The majority of gamers' attention is today of course focused on E3 in Los Angeles - with Microsoft and Sony's conference both taking place in the City Of Angels. But a few hours down the road, Apple's WorldWide Developers' Conference (WWDC) is kicking off in San Francisco, bringing the possibility of new iPhone and iOs announcements.
ZoomOther whispers suggest Epic will be in San Fran to announce some iOs-related goodies too - and with gaming an ever-increasing focus for Apple, it would be a big surprise if the firm didn't have at least one big interactive entertainment announcement.
Just as we're doing with all the big gaming conferences from E3, we'll be live blogging the Apple event from 6pm UK time (10am PST) right here. Just refresh for all the latest from the show, which is taking place at the Moscone Center in SF.
And, yes, that clashes with Microsoft's E3 shindig. We know. Cheeky, huh?
Okay. You want a bit of excitement, Apple heads? A big secret banner hangs in the foyer, covered by a sheet. We still don't think it will be iPhone 5. But, this IS Apple. Predictions aren't exactly an exact science.
T-minus five minutes until things kick off.
'net went down there for a sec. Right now, James Brown's I feel Good playing. Macbooks clearly on stage.
iOs 5 and iClous banners everywhere, btw.
Steve jobs on stage. Over 5,000 people at conference, tickets sold within two hours. He's promising us an "awesome morning".
Product marketing man Phil Schiller is on stage, talking up Mac vs. PC.
54 million Macs around the world. Mac has rown 28% year-on-year, PC market has shrunk 1%.
OS X Lion announced, with over 250 features including multi-touch tracking on all notebooks, full screen apps and Mission Control, which shows all your apps and documents in one place.
Swiping between Apps now. It's very cool, but this is pretty much organisation-related. Show us the content, Big Steve.
Auto-save being improved with Lion too. Zzzzzzzzzzzz.
We're on email now. It does actually look pretty sweet, with improved search too. But we've had enough of Lion. Less work, more play.
Lion finished now. Coming July.
YES. iOs. Here we go.
Scott Forstall talking about iOS 5. 200 million iOS devices sold.
"iOS the number one mobile operating system... more than 44% of the market."
Over 25 million iPads sold. "We've created a whole new category of device with the iPad."
15 billion songs have been sold through the iTunes Music Store, making it the No.1 music retailer. Big numbers.
225 million accounts.
iOs 5 now. "iOS 5 is a major release. This is incredible for our developers and our customers." The "future" tomorrow.
Notifications and 'Newstand' now - all magazines available on iOs. Including those from our parent, Future Publishing. Nice of them to tell us ;-)
Simpler Tweet setup coming to iOs. So you can send drunken picture even more easily.
Safari reader getting update. "Safari is the best mobile web browser out there. It's also the most popular." Responsible for two-thirds of browsing on mobile.
Reminders getting improved. As in, digital post-its. It gets a woop. Some people will clap anything.
Camera now, live editing. Very swish. Camera will show when iPhone is locked too.
"PC free" connection will do away with that USB cable that ties devices up with iTunes/Store. All wireless. W00t.
RIGHT. GAMING. HERE WE GO.
Game Center.
"In just 9 months we have 50 million Game Center users. To put that into perspective Xbox Live has been around for about eight years and they have around 30 million users."
Boom.
Social stuff, seeing friends of friends and what they're playing. Turn-based games coming too.
Achievements being introduced. Screen showed with Infinity Blade on it. Score; 485. We could beat that.
You can purchase and download games right off Game Center with iOs 5.
Now onto iMessage - which will allow MSN-style real time chat between iOs devices.
Steve Jobs: ""I'm going to talk about iCloud. We've been working on this for some time now, and I'm really excited about it."
iOs 5 out in the autumn.
Jobs says he's going to 'demote' PC and Mac to be 'just a device" as Clous storage takes over.
"Everything happens automatically and there's nothing new to learn. It just all works.... "iCloud stores your content in the cloud and wirelessly pushes it to all your device. It automatically uploads it, stores it, and pushes it to all your devices... Some people think the cloud is just a big disk in the sky... We think it's way more than that."
MobileMe used to cost $99 a year. "As of today this product ceases to exist."
iCloud will be free. Big graphic smashes the $99 thing.
App Store shows your purchases even if they're not actually on your device. Clever.
Same for books and other things - backed up in the Cloud, not on the device. Music, books, photos and videos, device settings, and App data all stored for nada. Cool.
And that's not all: documents in the cloud is another.
"If I'm on my iPad and I create a Pages document, it automatically uploads it and stores it in the cloud."
APIs for devs too, so they can start taking advantage right away. And now he's talking about photos, and the pain of sorting your hoilday snaps when you get home. Straight automatic storage in the Cloud, uncle Steve?
Pics pushed to Cloud automatically, then shared with your other devices. Your last 1,000 photos are stored, promises Jobs. Photos kept in Cloud for 30 days. If you want to keep them, just move into permanent folder - or back onto your device. Photo taken on iPhone on stage, immediately appears on iPad.
Music also gets pushed. Means one download to have Apple-approved music on numerous devices, which Steve is very pleased about.
You'll get 5GB of storage, not counting photos and music. Launching in developer beta today. Coming in autumn with iOS 5.
New service iTunes Match will find songs you rip from CD on iTunes and add to Cloud. If it doesn't have them, it'll upload your version. Costs $24.99 per year.
Jobs shows off massive servers. Looks like something from Gears of War. Huge.
And that's it, folks. No iPhone 5 for you, none.
