Apple To Stream a Product Launch Live For the First Time 288
redletterdave writes "In the biggest surprise since the original iPhone, Apple has decided to live stream its product announcement for the very first time on Tuesday. This means that the company's media announcement from the California Theatre in San Jose, which will begin at exactly 10 a.m. PST (1 p.m. EST), will be available to watch on computers, laptops and mobile devices for the very first time, all in real-time. Apple will be live streaming today's event directly on the company's website. Apple says all Mac and iOS devices will be able to live stream the event, including computers, laptops, iPhones, iPads and Apple TVs." Update: 10/23 18:45 GMT by S : The iPad Mini was announced, as expected. It has a 7.9" screen at 1024x768, it's 7.2mm thick, and it runs on an A5 chip. Pricing is as follows for the Wi-Fi only version: 16GB for $329, 32GB for $429, 64GB for $529. For LTE-capable versions, add $130. Apple also updated the larger iPad, as well as its Mac Mini, iMac, and MacBook Pro lines.
They used to stream Keynotes (Score:3, Informative)
would not consider this a First Time.
Re:New Tag Line (Score:1, Informative)
News for Nerds
Stuff that Matters
Apple Stories Regardless
And how is an Apple product announcement not news for nerds?
Unless its just a new music player, Apple has a history of releasing products that are... notable among geeks to say the least.
Re:Apple devices? (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think so. I have Quicktime installed on my Win7 PC, and all I see (even in Safari) is "Apple Special Event, October 23, 2012", whereas on my iPod touch 4th gen I'm already seeing streaming video. Looks like they truly restricted it to Apple hardware.
Re:Apple devices? (Score:4, Informative)
If you go look at the source of this Javascript [edgesuite.net] in an auto-refreshing IFRAME, you'll see
My VLC can play the first link (labeled Snow Leopard), for a little while, but drops the stream.
The "checkback" links all seem to indicate they are either not streaming live to non-Apple devices, or they ran into a "problem" and will start it later.
Re:Apple devices? (Score:5, Informative)
What the hell Slashdot? You have to love a nerd news site that can't handle posting a tiny bit of code without frakking it all up. Screw Unicode support -- can we get some decent ASCII support sometime this decade?
Try again with some manual editing to make it fail a little less.
var slURL = "http://qthttp.apple.com.edgesuite.net/1210pibasdfvoihbadsv/sl_mvp.m3u8 [edgesuite.net]";
var nonSlURL = 'http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/oct/1210pibasdfvoihbadsv/12poibnasfdvpiajbafvpihjbasfvpiubfsv10_checkback.jpg [apple.com]';
var windowsURL = 'http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/oct/1210pibasdfvoihbadsv/12poibnasfdvpiajbafvpihjbasfvpiubfsv10_checkback.jpg [apple.com]';
var iphoneURL = "http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/oct/1210pibasdfvoihbadsv/12poibnasfdvpiajbafvpihjbasfvpiubfsv10_iphone_ref.mov [apple.com]";
var ipadURL = "http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/oct/1210pibasdfvoihbadsv/12poibnasfdvpiajbafvpihjbasfvpiubfsv10_ipad_ref.mov [apple.com]";
var voiceOver = "http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/oct/1210pibasdfvoihbadsv/12poibnasfdvpiajbafvpihjbasfvpiubfsv10_iphone_ref.mov [apple.com]";
var requirements = "Live streaming video requires Safari 4 or later on Mac OS X v10.6 or later; Safari on iOS 4.2 or later. Streaming via Apple TV requires second- or third-generation Apple TV with software 5.0.2 or later.";
var refreshPage = false;
iPad Mini -- $329 (Score:5, Informative)
Well, they announced the iPad-mini starting at $329 for 16GB, wifi-only. At that price, I don't think it is going to be the "Android-killer" they hoped it would be.
Re:Apple devices? (Score:5, Informative)
h.264 is not a plug-in. It's a codec. Anyone who even hints that h.264 is some sort of Apple lock-in mechanism has no idea what they are talking about.
Re:Another Apple blunder (Score:5, Informative)
As an advocate of getting facts right, I feel compelled to point out that Apple announced the fourth gen iPad as a replacement to the third gen iPad and will stop selling the third gen. Apparently you missed that. And you could at least get your prices right. Comparably-featured Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire models are $80 cheaper and $130 cheaper, respectively, than the iPad mini base model, though you can get models as cheap as $130 less and $170 less, respectively.
Also, ignoring your issues of fact, I fail to see the logic in what you're suggesting. Up until today, Apple didn't even have a product that competed in that class of tablet. It's been relying on a product in an entirely different class and at a far higher price to draw customers away from the products you cited, and even then, it's been doing very well (based on the 100M total iPad sales they announced today, coupled with the history of sales numbers listed on Wikipedia, we can gather that they've sold roughly 16M iPads in the last three months, as compared to 3M Nexus 7 sales in about the last four months). Yet for some reason you seem to think that Apple entering that space with a competing product right before the holiday season will actually drive customers away from Apple? That makes no sense whatsoever, and not just because we're talking about Apple. It just makes no sense period.
At worst, its price will keep it from doing as well as Apple would like, but for customers who wanted an iPad but felt like their only choice was an Android because they wanted something smaller or cheaper than a full-sized iPad, Apple now has an answer that is sure to capture some interest where none would have existed before. That's a net gain, not the loss you're suggesting.
Re:Apple devices? (Score:0, Informative)
(goes to http://www.apple.com/apple-events/october-2012/ [apple.com] using chrome) "Streaming video requires ... QuickTime 7 on Windows"
The rest of your post is irrelevant
Re:Wait, what just happened? (Score:4, Informative)
You forgot NFC, and the Nexus 7 has a better CPU (quad core + low power core) and batter battery life.