Liveblog: Apple Live Event, September 9, 2014
Anil Dash and Paul Ford live-blogged the Apple Live Event. Start from the bottom and read up for best effect.
11:53AM
Let’s get out of here before the encore. -PF
11:53AM
Well, I look forward to synchronizing our heartbeats. -AD
11:52AM
Of course! I’m looking forward to a watch that constantly reminds me of my weight. -PF
11:50AM
Well, Paul, I don’t have much chance. It’s not like I carry around an existing Apple product that has the time on its face, runs apps, costs a fortune, and needs to be recharged every day. And you? -AD
11:49AM
I don’t know how much longer I can take, Anil. Will you buy one?
11:49AM
I just lost audio, which is fortunate. -PF
11:48AM
Oh cool it’s a U2 song no one knows. -PF
11:47AM
If they do “Beautiful Day” I’m switching to Linux. -PF
11:47AM
Tim Cook: “We’ve brought U2 here as a threat for any members of the press who refuse to accept our messaging.” -AD
11:45AM
NO COME ON NOT U2. -PF
11:45AM
“Apple Watch has no ability to interface with a time clock, since nobody who has to clock in to one could ever afford it.” -AD
11:44AM
Tim Cook: “Hope you guys enjoyed this two-hour commercial and look forward to reading your legacy-of-Steve-Jobs thinkpieces!” -PF
11:44AM
Tim Cook: “To recap: ‘Apple Pay’ is a new service that we named specifically to remind you about the fact that you are just gonna keep shelling out money to us.” -AD
11:44AM
I like the way it costs 48 hours of minimum-wage work to buy one, but still requires that you have an expensive phone. -PF
11:42AM
I’m just excited to see months and years of people debating infinitesimal UI decisions about this product. -AD
11:39AM
Well, Anil, it’s all over now but for the slavish media attention for days and the horrible, endless blog posts. Any thoughts? -PF
11:38AM
Guest star of video is Christopher Walken! Crowd very excited.
Walken: “Jony Ive carried this uncomfortable hunk of metal in his ass for 4 years.”
11:37AM
Watching a video. You’ve never felt guilt like ⌘WATCH fitness guilt. -PF
11:34AM
Tim Cook is back to talk about how ⌘WATCH will cure the obesity epidemic among rich people. -PF
11:32AM
Kevin Lynch: “The Apple Watch also allows you to automatically favorite a tweet simply by making the “jerking off” motion with your watch hand.”
11:30AM
Kevin Lynch: “Nobody has ever sent this degree of personal medical information in real-time to another person, especially not on an untested platform that’s known to be wildly insecure.”
11:29AM
First user spotted. No word on whether the new watch supports OneNote.
11:28AM
Gonna be “taptic” from here on out everyone. Sorry.
11:25AM
11:25AM
“EMOJI.” TAKE A DRINK.
11:23AM
Kevin Lynch: “This is a revolution in sequential menus not seen since since Norton Commander.”
11:22AM
It may be ill-advised to play Coldplay in a context where someone has direct access to their wrists and a piece of super-strong glass.
11:21AM
Urgent correction: “Watch faces” are the new “apps” and “force touching” is the new “molestation.”
11:21AM
Kevin is showing us an astronomy app with an image of a full moon. This is going to revolutionize menstruation.
11:20AM
Kevin is force-touching all the faces. It feels weird.
11:19AM
“Force touching” is the new, horrible swiping.
11:18AM
IMPORTANT NOTE: Anil is friends with Kevin Lynch, so all mockery will come from me. -PF
11:15AM
Jony Ive: “We’ve made three families of watches with six different straps available in four different finishes, for the ultimate in simplicity.” -AD
11:14AM
Jony Ive: “The nightmare hose releases comm-link spores whenever you rub the supple bevel with your buckle graspers.” -PF
11:13AM
Jony Ive: “Finally, you can wear After Dark on your wrist.” -PF
11:12AM
HOROLOGICAL HE SAID IT EVERYONE TAKE A DRINK. -PF
11:12AM
Jony Ive: “This zirconium charming otter is made entirely of inductive hatboxes.” -PF
11:10AM
Oh god, the next three years will be people talking about taps v. presses. And haptics. No…taptics. Oh this is terrible I tell you. -PF
11:09AM
That’s not us making a joke, that’s a quote.
