Apple – Live – September 2014 Special Event
apple.com
apple.com
Refreshed a few times, got 'access denied to server' page a few times. Then got video with Chinese translations talking over the presenter. Then it suddenly stopped, I pressed 'resume' to get the TV truck schedule again.
On an iPad.
The HTML summaries on apple.com were a nice touch, though, which softened the blow.
Dude is buried: let the dead lay dead.
The parents say "don't" not "will not". Even though there are trouble I very much doubt people are fired on the spot, they're too busy fixing it. But sure, some might. Later, in the future.
Anyway, the comment was out of line an the downvotes deserves.
Ironically it's showing very clearly that the field has discorporated.
This is the worst user experience ever.
Everyone else is just going to see it on Engadget, Gizmodo, Fox News, or wherever.
This will not impact their bottom line one bit.
your point is totally valid. the odds these guys screw up again like this seem slim. especially if they were to lose their job over it.
The stream was a disaster and tarnishes the entire announcement, whose image is priceless to Apple. The jobs of the people responsible are in no way worth more to Apple than the damage done by said people.
I've always believed that Google making their pages crash iPad's Safari can have benefits, but obviously the web developers who produced the Live page used only Safari on their big computers and never tested them enough on the iPads. That alone is really unacceptable execution.
The reasons the servers got under bigger pressure was obviously the wrong decision to have the video content page and the live picture and text updating resource and script hungry page as one and the same. The browsers of the viewers crashed, they attempted to view again, producing much more load to the servers than it would be if these unfortunate decisions (everything on the one page) haven't been made.
Independently, the stream was obviously botched at the source. It seems all parts of the world got the same Chinese translated pieces and the truck signals.
There were more smaller disasters there making one big.
2 new iPhone models: iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. iPhone 6 is 4.7", iPhone 6 Plus is 5.5". Power button on right side. A8 chip - 13% smaller chip, 25% faster CPU, 50% faster GPU, 50% more energy efficient than A7. Battery a little better on the iPhone 6; iPhone 6 Plus has amazing battery life. VoLTE (Voice over LTE) - make calls over LTE internet instead of using minutes. Camera is still 8MP...
YouTube video stream is working: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxCbIjAg6mg
That's would have been a killer feature if it had occurred when smartphones were new enough that providers were selling plans with limited call minutes and unlimited data, but now that virtually every carrier has smartphone plans that are unlimited phone minutes/unlimited text and limited data with surcharges for data overages, who is looking to move from using voice minutes to using data?
[1] I'd be very surprised if VoLTE traffic, including media, was sent over the public Internet at the same QoS as the rest of your data. Voice-over-LTE is a nice technical achievement -- IIRC reliability was very difficult to ensure, especially during 3G/2G handoff -- but to consumers, VoLTE means nothing.
Yes, this is Net Neutrality fodder.
So if you can not make a call upon LTE normally out of your call minutes then you won't be able to make a call over VoLTE as they call it as it will just route from your device to the telco provder in the same way as currently and maybe less QoS tagging, so be supprised if there was any situation were making a pure VOIP call will be better than using normal call minutes.
Now as many say all packages tend to have more than enough voice and SMS included quota and tend not to have unlimited data.
Now for WIFI based calls with no or poor signal then this would be useful, also for long distance calls, which will probably not be included in that huge minute call bundle.
So given all that for most it will be a novel feature they will not use, but for those making calls that do not fall within their calling plan, then this may be useful.
Of note I was aware of VOIP over wifi being a feature in some phones (Blackberry and Nokia) over 10 years ago; But alas the carriers back then blocked such features from coming to the market. Nowadays carriers have changed and that may be in part how Apple initially pushed there devices onto the market allowing more clout and the fact such features will be more standard is only a good thing. Albeit for most they will be a feature they will not use.
