Apple began the event by running through their statistics, the standard pats on the back commence. Some of the numbers are actually quite impressive.

• Some Apple retail stores now get over 1 million people in a single day.
• 250,000 Apps in the App Store, 25,000 iPad apps
• iOS4.1 shipping today (includes bug fixes, HDR, Game Centre) – shipping next week.

Next up was a game demo called Project Sword to demo Game Centre – impressive 3D capabilities.

iOS4.2 Sneak Peak

• Demo’d on iPad
• Coming in November
• Game Centre and HDR photos also coming to iPad (ahh Steve, iPad doesn’t have a camera).
• AirTunes renamed as AirPlay (stream more than just music around your home)
• Folder support

Apple have sold 275 Million iPods, are now refreshing ALL iPods in the range. The biggest update to iPods – EVER!

• New iPod Shuffle now has small size and now with buttons (15 hours of battery life) – 2GB A$69
• iPod Nano has multi-touch (24 hours of battery), FM Radio, works just like any other iOS device.. no 3rd party apps yet. 8GB A$199, 16GB A$229.
• iPod Touch now being discussed (Jobs claims, #1 portable gaming device in the world). Doesn’t have the same body as the iPhone 4, instead thinner than before. Retina display, front and rear facing cameras, Facetime (between iPhone and iPod Touch), Game Centre.
• New iPod Touch prices – 8GB A$289, 32GB A$378, 64GB US$499
• All new iPods available next week (need to confirm that includes countries outside US)
• No mention of classic, now killed off, SSD only.

On to iTunes now

• 11.7 billion songs downloaded
• 450 million TV episodes
• 100 million movies
• 35 million books
• iTunes 10 announced

New in iTunes 10

• New Logo – ditches the CD.
• New view includes Albury Art and list view combined
• Music discovery – Ping (“a social network all about music”) – follow music, artists and friends, shows as a feed, includes comment system, think Facebook for Music.
• You can follow people, if you choose to you can be followed (can be global, or circle of friends)
• Ping will be available to 160 million iTunes users in 23 countries at launch
• Ping available on iPhone and iPod Touch.
• When will we get iTunes 10 – Today !

One more thing,,, / hobbie – Apple TV update

• Users want Hollywood movies & TV shows, everything in HD, lower prices, don’t want to connect a computer to their tv, manage storage, don’t want to sync, silent, cool, small hardware.
• 1/4 the size of the old Apple TV
• HDMI, no power brick, Ethernet, 802.11N, No storage
• No purchases on Apple TV anymore, rentals only (streaming including HD where available).
• US$4.99 for new movies in HD, same day as DVD release.
• US$0.99 for HD TV show episodes (ABC and Fox shows only)
• US customers get Netflix support for Netflix subscribers
• Still allows for photos from flickr, Videos from YouTube, Audio + Video Podcasts
• No mention of 1080 – New Apple TV only does 720p
• iOS devices can stream to Apple TV, killer feature ! iPad to Apple TV demo’d.
• Launching in US, Canada, France, UK, Australia
• New Apple TV – A$129, pre-order today, available in 4 weeks

Jobs is doing a wrap-up now, the event is coming to a close. There were a few surprises – iTunes 10, Ping, a complete revamp of the iPod line-up, but a lot of the speculation prior to today were right.

Update
The Apple store has now been updated with the new products. Local pricing is actually pretty good in comparison to US prices.

Gallery

		Apple Event Sept 1st VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Tomorrow morning will be an early start with Apple’s latest PR event, this time relating to iPods. Each time this year Apple announce updates to their line-up of their insanely successful iPods. Fierce speculation online points to not only an iPod touch in the iPhone 4 style, but also an update and rebranding of Apple TV.

Living outside the US, means that a typical Apple event involves watching countless live blogs competing for the best coverage. Sure there’s times where some audio or even video streams leak out, but typically its something Apple has mandated is NOT allowed.

Well after years of insanity, Apple have finally announced they will stream tomorrow’s event live online. Apple have always filmed the events and posted them online afterwards, but by that point all relevant news has already spread across the internets.