11:09AM
Jony Ive: “We’ve developed an entirely new way for you to connect intimately with others.”
11:08AM
We know that Jony Ive is a brilliant designer because he tilts his head at the same angle that your dog does when it doesn’t understand what you’re saying. -AD
11:08AM
Sorry, that’s Saint Jony Ive. -PF
11:06AM
It’s so sad that Jony Ive cannot survive without 50,000 candlewatts of light trained on him at all times. But so inspiring that he keeps working even though if he is exposed to color or darkness he will die. -PF
11:04AM
One of the most compelling features of the Apple watch is its all-caps logotype, which will fuel Medium posts about typography for the next 18 months. -AD
11AM! EVERYONE! It’s here! The ⌘WATCH!
11:00AM
The crowd is on their feet, an ovation that’s typically reserved for when people have some idea of what they are looking at. But fortunately, a standing ovation is far more critical than the trade press tends to be about Apple product launches. -AD
11:00AM
“People” are giving the “watch” a standing ovation. The official brand-name of the watch is ⌘WATCH. -PF
10:59AM
No, it is a watch. -PF
10:59AM
Tim Cook is about to announce something. It starts above the earth. It’s big. Perhaps it’s world peace or a way to fix poverty. It’s clearly a big, global thing that really matters to everything on earth. -PF
10:58AM
10:57AM
Eddie Cue is finishing up. “We wanted to celebrate our rich legacy changing the world and helping people find new ways to be creative by giving you a magic $400 credit card. And we did.” -PF
10:55AM
Eddie Cue: “Best of all, if your security information is ever compromised, we’ve arranged for you to automatically have new fingerprints delivered from our Foxconn factories in China. We’re not asking about sourcing.” -AD
10:55AM
Eddie Cue: “I don’t know about you but I’m looking for some Beats headphones. I’m buying them for my niece’s dog.” -PF
10:54AM
Eddy Cue: “We’re really excited to announce our new partnership with Disney, which has nothing to do with Tim Cook appearing in an infomercial during ABC’s World News Tonight in a few hours.” -AD
10:52AM
Eddy Cue: “We can do that because we’re a bank now in addition to being a phone company and a media company. Although not a video streaming company apparently.” -PF
10:52AM
Eddy Cue: “All of your cards are stored securely, and other than a merchant, there’s only one place that your credit card data will go. We’ve also retroactively converted all the Coin Kickstarter into a charity campaign.” -AD
10:51AM
Eddy Cue: “So your phone is now all of your credit cards at once. That sound you hear? That’s the people who backed Coin screaming in pain.” -PF
10:50AM
Eddie Cue shows his commitment to musicians who use iTunes by coming out dressed as Robin Thicke. -AD
10:49AM
Tim Cook: [Ballmer squeal.] -PF
10:48AM
Tim Cook: “We’ve made a brand new payment process that your one friend who used to live in Tokyo will not stop telling you he used 10 years ago.” -AD
10:45AM
Tim Cook: “What we realized is that the experience of losing one’s phone and the misery of misplacing your wallet were still not a single, integrated experience.” -AD
10:45AM
Tim Cook: “You gave us all your private information, and that worked out well. We set up an amazing livestream that allows for 50 simultaneous viewers. Now what if I told you you could give us all of your money?” -PF
10:45AM
Tim Cook: “We’ve brought in Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon to make our new ads, which feature every black device being replaced by a white device that does the same thing at a higher price.” -AD
10:44AM
Tim Cook: “Who wants to see some ads!” This audience, apparently. -PF
10:43AM
Tim Cook: “In this new ad, we use the theme from 2001, in case you didn’t understand that we literally think you are monkeys grunting at our giant black obelisk.” -AD
10:43AM
Tim Cook takes the stage.
