Thank you to everyone who has been following the Apple Keynote today on Joystuck. I hope you have enjoyed our trial run of live-blogging! Check back over the next few days for more information on how today’s announcements will impact all you gamers out there!

It’s over!

“I am so incredibly proud of this company and all of the teams who work so hard to bring all of the innovations you’ve seen today.” Isn’t that nice.

Tim Cook is back on stage again. “What puts Apple way out front is how they’re engineered to work together so well.”

Pre-order the 4S from October 7th, and own it from October 14th!

iPhone 4 8GB version will be $ 99 on contract, and the 3GS will be free.

*assuming you are getting it on contract, obviously. Otherwise we would be back to those astronomical numbers again!

Black and White versions of the iPhone 4S:

16GB = $ 199, 32GB = $ 299, 64GB = $ 399

So any guesses on price?

Looks like that might be all for the iPhone 4S for now. They are showing an advert reiterating all the magical improvements.

A new button next to the space bar will allow you to do dictation. Additionally, while all these voice functions will work as soon as you start using it, over time it will learn you voice and become more efficient.

I always remember it taking some time to get used to a new phone…didn’t realise how quickly we would reach a point where my phone would have to get used to me…

Ask it to give you the definition of words, set reminders, ask it anything. Anything at all.

Ask it to find you a restaurant, give you directions, tell it to read out text messages, and then tell it to reply to them as well. Wow – and I thought the current voice interaction with the iPhone was neat.

Ask it a question, in a variety of forms – the examples Apple are trying out on stage are about the weather – and it will give you the right answer.

“What is the hourly forecast” or “Do I need a raincoat today” and it answers you! The machines will conquer us all.

But that is not all. A new voice recognition system…but more so.

“Your intelligent assistant that helps you get things done just by asking”

“The most amazing iPhone yet.” Well, they would say that.

So just to remind you all – 8 megapixel camera, 1080p video, wireless mirroring, iOS5. It has a lot going for it.

AirPlay Mirroring. Wirelessly or wired gaming from your iDevice to the big screen.

Noise reduction and video image stabilization. Not every announcement can make jaws drop to the floor, but it’s all these minor tweaks which keep Apple on top.

1080p HD video recording. Would it be anything else?

Video recording is the next hot topic to be shown off.

30% sharper images, 26% better white balance, face detection enabled.

The 4S will have a brand new 8 megapixel camera – that is 60% more pixels. One third quicker too! Speaking as an iPhone 3GS user, this all sounds very appealing.

Two times as fast download speeds. 14.4Mbps compared to half that on last years iPhone 4. Even the smaller numbers have their place it seems.

So back to the 4S.

Eight hours of 3G talk time. Six hours of browsing, and nine of WiFi use. Ten hours if you are using video, and forty hours for music.

Infinity Blade II coming December 1st. Merry Christmas!

Joystuck will put together this information about games and the new iPhone 4S in to a more easily digestible form, so don’t worry.

Epic made $ 20,000,000 from Infinity Blade. So naturally here comes the sequel.

Mike Capps from Epic Games takes to the stage. This is all very exciting isn’t it!

iPhone 4S is announced.

Retina Display. Glass back. A5 Chip (as found in the iPad 2). Two times faster.

And now the iPhone. “Despite competitors trying really hard to copy the iPhone 4, they haven’t really been able to come close.”

There is a white iPod Touch coming.

8GB = $ 199, 32GB = $ 299, 64GB = $ 399. Coming October 12th.

iPod Touch is the most popular handheld gaming device on the market at the moment. Poor Nintendo. iOS 5 simply makes it even better!

$ 149 for the 16GB version and $ 129 for the 8GB.

Updates to the iPod Nano help selecting apps. Plus all the sensors required when exercising are now inbuilt into the device. Pick it up and go for a run!

Phil Shiller is now on stage. “We introduced the iPod because we loved music, and that hasn’t changed.”

US only for now – so no hurry in explaining it to me.

$ 24.99 for a year! Not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing – someone clear this up for me!

iTunes Match will add the “same benefits” of music which you have bought from iTunes to music which are have acquired by other means.

iCloud is free to use for Lion and iOS5 users, with up to 5GB of online data free. But, you can buy some more space if you want to.

A new service will allow you to find your friends. It is called “Find Your Friends”, and assuming they have given permission for their position to be broadcast, it should now be a breeze to find them.

