Apple Autumn event liveblog: iPods, iTunes and Apple TV

17.27: One interesting theme to watch out for tonight will be any Apple TV announcements. The expansion of apps from mobile devices to TV is proceeding apace, as is the development of cloud-based entertainment accessed through a range of devices.

Witness today's stories on Samsung, and Sony and Amazon, for more context to this. Mobile developers are looking beyond mobile, and cloud entertainment includes mobile as a key element.

17.39: There will be a musician closing the event, for sure. Sweepstake on who it'll be? I'm hoping for Joanna Newsom. Outside bet: Paul'n'Ringo if there's a Beatles / iTunes announcement (but there won't be).

17.43: That last update will, naturally, be amended when Steve Jobs whips a branded Yellow Submarine iPod touch out of his pocket and promises a free download of The White Album to all registered iTunes users...

17.55: The presentation is about to start. Jack Johnson is playing in the venue, as is traditional at these events. Let's go!

18.00: Steve Jobs enters. Much whooping and clapping in the US. Much awkward bottom-shifting here in London. We don't do hero-worship very well, us Brits.

18.01: Update on retail first. Jobs plugs the new Apple Stores in Paris, Shanghai and London, Covent Garden. "It's fantastic!" he says. "It's a beautiful store now!" And just a short walk from the Cornwall Pasty Company stall to boot...

18.02: Apple has 300 stores in 10 countries, with Spain soon to become the 11th. And Jobs says some days, Apple gets more than one million visitors wandering through its stores.

18.03: Now onto iOS. "It's been a revolution in both touch and apps," says Jobs. "Mobile applications were completely different before the iPhone."

Apple has shipped 120 million iOS devices since the launch of the original iPhone. "People are throwing around a lot of numbers as to how many devices their operating systems are activating every day," he says - a reference to Google. Apple is activating 230,000 new users a day - that doesn't include upgrades.

And the App Store? More than 6.5 billion downloads from Apple's store - 200 apps every second. And there are 250,000 apps on the App Store, with 25,000 of those iPad apps.

"Today, we're introducing iOS 4.1," says Jobs. Key new features: bug fixes, 'high dynamic range photos, HD video uploads over Wi-Fi, and the consumer debut of Apple's Game Center community.

18.07: What's High Dynamic Range photos? It's about shooting different versions of a photo with varying colour contrast, allowing users to choose the best one.

18.08: Game Center was announced earlier this year - an Xbox Live style community. "Game Center is all about multiplayer games," says Jobs. "It lets you challenge your friends and your friends challenge you. And if you don't have any friends, it'll auto-match you."

18.09: Jobs introduces a new game from Epic Games, whose president Mike Capps takes the stage to show it off. It's Epic's first Apple product, and is codenamed Project Sword.

It promises "epic sword battles", and is a visually stunning first-person shooter, which will tie in with Game Center for achievements, leaderboards and online multiplayer.

18.12: The game designer beats the president in a live demonstration. He'll be sacked in the morning.

18.13: But Epic is going to make its engine available for other iOS game developers to use too. In other words, the kit behind Gears of War is now going to power iPhone games. "It's on a phone!" says Jobs. "That's pretty remarkable."

18.14: iOS 4.1 will be available next week for iPhone and iPod touch - NOT iPad - and will be a free download.

18.15: Jobs now offers a sneak peak at iOS 4.2 that's coming to iPad later this year, though. "It's bringing everything to iPad... multi-tasking, folders, Game Center..." Also wireless printing.

18.16: iOS 4.2 will also include something called AirPlay, letting people stream audio, video and photos over Wi-Fi to other devices. It's a rebranded version of the existing AirTunes service. Mobile tech firm Ideaworks may be a bit miffed - its cross-platform development SDK is called... Airplay.

18.18: iOS 4.2 will come out in November for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

18.19: Onto iPods. Apple has sold 275 million iPods in the history of the product. "One of the secrets to the iPod's success is that even though it has a very high market share, we've never rested on our laurels," says Jobs. "Every year, we try to improve iPods... This year, we've gone wild!"

18.20: Taking them in turn, then. The iPod shuffle - Jobs admits that people miss the buttons, which were removed from last year's third-generation version. So, the fourth-gen iPod shuffle is even smaller, but has buttons to change the volume and skip tracks. And it supports voice control and playlists, and Genius mixes.

18.22: Next up is the iPod nano, with its sixth generation version. It's smaller, removing the click-wheel and going touchscreen, with multi-touch.

It's small and square, with a shuffle-style clip so people can wear it. It also has FM radio, Nike+ and a pedometer, with 24 hours of battery life. And it can also show photos and album artwork. No camera seemingly though. The 8GB version will sell for $149, and the 16GB one will go for $179.