10:42AM
Audience incredibly excited to see Phil Schiller leave the stage. -PF
10:41AM
Phil Schiller: “We’ve made a complete line of silicone cases that fit the new iPhone 6 plus, or you can simply reuse a standard twin-size fitted sheet.” -AD
10:40AM
Phil Schiller: “Using our new slow motion 240 fps feature, you can actually record the brief moment before we make this new phone obsolete. And if you use the new secret fast motion feature, you’ll be able to watch us drain your bank account in a minute instead of a year.” -AD&PF
10:35AM
10:34AM
Phil Schiller: “We’ve just added so many video and image features that you will never, ever use on Instagram.” -PF
10:33AM
10:30AM
In honor of this event, we had four minutes of technical issues with our liveblog. We’re back. -AD&PF
10:26AM
Phil Schiller: “We’ve named our new processor the ‘M8,’ pronounced like ‘you will never m8 with a human.’ And using our new barometer, we can tell exactly how high you are. Which should help us prevent another Apple Maps fiasco, as well.” -AD
10:23AM
“You’ve never seen a game featuring the same old bullshit swords-and-dragons tedium like this before!” -AD
10:21AM
10:20AM
Phil Schiller: “Okay, honestly this is a bunch of nerd stuff right now. We know you’re just putting up with it. Tim’s in the back rebooting his iPhone so it’ll be about twenty minutes.” -PF
10:17AM
Phil Schiller: “Now, we’ve specially designed the iPhone 6 Plus to support one-handed operation, which is critical for all the gadget bloggers who are watching me right now. And to accomodate the larger screen, we’ve introduced a new gesture called “reachability”, because it’s not enough that your lazy ass won’t get off the couch — we need to make sure even your thumb is sendentary.” -AD
10:15AM
Phil Schiller: “And when you rotate the phone it becomes an Android tablet.” Very exciting! -PF
10:13AM
Phil Schiller: “With our new Retina HD displays, it’s possible to fit an image of Jony Ive’s entire giant head onto one screen.” -AD
10:12AM
Phil Schiller is talking about the new Retina 3 displays. I was hoping for a new Magsafe but this is okay too. The iPhone 6 Plus is really big. -PF
10:09AM
If we all keep reloading, that should help. -AD
10:08AM
Got the video back. Simulcasting the Chinese translation is a bold statement, but an honest one. -AD&PF
10:06AM
10:04AM
The new version of WebObjects is fantastic. -PF
10:03AM
Neither did Apple. -PF
10:03AM
I hadn’t considered a total failure. -AD
10:01AM
It just started and we’re being treated to some amazing effects that really go well with that audio mix. Take a look at this:
9:57AM
Well, Paul, everyone said that Girl Talk couldn’t pull off the magic again, and they were right. -AD
9:54 AM
Anil, I see this strange audio mix of Haim and George-Winston-esque New Age music as a signal that the company is struggling to resolve its pop-driven media side with its California counter-culture roots. Alternately we are in the world’s most horrible planetarium. In either case I’m counting on a new version of Ping to fix the problem. -PF
9:49 AM
As people file in, they are treated to a modern Beatles-style multi-layered audio collage designed to disorient and confuse the listener. Someone just leaned over to me and said, “This audio stream is giving us a preview of how seamlessly Beats Audio will be integrated into iTunes.” -AD
9:47AM
Today is one of the most exciting days in Apple’s history. We have seen milestones from this company in the past, from the original Macintosh to the legendary iMac to the revolutionary iPhone to the magical iPad. And today promises to be just like those, or possibly just like that Mac Cube thing. But either way, definitely memorable. -AD
9:43AM
Everyone is untucking their shirts. -PF
