Great to see Steve Jobs on stage again. The presentation is about three blocks of information:

1. The market: Steve presents some amazing numbers … 15 Million iPads sold, 100 Million iPhones sold, 100 Million iBooks downloaded, 200 Million Accounts on the iTunes/AppStore/iBookStore with credit cards, $2 Billion payout to AppStore developers.
2. The iPad 2: Apple listened to their customers and integrated most of the features iPad users are demanding. But they also kept the prices and the battery life. The new A5 Dual-Core CPU is up to twice as fast and the graphics performance up to 9x. With the HDMI-cable accessory, it’s possible to mirror the iPad 2 screen to a flatscreen or beamer. This is perfect for live app demos and presentations. The iPad 2 is now equipped with a front and a rear camera. The new design of the iPad 2 and the magnetic covers speak for themselves. The design team of Jony Ive did a great job.
3. The software: iOS 4.3 is shipping with a lot of improvements under the hood. By introducing iMovie and Garageband for the iPad Apple shows, that the iPad is not only a consuming device, but also a device to create things.

But I only can recommend to watch Steve Jobs, Scott Forstall, Randy Ubillos and Xander Soren on the Quicktime streaming video yourself. Sorry PC-folks: The streaming video requires Safari 4 or 5 on Mac OS X Snow Leopard or Safari on iOS 3 or later.

What’s Apple focussing on in the year 2011? Is it “just” the iPad2? Or is there just one more thing …

Let’s find out on the Apple Special Event at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts! March 2nd 10:00 AM PST (7:00 PM MEZ). Apple did not announce a live video feed (yet) … but here’s live coverage:

• Shane Richmond & Emma Barnett for The Daily Telegraph, UK … they are blogging since 01:00 PST / 10:00 MEZ.
• Ars Technica … live blog will start with the special event (ScribbleLive).
• Jason Snell & Dan Moren for Macworld… live blog will start with the special event (Demand-Media)
• Joshua Topolsky for Engadget … live blog will start with the special event
• John Paczkowski for AllThingsDigital …live blog will start with the special event.
• Josh Lowensohn for CNet … live blog will start with the special event (Demand-Media).
• Adrian Kingsley-Hughes for ZDNet … live blog will start with the special event (Demand-Media).
• MacLife … live blog will start with the special event (Demand-Media)

As soon as the video of the keynote is available as a Quicktime stream or Apple decides to live stream the event … you’ll be updated

Finally Apple officially published the video-on-demand of the Apple special event “Come and see our latest creation”. Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco on January 27th 2010. You can watch it as a QuickTime video stream or as MPEG-4 … and it’s really worth it

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.