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Apple Nixes Live Webcast, Satellite Feed
spamguy writes "MacInTouch reports that Steve Jobs' January 11th MacWorld Expo keynote address may not be broadcast live in any way. If you were hoping to watch Stevie present the rumoured sub-$500 Mac, the Motorola phone, the Flash iPod, and/or the office suite, you now have no choice but to buy your plane tickets to San Francisco ASAP."
isnt it a good advert for apple when millions are tuning into live webcasts to see what's happening? it's not like it's doing them any harm is it? the news is out there.
dave
You know, there has been this concern in some previous years too and every year there has ended up being a live webcast. I suppose its possible, but I seriously doubt it. During almost every keynote, Jobs starts out with, "Welcome to MacWorld, we have XX thousand people attending, and another XXX thousand people watching this keynote throughout the world on the web."
I certainly hope there is a webcast, otherwise what will I do at work for those two hours? Actually write code? Bahhh.
Apple probably figured they didn't need to waste the money on the web cast because the audience will be filled with Apple fan boi bloggers uploading Jobs' comments in real time and streaming iSight video.
John.
Although, no one can see it, so it doesn't matter if they screw up or not...
It's quite usual for most demonstrations to go the way Gates' did, with a few glitches. They are, after all, running on beta products with early release software. You can't say any other technology demo goes 100% smoothly, and I can bet Apple has their own screwups at each show too whether they have the event telecast or not.
it's being posted as a file later on, you can watch it as many damn times as you like then. Is this really bl**dy news??
you now have no choice but to buy your plane tickets to San Francisco ASAP
Or wait until the stream is released the next day.
Find funky gifts
This is planted, just to get more attraction to the event. You don't know Mr. Jobs very well, do you?
Rumors, law suits, cancellations, more rumors... it all adds up to an exciting climax.
> All you need to know is that this fallacious "Sub $500 mac" is
> not going to happen. Period.
>
> see billpalmer.net for more information.
No, see billpalmer.net for more *opinion*. He has no inside information.
> It makes no sense for Apple to make, it has no market to fit
> in, and even if it did they couldn't make it for the cost some
> rumormonger has conjured up out of nowhere.
It makes perfect sense for Apple to make, and from the excitement caused by this rumour there obviously is a market for it. As for the cost, Apple is quite able to make it for the rumoured price, they'd just have to forego some of their usual extortionate profit margins.
You know Roland, you'd come across as far more credible in your quest to present yourself as a journalist if you could spell simple words like "rinse" correctly.
Don't you deal with Apple news on your site? If you do then you've probably just lost a few readers by suggesting that this is "obviously only of interest to Steve Jobs and Apple devotees", and they won't all be Apple fanatics: I'm sure there are plenty of non-devotees, including the CEOs of companies like Microsoft, Adobe, RealNetworks, Creative, HP and Sun to name but a few who pay close attention to what Jobs has to say.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Lots of people are new to Apple products because of the iPod. Having seen the iPod and been impressed by it, they are now interested in buying Apple computers, but the entry level price point is a little high.
There's your market.
A protest in PARIS, in 2000?
what exactly would that have to do with _anything_ in San Francisco in 2005?
Advanced users are users too!
I find your faith in media disturbing.
Seriously, I don't own any Apple-hardware, yet I enjoy watching Steve Jobs's keynotes. Why? He's an extremely talented and charismatic speaker. And like it or not, the products he usually talks about ARE cool.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
This paragraph says it all:
By all accounts the eMac is Apple's poorest selling Mac in the consumer sphere. Oh sure, it has some educational buyers, and probably outsells the xServe, but in terms of so-called consumer Macintoshes being bought by actual consumers, it's a lemon. It's an ugly box that forces you to have a giant 17" monitor with it at a time when ordinary users - not just geeks, not just trendy Mac users - are running out and buying LCD flat panels in droves.I know many, many, people who will not buy a Mac because of the high cost of entry. And when I say "Well, you can always get an eMac, they start at just $800", they always point out the monitor. It's not even as if you can throw away the monitor, it's there, even if you decide not to use it. Of course, Bill "Delusional" Palmer seems to think that this is a delusion on my part, that the many, many, people saying that they've made this argument and got this reply are deluding themselves. Well, there's either something very strong in the water and Palmer is a bottled water freak, or it's Mr Palmer that's living in a fantasy world.
