Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage at today’s iPhone event and opened with an update on the company’s retail presence. Cook started by showing off Apple’s new Barcelona store and playing a video of the store’s launch.

Apple now has 380 retail stores in 12 countries. The company’s first Swedish store will open on Friday, September 14th. 83 million visitors walked through Apple’s retail stores last year, making the Cupertino company one of the most successful consumer electronics retail chains in history. “Apple stores offer the best buying experience and customer service on the planet,” exclaimed Cook.

While Apple retail is definitely a force to be reckoned with, the company’s digital downloads are also setting the industry standard. Apple customers have downloaded 7 million copies of Mountain Lion since its launch in July, according to Cook. That figure makes Mountain Lion the fastest selling OS X release in history.

Image: The Verge

It’s finally here. The event everyone’s waiting for. Tim Cook has just walked on stage at the Yerba Buena Center For The Arts in San Francisco, California to announce the iPhone 5.

What will the iPhone 5 be? Rumors peg it as wide screen, thinner, better battery, and LTE capable, along with a new Dock Connector called Lightning which is much smaller than previously.

What else is coming? The iPod Touch, new iPod nanos, new iPod shuffles, a new version of iTunes and the possibility of new iMacs and a 13-inch MacBook Pro.

We’ll know shortly. Now Tim Cook’s opening his mouth: “It’s an exciting time for Apple. An amazing time. An extarodinary time…”

It sure is.

Image: The Verge

With less than 30 minutes left before Apple takes the stage to unveil the iPhone 5, pictures of what is allegedly the final iPhone 5 design have leaked. French site Nowhereelse.fr has been leaking next-gen iPhone parts systemtically for months, and today the site has what it claims to be a finished iPhone 5 body.

Apple’s beloved digital assistant is up to no good again. Nick Bilton of The New York Times tweeted a fun screenshot just moments ago. When asked about the iPhone 5, Siri redirects to Apple’s “fabulous website” for more information. As we already told you, Apple’s online search engine leaked the iPhone 5 earlier today.

Less than an hour until the keynote starts!

Source: @nickbilton

If it weren’t for the fact that we’ve seen a ridiculous amount of Apple fanboy tattoos, I wouldn’t think this image is that funny. But someone, somewhere, might possibily have this same tattoo conundrum everytime Apple releases a new iPhone.

Source: App Advice

Tim Cook and the gang at Apple were in full force at yesterday’s keynote. Yes, the iPhone 5 was announced, but there was so much more than that. EarPods, Lighting, crazy new iSight cameras, iTunes, and much more.

The keynote was packed with info, but we’ve broken everything down  into delicious bite-size information nuggets so you can know all of the essentials of what happened today without having to read 3000 different blog posts.

Here’s everything that Apple announced at today’s keynote:

Apple is going to unveil the iPhone 5 with LTE, the new iPod touch, new iPod nano, and a new version of iTunes today. How do we know, you ask? Because Apple’s own search engine just leaked all of it.

You don’t need to watch the Apple keynote — you already know there’s a new iPhone coming, it’ll be called the “iPhone 5,” and will be accompanied by a new iPod touch and a new version of iTunes. You also know now that the device will be packing an A6 processor and LTE connectivity, thanks to the latest pictures of its logic board.

We thought we’d had it all figured out.

When Apple bucked the trend of numerically naming the iPad by calling the Retina iPad the “new iPad” instead of the iPad 3, we thought it was a sure thing that they’d do the same thing for the next iPhone. The next iPhone, then, would be “the new iPhone” or the “2012 iPhone”, not the iPhone 5.

It made total sense, in a way: Apple doesn’t add a numeral to the end of its other products, like the MacBook Pro or the iPod Classic. They don’t even do it for the iPod touch, which is basically the most current iPod with all the phone guts stripped out. Why continue setting apart the iPhone as a sequel to the handsets that have come before when you can position it, not as an incremental update, but a timeless product in its own right: the Mercedes of smartphones?

That’s the way Apple handles the rest of its products, but with the invitation for today’s, and now Apple accidentally spilling the official name of the next iPhone on their website, it now seems clear that Apple is going to call the sixth-generation iPhone the ‘iPhone 5’ after all. Why would they do that?

In case there was any doubt, Apple has just accidentally confirmed the next iPhone will indeed be called the iPhone 5, as a search inputted into the official Apple.com website looking for “iPhone 5” calls up (non-functioning) results for an upcoming “Apple Introduces iPhone 5” press release.

Via: MacRumors