The carriers. VoLTE is the way to do Voice+Data with a single connection saving power and finally unifying the GSM and CDMA worlds[1]. This could be the first iPhone that can be used in both AT&T/TMobile and Verizon/Sprint in LTE enabled areas. It could also allow mainstream use of Wifi for voice calls like Republic Wireless does[2]. Add something like Multipath TCP[3] and you could even do seamless switching between Wifi and LTE depending on availability/performance.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_(telecommunication)#Voice_...
Our least expensive portion of the trip and historically the most frustrating (well aside from the autoroute tolls that don't accept US credit cards).
Being a carrier voice product, it probably will not have any advantages over other carrier voice products, e.g. international calls will still be the same price, etc.
http://p.events-delivery.apple.com.edgesuite.net/14pijnadfpv...
Access Denied
You don't have permission to access "http://www.apple.com/live/2014-sept-event/" on this server. Reference #18.2d2f0660.1410283131.13b065e3
Edit: Now getting "Access Denied" on http://www.apple.com/live
Edit- Getting it now, but I'm hearing a translator talking under Cook. Get it together.
Edit2 - stream keeps cutting out. Disaster.
Edit3 - Access Denied. And we're done.
Access Denied
You don't have permission to access "http://www.apple.com/live/2014-sept-event/" on this server. Reference #18.1e111cb8.1410283041.b76d50
I had this cynical feel to practically every Apple product released in the past. This time I am resigned to it.
this just covers the status symbol portion of the market
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/11/luxury_branding_the_f...
I'll probably wait to see what they release next year.
But then de gustibus non est disputandum, so please don't flame me if you disagree!
(PD: Also it requires an iPhone to work at all?!?? Really?? That's just sad...)
iWatch may win out on functionality and user experience etc.,
but it just looks funky.
I agree about the Moto-360: whatever its faults, it looks nice. I understand that the watch on my wrist right now is round because of the sweep of the dials, but it's also pleasant looking. What I find exciting about the Android side of the equation is that [in a couple of years] we'll probably have a crazy range of watches from which to select. Grab a Tag Heuer Android watch with replaceable innards or maybe a few cheap Fossils for variety.
Yeah I definitely do want that. Would pay in the $1K range for a Tag quartz, if they could somehow keep an automatic movement in there...
Can't wait to see what happens when the watch companies adopt tech rather than the tech companies adopting watches.
http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--L8XBEzVA...
http://cdn4.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/Watches/Samsung...
Especially with the Moto 360 already out there and the LG G Watch R coming later this year:
http://mashable.com/2014/09/08/lg-g-watch-r-hands-on/
Also very conspicuous that Apple made no mention of battery life, which is the achilles heel of all the current Android Wear devices.
Why would they only allow already-customers to watch their presentation?
Locking out non-customers seems not the best way to get some.
Here's the reality of video, and this goes for a lot of things that Apple makes "simple and beautiful". They fundamentally aren't. Video is a fundamentally difficult mess, a PITA, and the only way to have it work really smoothly is to have enough control over the entire stack to ensure that things work they way they are supposed to... and even then it doesn't always work. People adopting MP4 as a standard has gone a long way towards making things "just work" generally, but it's not sufficient by itself for a quality live stream.
I remember trying to watch a previous live stream from south america and the difficulties I had, even though I was using Apple devices and software the whole way.
Simple and Beautiful is a contradiction from "everywhere out of the box".
Those are two opposite goals.
This is an important thing to understand about software broadly, but with video it borders on impossible.
The better answer is probably: "They simply don't care". No ifs and buts. Probably making it a bit exclusive and hard to get to only adheres to their marketing philosophy.
Like Bonjour, I really don't understand why other companies don't adopt these open standards. They don't benefit Apple particularly. It's not like Apple has some competitive advantage in HTTP Live Streaming. Meanwhile these competitors rush to copy everything else Apple does.
Frankly, I think its appalling that youtube, for instance, is still running on flash. How many years ago did they first trial MP4 streaming? Why I can't I access all the videos over MP4?
Why would you want your browser to be bad at streaming video?
Yes, several years ago, I was getting MP4 video, and today, a portion (say %30-%40) just launch with MP4. But most of the time I get the "you need flash".
