Steve Jobs keynote: Live coverage from Apple music event

Steve Jobs takes to the stage at 6pm on Tuesday 9 September. You’ll find minute-by-minute updates below. Keep refreshing this page for all the latest, as it happens.

Still not sure what to expect? Check out our predictions of what’s in store. Also, you’ll want to keep your eyes on The UK Apple Store for new products as soon as they’re available.

6:55: Things here are winding down. We’re off to play with the new products. We’ll bring you more pictures and video as soon as we can. In the meantime, have a look at the gallery. There’s even a couple of photos of Jack Johnson in there.

6:51: Steve’s introducing a musician… he’s the number one selling male artist in iTunes history…. it’s Jack Johnson. Oh dear. That looks like the end. No surprises. No iTunes subscriptions, but some great-looking iPods. Check out the gallery for tons of pictures!

6:50: Steve’s re-capping, now he’s clapping. That’s it people…. or is it…

6:48: The new iPod touch runs all new software. Version 2.1. If you’ve upgraded an iPod touch to 2.0 then it’s a free update. If you haven’t it’s a $9.95 update. It’s also coming to the iPhone. Steve says it fixes lots of bugs. Fewer call drops. Bettery battery life. Lots of bug fixes in apps. Backing up to iTunes is “dramatically faster”. Steve almost sounds apologetic. Performance enhancements are in there too. And it’s free for iPhone. Available this Friday.

6:46: The new iPod touch is good value: 8GB $229, 16GB $299, 32GB for $399. All available today.

6:45: Steve’s back on stage. The new iPod touch battery life is massive. 36 hours of music and 6 hours of video. It’s just as eco-friendly as the new nano too.

6:43: Need for Speed Undercover is next. It’s slick. Lots of 3D cars. Customisation. You know the drill. It’s clear Apple’s pushing game developers for great content. This is obviously one of the reasons they built speakers into the new iPod touch.

6:41: Now we’re looking at Real Soccer 2009 from Gameloft. It’s full 3D. Looks lovely. The D-pad, A and B, buttons are overlaid on the touchscreen. It supports “gestures” around the D-pad, so you can pull a 360 by drawing a circle on-screen.

6:40: Phil’s still fiddling with Spore. In the meantime, take a look at our images in the gallery. It’s all there - new iPod nano, iPod touch and new accessories.

6:39: Phil’s having fun with Spore, moulding a cell to look “just like me”.

6:37: Phil Schiller is on stage. He’s going to show us some unannounced games. He’s starting with Spore Origins.

6:35: We just added pictures of the new iPod touch, with Nike +iPod software, in the galleries. Take a look!

6:34: There have been 100 million downloads from the App Store. Steve’s highlighting that it’s only been open for 60 days. He’s now demoing Genius playlists. You just tap the genius logo while playing a song, and it builds the playlist. Very slick.

6:31: Nike + iPod is built into the iPod touch software, and the sensor is built into the player itself, so there’s no need to plug anything in for it to work.

6:31: There’s a speaker built in, and it’ll build genius playlists on the go too. The interface as been tweaked. The artwork shows up in listings now.

6:30: The iPod touch is getting an update. It looks the same. Has hardware volume keys on the side, but is thinner than ever. We’re uploading pictures now.

6:29: The headphones have a microphone built in too… for use with the nano’s voice recorder.

6:27: The headphones with a remote built in from the iPhone are now available for the iPod nano. They let you play, pause, turn volume up and down, even skip forward and back. They’ll be $29 next month.

6:26: $149 with 8GB of memory. $199 for 16GB. They’ll be on sale this weekend, or early next week. They come in lovely new colours.
6:23: The battery life is 4 hours for video and 24 hours for music. It’s also more eco-friendly than ever. Arsenic free glass, BFR-free, mercury-gree, PVC-free and highly recyclable.

6:22: The new nano has “shake to shuffle” using the new accelerometer. You just shake the iPod to skip to a new random track. We can see joggers having fun with this.

6:22: We’ve just uploaded some pics of the new nano. Take a look in the gallery.

6:19: The display rotates. There’s a new interface. Hold the centre button and a pop-up button gives you more options about the song that’s playing. More from this artist, Genius playlists. It’s all there. There’s a voice recording app included too.

6:18: The display is made of curved glass. It has an accelerometer inside. You can create genius playlists on the nano too.

6:16: The iPod nano - Steve’s introducing the 4th gen iPod nano. It looks exactly like we expected. Longer screen, oval-ish shape. We’re uploading pics now. It’s the thinnest iPod ever made, says Steve.

6:16: The iPod classic - the thick version is discontinued. There’ll now be a 120GB version for the same price as the 80GB.

6:15: Steve’s showing off the iTunes ecosystem… “there are loads of accessories available… sometimes they even announce products before we want them too… that’s kinda funny.”

6:14: We’re done with iTunes… on to… iPod.

6:13: Genius seems to work well. Steve just showed it off using Heartbreak Hotel by Elvis. It matched up Buddy Holly, and the Genius Sidebar also offers up similar-sounding artists, just incase you don’t have much in your library that’ll go well together.

6:11: Steve’s using John Mayer’s music to build a playlist of similar songs. He just played one song, hit “Genius” and iTunes 8 has built a playlist that works well together. It’s pretty cool. You can even flesh out a playlist with Genius. It’ll build on what you’ve already got.

6:10: A little diversion, Steve’s showing us a HD TV show. It’s The Office. Bah. It’s the American version, not the British original.

6:08: Steve’s showing off Genius now. It uses anonymous info from all iTunes users to get better and better at matching songs and making playlists.

6:07: Genius also suggests songs from the iTunes Store that you don’t already have, but will go great with music already in your library.

6:06: Introducing iTunes 8. improvements in accessibility. Voiceover etc is now included. It also includes Genius to automatically make playlists. There are new browsing options too, using loads of album artwork.

6:01: Hold on to your credit cards… the screen in front of us says the “programme is about to begin!”

6:00: Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak’s in the audience.

6:56: Pascal’s off stage. We’re waiting for Steve to appear.

5:55: Pascal’s highlighting Axel Springer, one of Germany’s largest publishers, moving its entire operation to Mac. It’s clear Apple wants a bigger slice of the business market. They’re keen to show they’re more than fancy music players and enviable phones.

5:53: Pascal is explaining Apple’s “shop in a shop” concept, where small Apple-branded areas open inside larger department stores. They’ve opened one every three days across Europe for the past year. Wow, that’s a lot of retail space!

5:46: Pascal Cagni, Apple’s General Manager and Vice President for Europe just stood up. He’s talking us through Apple’s European business. Nothing new here, but it’s all sounding good. Lots more sales. Apple’s paying more attention to Europe.

5:36: Lots of people here are also expecting Steve to unveil iTunes subscriptions. Let’s hope he doesn’t disappoint.

5:35: Mutterings amongst the crowd (at least the Italians behind us) are that there’ll be a new iPod nano (duh), and an iPod touch update that looks almost exactly the same. That chimes with everything we’ve heard from online retailers who “already have accessories in stock” for the new players.

5:30: We’ve sat down. Everyone else is filing in. The typical Apple ad music is filling our ears. Hardly seems 10 minutes since we were listening to the same tracks ahead of the MacBook Air launch.

5:13: We’re in. We’re waiting to be seated, and for Uncle Steve to make Christmas come early.

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