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Jobs kicks off Apple developer confab

Leslie Katz Former Culture Editor
Leslie Katz led a team that explored the intersection of tech and culture, plus all manner of awe-inspiring science, from space to AI and archaeology. When she's not smithing words, she's probably playing online word games, tending to her garden or referring to herself in the third person.
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Leslie Katz

From Apple Computer's annual Worldwide Developer Conference, which kicked off Monday morning in San Francisco and runs through June 10:

Ina Fried, one of our reporters on the floor, reports that more than 3,800 attendees will converge on Moscone West conference center for the largest developer conference in a decade, according to Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

Jobs' keynote is now underway. Here are a few early highlights.

•  Jobs kicked off with review of Apple retail stores. There are now 109 stores open drawing a million visitors a week, he said.

• Jobs gave an iTunes update, saying that more than 430 million songs have been downloaded.

• Previewing a podcasting feature in the next version of iTunes, Jobs said of the increasingly popular broadcasts: "We see it as the hottest thing going in radio" with more than 8,000 podcasts, both amateur and professional, being broadcast.

• Jobs touted the growth of the Mac and Mac OS X, noting that Apple has now shipped 2 million copies of Mac OS X Tiger since the operating system went on sale about six weeks ago(that number includes retail copies, those included on new Macs and those included as part of maintenance agreements).

Later today and this week, Apple engineers will host more than 140 technical sessions, including hands-on labs that discuss Mac OS X version 10.4, also known as Tiger.

Stay tuned for conference updates throughout the day.