Tim Cook took to the stage for the first time as Apple’s CEO, welcoming the crowd to the company’s headquarters in Cupertino with an overview of Apple’s recent history, work, and growth. Some notable stats include: The Mac outgrew the PC market by almost six times (in the last four quarters); more than 6 million copies of Lion have been downloaded; the iPhone is experiencing 125-percent growth vs 74-percent for smartphones; and three out of four tablets sold are the iPad.
Scott Forstall, Apple’s senior vice president of iOS software, introduces the company’s new Cards app. You can create and mail cards, directly from your iPhone or iPod touch. Choose from 21 letterpress designs, and Apple will print it out and send it for you.
Apple introduced iOS 5 at its WWDC keynote event in June; Forstall went over all of the new features again and announced an October 12 release date.
Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, walked the crowd through iCloud. The service will replace MobileMe, and offers a place to store and sync your content across various devices. Like iOS 5, it will be released on October 12, for free. For more details on iCloud, check out our coverage of the new service.
Apple introduced a new app called Find My Friends, which lets you track the location of your friends and family. Users can only see locations for people who are sharing with them, and location sharing can be customized so that it continuously shares your location, or only lasts for a certain amount of time.
Schiller made the biggest announcement of the day, revealing the newest iPhone—the iPhone 4S. It will be available on October 14, in three sizes: 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB. Learn more about the iPhone 4S here.
The iPhone 4S features a new A5 chip, making the phone’s graphics up to seven times faster than the iPhone 4. To illustrate, Mike Capps from Epic Games demoed the company’s new iOS game, Infinity Blade 2.
Photo taking gets more advanced with the iPhone 4S. The phone sports a an 8-megapixel sensor, 60 percent more pixels than the iPhone 4, advanced optics, better color accuracy, and a new LED flash. Users will also be able to capture 1080p HD video.
Schiller introduced Siri, a voice-based assistant built into the iPhone 4S. Schiller gave examples for how to ask Siri about the weather; everything from “What is the weather like today?” to “Do I need an umbrella today?” will work. Siri understands what you are asking, it gets the meaning behind certain words.
Launch Siri from the home screen and it will ask how it can help you.
Apple partnered with Yelp so that Siri can help users find restaurants. For instance, you can tell Siri, “Find me a Greek restaurant in Palo Alto,” and it will pop out these results.
Schiller showed off more of Siri’s voice command features. It seems like Siri can do it all—schedule meetings and reminders, send text messages and emails, conduct web searches, get directions, set a timer, check stocks, and more—without any typing.
Tim Cook returned to the stage to wrap up all of the event announcements. “When you think about it, only Apple could make such amazing software, hardware, and services, and bring them together into such a powerful, yet integrated experience. I am so incredibly proud of this company and all of the teams that work so hard to bring all of the innovations that you’ve seen today to reality,” Cook said, before thanking everyone for attending.