18.29: Onto the iPod touch, which Jobs says has become "the most popular iPod" in the last year, and "the number one portable game player in the world.. it outsells Nintendo and Sony portable game players combined!" Jobs claims it has more than 50% market share for portable gaming devices in the US and worldwide.

18.30: "Over a billion and a half games and entertainment titles have been downloaded from iTunes to the iPod touch alone," he says.

So he shows off the new model, which is thinner than the previous model - NOT like the iPhone 4. But it does have the iPhone 4's Retina Display. It also has an A4 processor, a three-axis Gyro, iOS 4.1 and a front-facing camera with FaceTime video calling. And a rear camera with HD video recording.

18.33: "We're very very excited about this product," he says. The 8GB model will cost $229, the 32GB model will be $299, and the 64GB model will be $399. All the new iPods will ship next week, and are pre-orderable from today.

18.35: Cue hipster ads. "The strongest lineup of new iPods we've ever had," says Jobs.

18.36: Now onto iTunes. Jobs says 11.7 billion songs have been downloaded from Apple's store, and more than 450 million TV episodes. More than 100 million movies, and over 35 million e-books. Apple has more tha 160 million accounts on iTunes - people with their credit card details registered.

18.37: Today, iTunes 10 is launching. It has a new logo without the CD - a musical note instead - and a reswizzed interface. Discovery is also a focus, grappling with 12 million songs in the store. The nwe feature is Ping - "a social network for music - sort of like Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes. It's not Facebook, it's not Twitter, it's something else we've come up with. It's a social network for music."

18.40: People can follow friends and celebrities - by searching for their names. It seems no Facebook Connect then. However, there will be charts customised to what the people you follow are buying from iTunes.

18.42: Users can allow themselves to be followed by anyone, but have approval if they want. "You set up a circle of friends - me, my ten buddies, we'll all agree to let each other follow each other, and that's it." It includes more than 17,000 concert listings, since live gigs are included.

18.43: Ping is live immediately - or at least to anyone who downloads iTunes 10. "It's a social network all about music. Make sense?" says Jobs.

18.47: Ping will also be available on iPhone and iPod touch. "It's showing up right in the iTunes Store," says Jobs. iTunes 10 is available today, but now the big One More Thing... moment. "One more hobby," says Jobs. That'll be Apple TV then.

18.49: Jobs admits that Apple TV "hasn't been a huge hit" since it launched four years ago, but cites the learnings: users want Hollywood movies and TV shows "whenever they want them... they don't want amateur hour, they want professional content. And they want everything in HD."

18.50: He also says users want to pay less for this content, and "they don't want a computer on their TV - they have computers - they go to their widescreen TVs for entertainment." He says this is hard for people in the computer industry to understand, but obvious for consumers.

18.51: Jobs says consumers don't want to manage storage - hard disks filling up with multi-gigabyte downloads - and they don't want to have to sync to a computer.

18.52: The new Apple TV is much smaller than the previous model - a quarter the size. "You can hold it in the palm of your hand" says Jobs, while doing just that. It supports Wi-Fi, and has an HDMI port for connecting to TVs.

18.53: "We've gone to the rental model for this," he says. "And there's no storage problem, because you don't store things any more - you just rent them."

First-run HD movies will be rentable for $4.99 day and date with their DVD releases, and will then get cheaper over time. Meanwhile, HD TV shows will cost $0.99 as predicted. ABC and Fox are on board for launch. "We hope the rest of the studios will see the light and get on board pretty fast with us," says Jobs.

Apple TV will also support Netflix subscriptions and YouTube videos. Jobs kicks into a demo - what he hasn't said (yet) is whether all this will also apply to iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. Can someone rent a movie to their iPad as well as through Apple TV?

19.00: The demo reveals that users can flag their favourite shows, and will then be alerted - via iOS-style update icons - which have new episodes to watch.

19.05: Back to AirPlay, which launches in November with iOS 4.2. It will allow content to be streamed wirelessly from an iOS device to the Apple TV box. So you can play a movie stored on your iPad on your TV, via Apple TV.

Content will be on iTunes in the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany and Australia for launch, with more following later this year. Apple TV will cost $99, down from $299 from the old model.

19.07: Note, Jobs hasn't shown any apps running on the Apple TV, nor has he shown any ability to display apps and games from your iPad on the TV. It seems apps will NOT be part of the Apple TV ecosystem for now.

And that's a wrap. Who's the artist performing the closing songs? Chris Martin of Coldplay, solo, doing Yellow. Which, when you think about it, is not a million miles away from a Yellow Submarine.

Thank you, and goodnight.