> Frankly, I think its appalling that youtube, for instance, is still running on flash.
Everyone can turn on HTML5 for YouTube if they wish. They offer both. They give you the choice, the default is Flash (but Flash still has the widest support on older platforms).
> Why I can't I access all the videos over MP4?
Because people would have to pay licensing fees several times for the same stream (e.g. sender and receiver both have to pay $$$, sometimes the sender, browser vendor AND OS vendor have to pay $$$).
> Meanwhile these competitors rush to copy everything else Apple does.
And Apple copies everything their competitors do also. Just look at iOS 8, that was just copying some of the best features from their competition (not that I blame them, they were right to do so).
The new keyboard (Android), third party keyboards (Android), "Handoff" (everyone else), Spotlight web-search (everyone else), etc.
Apple hasn't done anything original since Jobs died.
I turned on HTML5 video for youtube and I still have this problem, because they don't encode all videos in MP4.
> Because people would have to pay licensing fees several times for the same stream
Many groups have spoken out about the licensing issues with pictures, video, and audio. That's what has created this mess.
I think that honor befalls the ITU with their H.261. It's only a few years difference and it definitely was never as wide spread as Quicktime but that's the first format that I remember that actually worked. It never succeeded on the web though there were a couple of companies that tried to do this using so called browser plug-ins.
Live streaming is mostly the domain of RTMP these days, HTTP doesn't lend itself well to live (but works just fine for streaming stored content).
As for why browsers don't all do MP4, you could ask why browsers do not natively support RTMP, that would solve the whole problem in one go.
Twitch, Google Hangouts, any "live" sport event what protocol/technology do they use ?
A mix of HLS and flash ?
HLS is nice because it doesn't require any new servers or protocols -- it uses vanilla HTTP, and can be served up by basically any web server. As a result, it's much easier to make it work with a CDN.
I guess the reason of having such poor support outside Apple browsers, despite the benefits, has to do with licensing issues and the complications of embedding ads, as someone pointed out.
Because I don't think they'd make it if it weren't worth making. Apple has never tried to create a new category when they didn't have something substantial to offer.
http://www.businessinsider.com/10-old-apple-products-that-to...
There was an interesting presentation that Tim Cook gave where he said that every product Apple currently sold being was on a single table in front of him at the presentation - can't find the link now.
That's what the excitement is all about, either pro-Apple people that want to see Apple creating another iPhone/iPad/iPod market, or anti-apple that want another Apple TV to finally prove that Apple could not recover from Steve Jobs death.
Best of all, unlike monads, this is a topic everybody can have an opinion about, that's weeks worth of traffic guaranteed. Apple announcement themselves are valuable product for the media.
I'm very intrigued to see if Apple can pull it off...
It's incredibly hard to predict whether they will succeed or not (although after the fact most people will say what happened was incredibly obvious beforehand). They'll bomb or they'll take off.
There is a whole market of people that want apps for running, surfing, and other things that are nice to have in wearable form, but cumbersome to use in a phone form factor--assuming the phone is even waterproof.
Wow, this is an utter failure. Now video is skipping around.
My browser supports live video just fine. It's -your- streaming software that lacks support for my browser.
This illustrates why I never have, and never will own a Apple product.
edit Admittedly the integration of all different types of cards with Passbook is good stuff!
It's very surreal to see all the fanboys lose their shit in the audience as if this is a brand new technology.
Edit: Would have been nice if you could pay with the Watch instead of pulling out the phone
That's pretty disingenuous. Everyone knows NFC exists, they're probably just happy it's finally coming to their platform of choice.
> Edit: Would have been nice if you could pay with the Watch instead of pulling out the phone
You can!
You can.
It's almost disingenuous for apple to make it sound like this is such new technology...
But I'm not going to complain, now that apple has nfc payments retailer adoption is going to go up so that's a good thing for everyone.