Apple® will broadcast its September 1 event online using Apple’s industry-leading HTTP Live Streaming, which is based on open standards. Viewing requires either a Mac® running Safari® on Mac OS® X version 10.6 Snow Leopard®, an iPhone® or iPod touch® running iOS 3.0 or higher, or an iPad™. The live broadcast will begin at 10:00 a.m. PDT on September 1, 2010 at www.apple.com

I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome Apple to the 21st century. Other companies like Google and Microsoft have streamed their big events live for years. That said we all know Apple fans are like no other, so despite forward planning it’ll be interesting to see if Apple’s servers melt or can sustain the punishment.

So is this the death of the Apple event liveblog ? Absolutely not. There’s still score for interpretation of the announcements that arrive tomorrow, so MacWorld, GDGT, Engadget and TWiT and plenty more will still be running live coverage.

All the action starts at 3AM AEST, so if your a keen tech enthusiast set your alarm, if not, be sure to check techAU tomorrow for a summary.

More @ Apple

It’s been around a year since the launch of Windows 7, so in the final interview from Tech.Ed last week, I discuss the current state of Windows 7. In an interview with Moragh Blyth and Michael Niehaus from Microsoft we discuss Win7 Service Pack 1, business adoption and a whole lot more.

Check out the 11 minute video below.

Sorry guys, your out of luck, geek chicks its your lucky day. Xbox Australia just posted a deliciously inviting tease, an offer to the ladies of Sydney to get hands on with Kinect.

Sydney area ladies (and only ladies—sorry dudes) if you’re free tomorrow arvo and want to have a go at Kinect, @ me for details! –jinx

This comes only days after Tech.Ed attendees were disappointed they missed out on a chance to have a go at the latest in Xbox tech. Specific details of the event are being kept quiet, if you want in, @reply Jinx at Xbox Australia on twitter for more info.

Update
Looks like the boys aren’t happy with another post from XboxAustralia

Sorry guys, there will be times for you too. this happens to be at a ladies-only event. Send the lady in your life to spy! – jinx

Since I won’t be in Sydney tomorrow and don’t have a vagina, I’m after ladies who do get hands on with Kinect and get photos. Please send them to jason@techAU.tv and I’ll post with credit. Extra points if you can score video.

Microsoft have finally flipped the switch on Exchange Push for their Mail, Contacts and Calendar services. Competitor Google has offered this for months, and like many other iPhone owners who want all their info on the go, I switched to gmail to achieve this.

To enable the services simply insert your credentials and use m.hotmail.com as the server address.

So now push email, contacts and calendar is available to Windows Live users, question is, how many people will switch from Google. While Gmail is beloved by tech darlings, the reality is there’s a lot more users on Windows Live. My contact list on Windows Live Messenger is many multiple times the length of that of Google Chat.

Personally I need to run both emails for different services like Google Reader / analytics and Skydrive, but may switch Windows Live Contacts and Calendar. As shown above, I now have exchange accounts defined, Google, Work and Hotmail.

Prior to today’s launch, users would be met with a looping Password prompt, now the service has launched, this no longer occurs. Its also important to note that Exchange activesync for Hotmail supports multiple calendars that can be turned on or off in settings. These individual calendars appear as different colour calendar entries on most mobile devices.

This move is critical in preparation for Microsoft’s launch of Windows Phone 7 later this year to achieve their target of hitting both personal and business users.

In a pay-as-you-go model, Cloud services are particularly cost effective for start-ups that want avoid massive up front investment for server infrastructure. Also those businesses that often experience peak demands at certain times of the year. Valentine’s day for a florist is the example used during my interview with Gianpaolo Carraro & Phil Goldie from Microsoft.

Cloud services are pivotal to another key strategy from Microsoft – three screens and a cloud. This means that content delivered to your phone, desktop / laptop and you tv are all stored up in the cloud. This provides new possibilities like taking your game status from the Xbox and picking it up on your WP7 device. An interesting concept indeed, it’ll be a case of wait and see just how well Microsoft manage to execute on this vision.

Watch the interview below.

More info @ http://microsoft.com/windowsazure

This year’s keynote at Tech.Ed Australia 2010 was done by Microsoft evangelist Michael Kordahi with special guest August de los Reyes who spoke about Natural User Interfaces. To discuss this concept further I sat down with the guys to get some more information on the concept of NUI.

NUI is an evolution is design, moving past how we think about interfaces today. GUI or graphical user interfaces still require the users to learn how to interact with it. NUI is an interesting discussion with concepts that will likely shape future Microsoft products to make technology fit us more naturally. Rather than humans having to learn technology as we do today, NUI focuses on the idea that technology can integrate into our lives to the point where we don’t need to think about it. August references the example of doors with sensors that automatically open as we try and walk through.