So your comment
is just plain bogus. It does have a market, it's an entry level Mac. Right now Apple does not have an actual entry level desktop Macintosh. It has a Mac built for the education market that's kind of cheap, and it has an entry level laptop, but nothing in the entry level desktop area that works for general consumers. That's why Apple's marketshare is poor at the moment, so poor it's being beaten out by GNU/Linux, currently the ultimate niche product.As for the price, I agree it will not be $500. But those arguing that the headless iMac isn't real usually argue the product isn't real, not the price. The price is speculation. Realistically, we're looking at $600-700. At that price, it'll still be entry level, it'll still, despite the misgivings of those looking at specs alone, be low enough to attract substantial sales.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
This isn't to say the device will have a 970, just that I'm currently doubting the price is high enough to have a reasonable profit margin given the rumoured 1.2GHz CPU is probably 20-40% of the cost of the device. I'd be extremely surprised if it's under $600 (though disappointed if it's over $700)
Apple doesn't make commodity machines. They shouldn't either, it's a surefire way to doom your company.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Not taking bulk quanity reseller pricing into account, right now, I can buy:
256MB DDR RAM can be had sub-$50
80GB HDD can be had for ~$40
Combo DVD/CD-RW drive for ~$30
So, we're already at $120 and counting
G4 processor and motherboard... not sure. Last I heard, the motherboard alone was around $400. They're not cheap like x86 PC motherboards because the market is small. And that does not include the cost of the processor. Let's figure that Apple can get these parts for significantly cheaper than you or I, though, and that these parts cost around $250
Plus you have to figure in the cost of the case and power supply. I'd guesstimate this to cost ~$50.
The OS doesn't cost Apple anything to bundle, but it does cost them to develop it and they're not just doing that for their health. Presumably they'd want to recoup something on the investment. For now, though, let's say they're giving out free crack in the hopes of hooking a few more Mac junkies, and give away the OS with the hardware, and no cost is factored in. They'll make up for it by charging for updates every year, anyway.
So now, we're up to $420. An $80 margin is barely making it worthwhile for Apple, considering all the R&D they have to put in to bring this product to market. But if every miniG4 buyer ends up becoming a Mac convert, and later on decides to buy a G5 (or a G6 or whatever is out by that time) it will have been well worth it for Apple. This is a venture to expand their marketshare, not just to compete with Dell.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Dell has a particular formula for success but they're extremely vulnerable. Slight market adjustments could cause HP to succeed and Dell to Chapter 11, or vice versa.
You don't want to get into a commodity market if you don't have to. It's one of the first rules of business. Apple has no reason to enter a commodity market, they merely need to create a machine that will attract significant customers. It can be underpowered relative to commodity PCs, as long as the price is low and the reputation (through products like OS X) is good enough.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Everyone is writing in about how everything will be put up online as soon as it happens anyway by people doing transcription sitting in the audience.
If Apple wanted to limit Internet coverage, though, for whatever reason, they could easily shut down the publicly-available WAP in the convention hall. Do not tell anyone about it and then turn it off at the start of the keynote speech.
Sure, some people could get around that using cell phones, but the scramble would limit a lot of the "blow-by-blow" coverage on websites and IRC channels.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
when your company is run by a charismatic visionary. When he's up, he's way up and he brings everyone with him. When he's pissed, he's way pissed and he lets even his customers feel the heat.
That's why a lot of the older Mac users (myself included) cringed in '97 when Jobs took over full control of the company. Sure, he's got the marketing touch, but he can really be a brat at times. I mean, why did he kill the Newton division, which was a) way, way ahead of Palm and Microsoft, particularly in vertical markets, and b) out of the red and starting to make money? Could it be that he killed it because it was the brainchild and pet project of his former rival, John Sculley? Is there really any question?
Obviously, it's not because Jobs is opposed to marketing non-Mac gadgets; the iPod is doing phenominally well. And we know that after Jobs killed Newton, he tried to buy out Palm, which was largely staffed by those former Newtonites that he axed. So, why did he give up a market leadership position and then scramble to get it back? He killed Newton out of spite. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Jobs is a great visionary, but he, himself, needs somebody to pull on his reigns every now and then and remind him that this isn't all about stroking his ego.
My guess is that this has to do with the fact Quicktime 7 will be coming out, and Steve wants to get it in as many people's hot little hands as fast as he can do so. Therefore, the keynote will require Quicktime 7 to play, and since nobody will have Quicktime 7 yet, it can't be broadcast live!
- Allen Pike
Altering time, one time at a time.
Consumer Reports is probably at least a little more reliable, and their survey likes Apple desktops. I'm not a subscriber so I can't see their laptop rating or methodology, so that report probably isn't fully reliable either, but I imagine it at least has a larger cross-section of people than PCWorld.
If anyone else knows where to find better data about PC quality, I'd be delighted to follow a link.
Steve's magic isn't strong enough to support a reality distortion field big enough to go global on this one--must be a real hum-dinger --or-- he doesn't want the store slammed before it's updated.
More likely, he's "punishing" the unruly rumor mongering masses for the leaked insider info. More hype. Love him. Hate him. He still wins.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...