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.

Really amazing to read these new figures: 500,000,000 app downloads. Never heard of a number like this at one of the mobile operator portals of the pre-iPhone century Vodafone life or T-Motion would have dreamed of numbers like this.
But the 500 million app downloads can not be compared with the number of songs, sold on iTunes: Apple only revealed the complete number of app downloads – free and payed apps. So there is a fundamental difference between the number of (paid and free) apps and (only paid) songs.
More than 15,000 apps is also quite impressive – but it is getting harder and harder to find the apps you really like on the AppStore. There is a lot of room for improvements to meet the needs of consumers as well as developers.

Great! Now, also some German universities publish some free podcasts, videos and scripts via “iTunes U”. Until now, you can find content from the following universities from Germany:

• Hasso Plattner Institut / IT Systems Engineering / University of Potsdam
• RWTH Aachen University
• Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich
• University Freiburg

Perfect! Especially high school graduates can get a first impression of the different universities. At the end there is no getting around visiting the favorite universities to make the decision, but the iTunes U content is another first impression.
But also for students, post graduates and alumni, there are quite interesting contents – and some real gems also

Source: Macnews.de (only German)

Apple just published the Quicktime video-on-demand stream of the MacWorld Keynote Address 2009. So, if you want to tune in and watch Phil Schiller, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing at Apple Inc. …

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/keynote/

iLife’09, iWorks’09, DRM-free music on the iTunes Music Store and the 17″ unibody MacBook Pro … great news