waiting outside, ready to go in. Big crowd. I think I just saw Gruber across the street, will try for autograph later.
9:35AM Still waiting.
9:36AM Guy behind me just stepped on my foot. Ass.
9:56AM I’m in! VIPs everywhere. Scott Forstall just winked at me. Schiller looks like the cat who just swallowed a bucket of canaries. James Brown blaring.
10:00AM I smell Steve in the air.
10:01AM Steve takes the stage. Thunderous applause! Chills! I’m seeing the New Balances live. Pinch me.
10:03AM Steve starts usual “state of Apple” preamble: “Thank you all for coming, we’ve got a great show. I’m going to get to the good stuff in a bit, but first I’m going to tell you how rich we are.”
10:05AM Lots of stuff about iPads sales, iPhone sales, billions of downloads, blah, blah, blah. I want iCloud.
10:14AM Now he’s going on about Apple Stores. “We’ve just opened our 358th Apple Store in the Arctic village of Qaanaaq, Greenland. The entire store is powered by whale fat produced by the community. This is real big deal, and we hope to move it out to other Apple Stores real soon.” [Applause.]
10:20AM Steve pitching his book, iSteve: The Book of Jobs. Swears he really thought of the title before Woz published iWoz.
10:24AM Update on Steve Jobs fashion line. Big hit, thinking of branching out to Jony Ive fashion line. Asks audience if they’d like that — more thunderous applause. Feel the love Jony!
10:14AM Quieting down, getting serious … feels like something big.
10:15AM Steve: “You know, we make a lot of money. I mean a lot of money. People like our products, so they line up to give us their money. Pretty simple, right? Actually, no, it’s not that simple.”
10:17AM “A lot of thinking goes into where we keep that much cash — as you can imagine, this stuff piles up fast.”
10:18AM “Our engineers have been working hard on this. [Sips water.] Today, we’re announcing a new partnership with the U.S. Treasury. They’re going to print a whole new bill for us — a million-dollar bill.” No way! Awesome!
10:20AM “Since $100 is the largest denomination today, we can use the new million-dollar bills to store cash in literally 1/10,000th the space it used to take up. This is huge.”
10:21AM “Of course, this is more for us than you — but when we win, you win. Well, maybe you don’t win as much as we do, but I know you like to see us happy.”
10:25AM Steve’s ready to introduce Mac OS X Lion now. Calls for Phil Schiller.
Oh God no!! Phil is dressed as the cowardly lion!
10:26AM Lots of silence. Awkward. Phil’s doing a little Lion dance, but nobody’s laughing.
Steve’s not happy — wonder if Phil thought of this stunt on his own.
Whatever, Phil’s gone, back to business. Mac OS X and iOS. New features. Better mail. New Safari stuff … yawn. C’mon Steve, drop a bomb.
10:56AM Twitter built into iOS. Just take photo and hit Tweet button. Sweet!
10:57AM New feature built into iOS Twitter. Walking on stage to give us the demo: Rep. Anthony Weiner. [Crowd hooting!]
10:58AM Weiner: “Hi Steve, thanks for making this so easy.” [Big smile on Steve.] “iOS 5 gives you lots of good ways to share — Email… SMS… Tweet… and now, Tweet My Weiner.” Oh no, tell me he’s not going to do this!
11:02AM More Weiner: “iOS automatically searches photos to find the most tasteless shot in your collection. Now you can get yourself in trouble MUCH faster than before. And if you click ‘I’m feeling lucky,’ your photo is sent to a random co-ed.”
11:04AM Steve cuts Weiner off. [Nervous laughter.] Weiner extends his hand, but Steve has second thoughts about shaking it.
11:06AM to 11:28AM: A lot of hoo-hah about iCloud. Syncs movies, apps, documents, music, blah, blah, blah. Seems to be winding down. C’mon Steve, one more…
11:29AM Yes! “One more thing” on the screen!!! Woo-hoo! The place is going nuts.
11:30AM “Now that you know how iCloud works, there is one more thing: we’re going to totally own the cloud idea — and I don’t mean figuratively. We’ve not only trademarked iCloud, we’ve trademarked “cloud” too. We’ll be doing some magical things in the sky.”
11:38AM “Clouds are a symbol of imagination. We see all kinds of shapes in the clouds, like bunnies and ice cream cones. But we can do a lot better than that.”
11:42AM “Our engineers been working really hard with the National Weather Service, so now you don’t have to imagine anything. Just look up and you’ll see your favorite Apple products.”
11:53AM Steve is summing it all up. New Lion, new iOS 5, owning clouds, hoarding cash. And now … a musical guest?
Curtains opening. No way. No f-in way. Rolling Stones!!! They’re doing a classic, but it’s different now.
Hey! Hey! You! You! Get off on iCloud… Hey! Hey! You! You! Get off on iCloud…
Damn I love this.
12:02PM Thanks for reading, everyone. Hope to do this again soon ….
Roland G.
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