[Apple iPhone5 release]“Let's talk iPhone” Live

There are more than 200 new features that come with iOS 5, he said -- and it will work on models going back to the iPhone 3GS. It will be available on October 12. Set your download schedules, folks!

Scott Forstall photo from WSJ

Next up on stage is Eddy Cue, Apple's senior VP of Internet software and services. He's giving a demo of Apple's iCloud service -- also already introduced this summer.

We're a half-hour into the presentation, and so far we've heard very little about what is new. The biggest news is the release date for iOS 5.

Cue is now giving a demo for how iCloud works. Beyond syncing of iTunes purchases, Apple has built "the cloud" into the iPhone's camera app, allowing you to sync them up between different devices through something called "photo stream."

Amazon, which has its own cloud offering, was actually one of the first companies to introduce these sorts of cloud-syncing services to consumers at a mass level. Since 2007, Amazon's "whisper sync" service for the Kindle has automatically managed e-book...