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Apple To Stream a Product Launch Live For the First Time
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.
I was going to ask sarcastically if any device can stream it, or just Apple devices. Then I finished reading the article.
You never expect irony, do you?
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I dunno what semantics the authors are juggling to call this the first time Apple has live streamed it's product launches. But back in the day, Apple used to live stream all their WWDC keynotes... this is definitely not a first for Apple.
So reporting on a news release about the fact that an upcoming news release will happen live.
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I suspect that the reason for the restriction to Apple devices is to assure that the first wave of third-party online reporting about the announcement is from a group biased to be more generally favorable to Apple products, to set the tone of the response.
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.
Yup. Let's all ignore Apple's real advantages here. That you get 275,000 apps that work ono the iPad mini. Or that the Nexus 7 that costs $199 is actually the 8GB version.
Oh, and lets just pretend that the bigger and more expensive iPad is not outselling the Nexus 7 right now, with a much larger price differential.
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.
Oh, and lets just pretend that the bigger and more expensive iPad is not outselling the Nexus 7 right now, with a much larger price differential.
Indeed. I just ran the math on it, and the numbers ended up being about 16M iPad sales in the last 3 months, as compared to 3M Nexus 7 sales in the same time frame.
For anyone who wants to check my numbers, Apple announced today that they had sold 100M iPads. Wikipedia has a breakdown of iPad sales by quarter, and if you subtract those from the 100M number, you're left with roughly 16M sales that apparently make up the current quarter up to this point. Wikipedia also has sales numbers for the Nexus 7, and says that it's sold 3M as of mid-October, which would be pretty much exactly three months after it launched and only unaligned with Apple's numbers by about a week or two, making it a good comparison.
I've come to expect Apple to release hardware that is marginally better than their competitors at a pretty hefty markup. So let's compare...
iPad mini: 7.9" screen + 1024x768 resolution = 163 PPI. Price = $330 - $530 depending on storage size.
Nexus 7: 7" screen + 1280x800 resolution = 216 PPI. Price = $200-$250.
So for $80 more than the Nexus 7 version with the same amount of storage (16GB: $330 iPad mini, $250 Nexus 7) you get a 0.9" larger screen but significantly worse pixel density. And this is of course before the 32GB Nexus 7 announcement next week. The rumor is that the 32GB version will be $250 and the other models will drop in price. If so that means at the 32GB level you'll have to pay $180 more to get an iPad mini with worse resolution.
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