My camera supports NFC, my WiFi router supports NFC (useless though), my laptop has NFC, tons of payment providers do NFC, my LG washing machine has NFC (seriously), and on and on.
Apple is stupid late to the NFC party. NFC is here, and it is already super-popular. They cannot drive anything, they can just follow along.
I wouldn't say it's "super-popular".
In Android, NFC is generally available to developers, but Apple may not want that, given their tradition of hiding complexity and choices from users.
Apple doesn't get info on what you're buying...
and I hope others follow suit.
What Apple are doing is removing the middleman, purely making this about transactions, not data. This means they're avoiding selling private information as a revenue stream.
This affects you, it causes a filter bubble http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble and means you're effectively less free to make a truly informed decision.
So not sharing your private information by default, is fundamental to your freedom. That's why we should all care, and why this is a great decision by Apple.
"blah blah blah, and we don't store your financial information or transaction history. That's easy to say, but the pendulum has swung too far away from protecting our rights as consumers, so today we're doing more than that; we're announcing the Financial Information Security Organization and we're inviting companies to join us in making sure that all of our financial information is secure."
De-facto useless organizations like your FISO example with not enough players on board to start with are just lip service. Essentially you're arguing that Apple should be doing the governments job...
I doubt Apple could have dictated those terms to their financial partners.
Have you ever tried dictating terms to a bank?
De-facto useless organizations like your FISO example
I'm suggesting something along the lines of BrainTree's data portability organization (http://www.portabilitystandard.org/). Apple should be able to get a raft of players on board for something along those lines. If not, my original point stands: Apple was making a useless gesture.
http://p.events-delivery.apple.com.edgesuite.net/14pijnadfpv...
EDIT:
I shouldn't say fine, the stream keeps dropping out completely or just has audio. But I think even the Safari people are having that problem.
EDIT: Additionally, losing Steve Jobs really was as damaging as many feared then.
I'm pretty sure compatibility isn't the reason of that choice.
I still expect Apple to do something very, very big with TV.
An alternative explanation to a very confident Apple is just that they changed their attitude about all this, thinking there is not really much of a difference between them providing a countdown or others doing it (before the last Keynote this countdown webpage got pretty huge), between them providing a liveblog or others doing it (there are always many liveblogs with often crappy photos, so why not shot beautiful photos and provide them directly?), unaware that would hype up the event.
I don’t think it’s that, but if they are sufficiently tone-deaf that could be the case. Apple historically hasn’t really been, definitely not when it comes to their events, but who knows …
I was on IRC with other iOS developers viewing the streaming using Safari on Apple hardware with fully updated software all around (I know these people), in different parts of the US, people working at different companies, using different, very fast, geographically diverse networks, and all of us were seeing the same catastrophic problems at the same times: a mix of simultaneous multiple audio streams sometimes in sync, sometimes slightly out of sync, stopping and starting video, truck schedules for 5-10 seconds every minute or so, English over Chinese, audio temporarily resetting to beginning of stream while another track of audio continued at the current position superimposed over the let's-start-over audio, access denied errors, pause/continue buttons not working, refresh not working.. this went on for at least 40 full minutes as the problems started before the broadcast and didn't stop until after 30 minutes. And no, we were NOT madly hitting Refresh or pause/restart all the time, although we did try invoking them a few times and calmly waiting, usually to little avail.
I want to emphasize that when I saw a TV truck schedule on my screen in San Francisco, at that very same moment my buddies in other parts of the country started seeing the TV truck schedule on their screens as well. If we can say one thing for this broadcast, it is that the screwups were very well synchronized for many if not all viewers.
The mind boggles as to why the didn't have someone dedicated to be listening to a dog food channel of their own stream on a remote network, and report the problems back earlier, and whether they did or not, why they couldn't fix it sooner.
I'll admit he's probably mostly prescient, but we won't know for another hour or two.
Sorry, I'm not rich. :P
Here's a test stream http://devimages.apple.com/iphone/samples/bipbopgear1.html
EDIT: Nvm it worked after waiting for a couple minutes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twentieth_Anniversary_Macintosh
It's a little sad that the Mac hit 30 this year and all it got was a special web page to commemorate the event.