Check out the video interview below.

Last night the Tech.Ed 2010 closing party was hosted at the Gold Coast Convention Centre. In previous years the closing party has been held at theme parks or night clubs, this year the closing party offered a number of activities for attendees to participate in.

Activities included gaming on the Xbox, cricket, giant chess, table tennis, human fuse ball, sumo wrestling, arcade machines and laser tag. Those wanting a more relaxed evening grabbed a seat in the main arena and was entertained by comedians and ‘musical talent’.

Props to Microsoft for having so many different elements for people to the 2,700 attendees to get involved in. The underground car park was completely transformed and with great lighting, smoke machines, loud music and arcade machines, it felt like you were transported to underground japan.

The biggest criticism of the event is that Kinect wasn’t available. After being teased with Kinect during the keynote, that’s the last we seen of it for the entire conference. Last night would have been a great opportunity for attendees to get first hand experience prior to its launch in November.

		Tech.Ed 2010 Closing Party VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

During Tech.Ed 2010 I got hands on with the Domain WP7 application. The application has a very similar feature set to that of the iPhone version. Providing access to search on Rental or Sale properties and not only filter that list, but also to save out your shortlist of properties is a nice inclusion.

There’s the ability to view property photos in portrait or landscape, as well as book an appointment with the property manager right from within the app. Check out the video below for a hands-on demo of one of the first Australian developed applications for Windows Phone 7.

The Domain application for Windows Phone 7 will be free and available at launch.

Update
I sat down with Dave Glover from Microsoft and Matt Faries from Fairfax Digital to discuss the development of the app. Check out the interview below.

The UI itself looks a little strange with the address and Bing search bar not reaching the full width of the window. It’s possible the Bing section is the Bing bar that is installed as an IE add-on as part of Windows Live Essentials and could in fact be disabled or removed. If this is the case the address bar may in fact be Chrome-esk with one location to search and directly input URL’s.. Awesome! Other than that, there’s really not a lot to go on here, smaller, cleaner metro-style icons on the top right, as well as a more prominent Back button shown in blue in the top-left.

Image credit: ZDnet

As a multi-monitor user or Chrome, its killer feature is the ability to drag tabs into their own window and view 2 sites, side-by-side. If this doesn’t make it into IE9, there’ll be a lot of upset developers who’ll likely stick with Chrome even if IE9 wins the speed race. That feature is that important. Even on single screen setups running Windows 7, it works great with aero-snap and with more of our lives being online, this will become an increasingly common use-case.

This week at Tech.Ed 2010 presenters are still using platform preview 4 of IE9 despite the beta release only being a little over 2 weeks away. It seems even Microsoft developers have to wait for September 15th to get the bits.

Performance benchmarks show IE9 performing very well in comparison to other browsers and in some case leaping ahead. The problem is that without a UI wrapped around the shell, the question remains as to wether speed gains will be reduced by the final build.  

More @ All about Microsoft

This afternoon I sat down with David Powell from Telstra and Tony Wilkinson from Microsoft to discuss the Telstra One app announced in yesterday’s Tech.Ed 2010 keynote. We covered a number of topics including how the app got developed, what’s included in version 1.0 and what in store for future releases. Check out my full interview with Dave and Tony.

The Telstra One app for Windows Phone 7 includes News, Sport and Weather information. It works pretty much as expected, adhering to WP7’s design guidelines making it feel like a native app. Currently there’s no sharing of content to social networks or the ability to re-arrange tiles inside the app, but both features are on the roadmap for future builds.

All the content that is delivered via the app is unmetered for Telstra customers and when future version add the ability to live stream Bigpond content like the V8 supercars, it will also be unmetered.

Overall the app looks good, does what it says it does – sports, news, weather, Telstra says that WP7 phones sold from Telstra stores will come with the App pre-installed and the App Tile on the front page. This can be removed if the user chooses to do so.

Check out the Telstra One WP7 app in action below.

As for the rest of the opening party, attendees seemed to be having a good time with free beer and wine on offer as well as popcorn, giveaways, slot cars and Halo-style RC cars competition held by Gold Coast meter maids. Check out the gallery below if you couldn’t make it to the event.

		Tech.Ed 2010 Opening Party VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL