On Sep 9th 2009 at 9am PST Apple invited selected journalists to a special event in San Francisco. Apple did not bring up the Rolling Stones with Mick Jagger on stage of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater … but their song “It’s only Rock’n Roll (But I like it)” from 1974 was the intro of the event
Steve Jobs showed up on stage the first time since his liver transplantation and got a very warm welcome. Great to see, that he is doing better, now. He and Phil Schiller shared a lot of news and innovations:

Video-on-demand Quicktime-Stream of the Apple Special Event September 2009

Here are the facts of the 75min event:

Sales figures:

• Apple sold 30 million iPhones over the last 2 years
• In total they sold 220 million iPods since now. 20 million of these are iPod touch and 100 million are iPod Nano devices
• This means of over 50 million customers have access to the AppStore and can buy apps.
• 1.8 billion AppStore app-downloads (without updates)
• iTunes is #1 music retailer in the world
• iTunes has more than 100 million accounts

iTunes & iPhone OS update:

• iTunes 9 and iPhone OS update 3.1
• Genius-recommendations for apps in the AppStore
• 30.000 ringtones
• Genius Mixes … automatic mixes of songs in your library
• Improved synchronization
• Management of the iPhone / iPod touch apps within iTunes
• Home Sharing of songs
• Improved interface and optimized navigation within iTunes
• iTunes LP for music albums – the interactive replacement for LP-booklets
• iTunes Extras for Movies – Extras and chapter-selection for movies
• iTunes wish list

Sneak previews of new games:

• Ubisoft – Ben Mattens: Assasins Creed II Discovery
• Tapulous – Bart Decrem: Riddim Ribbon
• Gameloft – Mark Hickey: Nova
• EA Electronic Arts – Travis Boatman: Madden NFL 10

Update of the iPod product line:

• iPod touch – new price tags for iPod touch: $199 8GB – $299 – 32GB – $399 64GB. The two bigger models also have a faster processor and are up to 50% faster and they also support OpenGL ES 2.0 – like the iPhone 3GS.
• iPod classic – now comes with 160GB at the same price
• iPod shuffle – new colors and better prices as well as a new polished stainless steel special edition.
• iPod Nano – comes with a video camera, an fm-radio, audio recording, a pedometer and in many different colors.

We all waited for a long time for the new version 3.0 of the iPhone OS. iPhone users can upgrade to the new version for free. iPod touch users need to pay $9.95 for the upgrade to use all the new features.

Upgrading for iPhone users is quite easy:

• Connect your iPhone to your computer and select the iPhone within iTunes
• Click on the update button within the “summary” tab
• … and the adventure begins

230 MB … let’s see how the final version feels in real life

The AppsForSale.de cooperation of over 30 German iPhone developers was a great success at Valentine’s Day. Now the Easter special is the second round from today April 11 to tomorrow April 12. If you have an iPhone – you may take a look on the list of more than 40 apps … maybe the app of your dreams is reduced to the max

Btw you can find CompareMe there, also … reduced to 0.99$ from 1.99$.

Enjoy browsing through the app list and have fun at the egg hunt

Now, it’s official: The WWDC09 starts on June 8th and will end on Friday, June 12th. iPhone OS is just in the front row Mac OS X just behind – so it’ll be interesting to be at Moscone West in San Francisco and meet all those iPhone- and Mac-developers.
If you are a student – checkout the WWCD Student Scholarship and apply for a free pass. Deadline for the Stundent Scholarship application is April 14!!!

Today, at March 17 2009 at 10 am PST the invitation only event starts at the Apple headquater in Cupertino. Here a list of blogs who report live from the event:

• Jason Snell & Dan Moren for MacWorld
• Jason Chen for Gizmodo
• Tom Krazit for cnet news
• Joshua Topolsky for engadget
• John Paczkowski for All Things Digital
• Harry McCracken for Technologizer
• David Chartier for Ars Technica
• Greg Kumparak from MobileCrunch for TechCrunch

There is only one last thing … have fun … and let’s hope that our feature dreams will come true