But I bet we'll just get a 4.7" iPhone, Apple catching up to where Samsung has been for three long years now with a medium sized phone instead of a tiny chiclet. (I love the chiclet, but bigger would be better.)
And we'll probably get another lousy "smart" watch that needs charging every day and doesn't do anything you can't do by pulling out your phone for a second. Maybe fanatic runners like Apple's CEO will find it almost as useful as a fuelband or fitbit.
Note: Downvoters really hate the idea of a retina iMac.
Go figure.
Amazing that this isn't a solved problem by now.
Will the NFC capability be exposed to third party apps through the SDK in any way?
I'm curious because they started talking about the apps for iWatch right after talking about its features, but they didn't discuss NFC in any other context but its use via Apple Pay.
What do you all think?
Anyway the new iPhone looks more like a Samsung in terms of size, screen resolution etc. but presumably with a significant Apple technical edge. It seems like a really beautiful product, and I say that as someone who doesn't care for Apple's stuff in general.
I'm sad that the launch of multiple new products is being overshadowed by the clusterfuck of the presentation, but it's a great example of execution > ideas that will probably be taught in business schools for years to come :-/
Apple Watch does not bring anything exceptional to wrist devices world, though overall functionality and UX is much better than those of Android. It's just an accessory for iPhone. One thing they got right - wristwatch is personal, so it should be able to be made look personal and different.
I can't say much about Apple Pay. Payments via iPhone look nice (fingerprint as authorization method) but paying via Watch just does not look very secure to me - how are you going to add that one factor? Also, it's another proprietary way of paying for stuff, which just does not feel right...
Access Denied
You don't have permission to access "http://www.apple.com/" on this server.
Reference #18.342f0660.1410282543.baf7bd
but hey, the iphone 6 has rounded corners! B|
I'm worried. This is the machine I want to buy next. A modern mac mini would be ideal.
They should have shipped one early this year but didn't. That's ok, the mac pro took a lot of resources and is a major redesign.
So, then the next expected time is last week.
So, either the Mac Mini is significant enough to talk about today (with two phones and an alleged watch? that seems doubtful)... or it might be effectively cancelled.
"You don't have permission to access "http://www.apple.com/live/2014-sept-event/" on this server. Reference #18.520fd717.1410283069.16b78ac2"
How come?
http://p.events-delivery.apple.com.edgesuite.net/14pijnadfpv...
Not sure what Apple is trying to do.
http://www.macrumors.com/ feed of the event. It autorefreshes which is nice.
- iWatch with less features, possibly just tracks your every move and becomes part of quantified self
- a new record label or Dre inspired mood
- two new iPhones
Possibly some or all put back till they are perfect.
Is this a correct reading of what has to be a record 150 HN posts in five minutes flat?
I hope someone gets fired for these goofs. I expected better from Apple.
The ranking algorithm will drop them off soon enough. Maybe the time coefficient should be stronger for days like today, though.
I disagree. The reason the front page becomes full of Apple is because Apple launches all their stuff at once. There are only maybe 2 or 3 times a year that Apple releases new stuff. The discussions of these things are important. They shouldn't be penalised for happening at the same time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY4c2mh15Yk
The new "reachability" feature is an interesting way to try to minimize the problem though, if a little cumbersome.
Considering that the entire world uses GMT, and that only US citizens use PDT, they could have bothered to use GMT.
Or better still, they could have detected your location/system time and just put a countdown or your own local time.
And, no, whole world doesn't use GMT (talk to Indians and Chinese about what time they use). Also, entire US doesn't use PDT time. You know, some people live on east coast.
It want's there when I visited. :-(
> And, no, whole world doesn't use GMT (talk to Indians and Chinese about what time they use). Also, entire US doesn't use PDT time. You know, some people live on east coast.
But they must most certainly know their GMT offset, since it's the worldwide reference.