Contacts and calendars are backed up in the iCloud.

Photos and documents can also be pushed between your iDevices.

Eddy Cue is on stage to discuss iCloud. “iCloud stores your content and wireless pushes it to all your devices.”

It is all built in to the apps, and will happen automatically. “It just works, and iCloud is free.”

However, don’t we know all this from earlier in the year? It’s coming out October 12? Okay – that is some new information.

Save the date everyone – October 12th will be the official release of iOS5.

Updates will be coming to the Mail service as well.

Updates to the Safari app. You can add pages to a reading list to access at a later time. This list will be synced between all your iDevices – nice. Tabbed browsing will come to iPad (presumably it would be far too fiddly on the iPhone screen)

67 million Game Center accounts. Back to the large numbers I see.

The updated camera app can be accessed by a simple double-tap of the home button from the lock screen. The volume controls on the side of the handset can be used to take the photo. Finally – no more awkward tapping at the screen!

Newsstand app will collate all your papers and magazines and update them for you. A new iBooks to some extent, by the sounds of it. And the look.

New fully integrated Twitter, so that you can tweet images straight from your Photos folder. Just making it all that little bit simpler – which at the end of the day is what Apple is all about, isn’t it?

The Reminders app. It will remind you of what you need to do. Bit more straightforward.

iMessage is up next – the new messaging service for iOS devices. Those of you who have owned Blackberry phones in the past may be slightly familiar with the concept.

New Notifications, to get rid of those annoying pop-up messages. Easy to manage – you simply swipe down across the screen.

So now on to the new iOS5 – what are the top ten features of the new operating system?

Oh – $ 2.99 in the United States, and $ 4.99 elsewhere in the world. Not too bad given how much cards cost from the shops these days.

I am curious to know where this service will be operated though.

Cards app is now being shown off – which allows you to make and send your own greeting cards. And when I say send, I mean actually send. Apple will print it out and post it off for you, and then send you a notification to tell you it has been delivered.

I don’t know about you but there are a lot of large numbers being thrown out at us today!

iOS is the number one mobile operating system in the world. There are 500’000 apps in the App Store. 140’000 iPad specific apps. And between us all we have downloaded 18 billion apps!

Scott Forstall has taken to the stage to discuss iOS.

Over a quarter of a billion iOS devices (iPod Touch, iPad and iPhone) have been sold.

iPads are in our schools, our colleges, our hospitals and our airplanes! 74% of the tablet market is an iPad – three quarters of all tablets in the world!

And next up is the iPad – the newest member of the Apple product family.

“More coming up on iPhone….” Well I suppose they couldn’t give it all away right at the start. Mores the pity.

125% growth per year for iPhone sales, with iPhone 4 dominating half the overall iPhone market!

And now the fourth product which the mighty Apple empire sits upon: the iPhone.

iTunes is now at 200 million songs. 16 billion music downloads.

“iPod is still a large and important market for Apple.”

The iPod launched in 2001. “It reminded all of us how much we love music, and made it simple to enjoy again.” And at a 78% share of the market, that is a lot of people enjoying music on an iPod. Over 300 million people in fact.

58 million Mac users in the world, giving Apple a market share on 23%.

A chart on screen illustrates the age old Mac vs. PC debate. Mac, as a platform, has grown by 23% since last year. PC has grown by a more modest 4%.

Apple’s usual tactic of reiterating their dominance over the market before revealing something new and reassuring us that ‘at the top’ is where they planning to stay!

“The MacBook Pro and the iMac are the number one best selling notebook and desktop in the United States.”

There have already been six million copies of the latest operating system OS X Lion downloaded so far!

“Our products are at the core of everything we do” says Tim.

A video is played showing the openings of the new stories. A lot of happy customers!

Apple has opened two new stores in China in the past week. The one in Shanghai had 100’000 visitors on the first weekend. The one in LA took a month to reach those numbers.

The original iPod was launched in the very same room, ‘the Town hall’, which today’s Keynote is taking place in.

Tim Cook has taken to the stage. “This is my first product launch since being named CEO.”

Tim Cook was named CEO earlier this year when Steve Jobs stepped down from the position due to health problems.

This year the keynote is taking place at the Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California.

We are (hopefully) only a few minutes away from the ‘Let’s Talk iPhone’ keynote from starting.