Wahooo!!!
After months of leaks and almost a year of waiting, we've finally made it: Apple is going to announce a new iPhone today.
Stick with us for wall-to-wall live coverage.
It's easy to be cynical about what is, actually, just a product release from a big for-profit company with labor issues.
But today is not just a big day for Apple fanboys and gadget geeks.
It's a huge, pivotal moment for the industry and the American economy as a whole.
Did you know one analyst is predicting that iPhone 5 sales could boost the GDP by as much as .5%?
That could be the difference between a good year and a bad for the US and the entire world. The results of the Presidential election aren't going to move this year's GDP that much.
Thousands of independent app developers have created small companies building software for iPhones.
Today, those people find out if they should keep betting their careers on this one device.
Companies that are, collectively, worth a trillion dollars – Samsung, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and more – have bet billions of dollars building competitors to the iPhone. Some of these companies are on their way to being wiped out thanks to the iPhone.
Today, they find out if Apple has once again leapt way ahead of them, or if finally, the battleground is growing more even.
A year ago, Apple's visionary leader Steve Jobs died. The iPhone 5 will be the first iPhone to launch without his direct feedback.
Today, we find out if it will live up to his standards.
In 2007, Apple released a gadget that has not stop changing the way we exist on a moment to moment basis. By the time this decade is out, more of us will use mobile devices to connect to each other than we currently use desktops. We will connect in ways that we cannot currently imagine.
In a couple hours, we find out a lot more than just what the new iPhone looks like, and what features it has.
We find out what the world we work and play in will look like, feel like, for the next half decade.
It's going to be a must watch.
In the meantime, here's everything we know about the iPhone 5.
