Apple is Talking About the New iPhones Right Now

Apple putting its hyperboles on stage.

Going on right at at Apple headquarters in Cupertino is a reveal of the next iPhone. It's been something that the industry's been anticipating for the entire year, and finally today's the day. With Apple's exceptionally strong influence in the device space, the iPhone will rule the headlines today, both in tech and in the mainstream news.

The Apple online store is down right now, so there's definitely something new headed this way.

Stay tuned to this space for updates on what's going on at Apple's Infinite Loop campus.

Tim Cook just took the stage at Apple's Town Hall, where the company holds its employee events. He talks about Apple's tremendous success at the retail level. More Macs sold at the Hong Kong Apple Store on opening day than any other store's launch. Clearly Apple is gunning for more stores in China. Apple seems to open with these sort of sales statistics at all its events.

Now for a review of what Apple's product groups. Starting with the Mac, Mac OS X Lion has been downloaded 6 million times. Of course, it's offered mainly as a digital download. Apple boasts that it took Windows 7 20 weeks to get to the same install base.

Apple touts that Macs have grown by 23 percent while PC only 4 percent. MacBook Pro and the iMac are the most popular laptop and desktop computers in the U.S. There are nearly 60 million Mac users worldwide. 23 percent of the U.S. market belongs to Mac.

Next up is music. The iPod and iTunes launched 10 years ago, in its time selling 300 million units to date. Apple says that the MP3 market is mature and that it's still important to Apple. Maybe this means that the iPod isn't dead yet?

iTunes now has 20 million songs on it, with over 16 billion downloads. It's the biggest music store in the world.

Despite a launch that was tarnished with the antenna problem, the iPhone 4 was massively successful. iPhone 4 makes up half of all iPhones sold to date. The iPhone is just 5 percent of the worldwide phone market. It's much bigger for just smartphones, but Apple is looking to take over the entire world, not just smartphones.

iPads are viewed as a separate business for Apple. The product has an amazing 95 percent customer satisfaction rate - source may be JD Power, but Apple didn't clarify. Apple is showing the iPad photographed in classrooms, hospitals, even cockpits. Apple boasts that the iPad is the number 1 selling tablet, which we all already knew. 3 out of 4 tablets sold in the U.S. are iPads.

Scott Forstall is up to talk iOS 5. It's the number 1 mobile OS with 250 million devices sold. 500,000 apps on the App Store, 140,000 of them are for iPad. Apple's made another new one in-house called cards, for making and mailing postcards from photos. Basic, simplistic, but it'll be a big hit for the everyuser. That's not just an e-card -- it's a real physical card that gets sent in the post. $3 in the U.S., $5 elsewhere.

Now for a recap of iOS 5, which is a bit of a catch up in terms of basic features that other phones have long had, but will also bring with it some special Apple whizbang. A catchup feature is notifications. Finally. There's also iMessage, which is like BBM and will cut out the carrier from your text messaging habits between iOS devices. Twitter is baked in to the iOS, so you can tweet from Photos or Maps. Newsstand for magazine reading stuff.

The iPhone is the most popular camera on Flickr. Now Apple is making it even easier to take photos. The camera is accessible from the lock screen. Less fumbling to take that pic. Volume up will take a photo too. Photo editing with crop, red-eye, rotate.

Safari's tabbed browsing finally hits iOS 5, but it's probably just for iPad users with the screen real estate.

Now Apple is talking about iCloud. It's really nothing we haven't heard before. All your stuff gets synced to the cloud across your devices, etc etc. The backup of contacts, calendars is pretty nice, but nothing that hasn't been done on other platforms. The new bit is the syncing of apps, photos.

iOS 5 is hitting on October 12. That's the first bit of real news from Apple today.

Something else new is an Apple app called "Find my Friends". Remember when iOS 4 was logging all that location data? Well it's not doing it now, but you can soon broadcast your location with your family and friends through the app. There are promises of lots of security measures, such as when to share and when not to share location. Paranoids can also just not use it at all.

iTunes Match will scan your library and make it all legit to stream from Apple for $25 a year. It's Apple's answer to the other streaming services. Coming late October for U.S., and later for everyone else, if ever.

Phil Schiller is on stage. Updates to iPods. They're still alive and kicking. iPod nano gets a "swipe between bigger icons" instead of a grid. It's now also a fancier watch with 16 new clocks, for those who like to wear their iPods on their wrists. Some of them are pretty cool, including a Mickey Mouse one. 8GB for $129, 16GB for $149.

iPod touch's update is... iOS 5 and a new white model. 8GB model for $199. Double your storage capacity for $100 for two more tiers. iPod shuffle still at $49 for 2GB.

iPhone 4S time. It's real. A5 chip inside, of course. iPad 2 has had one for a while now. Up to 7 times faster than iPhone 4. Apple brings up Mike Capps from Epic Games to show you what it's all about. Get ready for Infinity Blade 2, coming December 1. Looks great, but definitely not 7x better than what we saw from Infinity Blade 1. Still insane for a phone.

iPhone 4S promises 8 hours 3G talk time, 14 hours 2G talk, 6 hours 3G browsing, 9 hours Wi-Fi, 10 hours video and 40 hours of music.

Oh yes, that metal antenna is still outside, BUT it has two of them and can switch between for transmit and receive. Faster downlink now too, at up to 14.4 Mbps.

iPhone 4S is a complete world phone, with both CDMA and GSM all in one. This should simplify manufacturing and supplies. Now the question remains... pentaband?

New camera and it's got 8 Megapixels. It's backlit too, like the iPhone 4 CMOS, but it's improved further to gather 73 percent more light. Five elements to the lens. f2.4. Face detection and 26 percent better auto white balance. The iPhone 4's white balance wasn't so good. Apple says it has a better image signal processor, so faster photo taking than ever before. 1.1 seconds for first photo, half second for next shot.

That same sensor now captures 1080p video. Real time image stabilization, temporal noise reduction. YouTube thanks you.

And now for a totally new feature to do with voice. Get ready to talk to your phone again. Apple is calling it Siri, like the company it bought. Scott Forstall holds down the home button and asks the phone "What's the weather like today?" and forecast happens.

Siri successfully answers: "What time is it in Paris" "Wake me up tomorrow at 6 AM" "Give me directions to Hoover Tower" "Find me a Greek restaurant in Palo Alto" -- that last one, Siri returns five Greek restaurants sorted by rating.

Siri can read your text messages to you and also take care of your reply. Phil texts Scott asking when they can have lunch. Scott asks Siri if he has any meetings on Friday at noon; Siri checks calendar and says no. Scott says "reply I can do Friday" and then the message is sent to Phil. New calendar appointment made automatically.

Built-in Wolfram Alpha. Asked how many days until Christmas - returned 82 days. Android has voice control for a while now, but this is big for Apple users.

It's launching as a "beta" for English speakers, supporting U.S., UK and Australian accents and terms. French and German are also in the first wave. I wonder how much Apple will have with tonal languages such as Chinese.

Ever get confused by some guy talking to nobody through a Bluetooth headset? Get ready for a whole new generation of people who will be talking dirty to their iPhone.

Black and white (at launch!). Pricing tiers same as before with $199 16GB, $299 32GB and now a $399 64 GB model.

iPhone 4 goes down to $99. iPhone 3GS lives on at FREE (on contract).

AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. No T-Mobile, so that's the U.S. carrier left out in the cold.

Pre-orders open on October 7, launching on October 14 in the U.S., Canada, Australia, UK, France, Germany and Japan. October 28 for many countries elsewhere.

And that's it. No iPhone 5. Everyone's iPhone 4 will still look cool and modern for at least another cycle.