First no video, then constant mixing between the TV Truck schedule, a video of the crowd, a video of the presentation screen showing the apple logo, a message showing apple copyright.
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.
I dont normally agree with these kind of things but honestly this time they deserve it. If this event ( and iWatch ) is really that important ( for Apple ) then this is the biggest screw up ever. Thousands ( possibly millions ) of People waiting and hoping to share the moment together and watching it live and be disappointed.
You really don't? And you're trying to take some form of moral high ground 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 tried the page from my iPad and my TV set which interestingly also has the user agent as Safari. The page makes both crash.
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.
Well, that's sort of how business works, isn't it? I mean, they didn't just pick a few random techs and say "make this happen", they have people whose very job is the technology involved in making this thing happen. If someone demonstrates they fundamentally can't do their job, do you keep them on the payroll or do you find someone else who can get the job done?
Anyone who screwed up like this in the world of broadcast television would certainly be fired. I am actually etremely impressed by the new products (in a way I didn't expect to be), but this webcast failure tarnishes the launch and will directly impact their bottom line in the short term.
It gives the press an unflattering story to run with besides "OMG new shiny", diluating Apple's carefully prepared marketing push. That's why it has impact beyond just Apple fans.
From the prep of this whole thing, with redirecting apple.com to apple.com/live, I felt it was intended to replicate Steve Jobs's reality distortion field. "If we are going this far out, it must be huge!"
Ironically it's showing very clearly that the field has discorporated.
Okay, I might have misread. From where I come from, when people watch something, say en Apple show, instead of working we say "some don't have work". That's what I misunderstood. I also assumed (wrongly ? I haven't checked) it was in California which meant it was morning already.
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.
".. and we want to get rid of this .. " cut to apple logo " .so weve decided .. " apple logo * snippet of apple ad * ".. so there you have it!.. " -access denied-
MacRumors.com is intermittently going out. Jesus. You'd think after umpteenth Apple keynotes they'd have this sorted out. It's not like it's their first rodeo.
What I'm missing in this sub-thread is guesses as to what went wrong. The video quality of all past Apple events I've watched where border line perfect, and I've seen quite a lot of them! Any ideas?
That's exactly what I meant... Jobs would have made them stress test that system before the event so this does not happen. The most popular company in the world that creates the incredible hype for its events should have made sure the system worked unless they wanted some to feel left out thus igniting jealous resentment.
The majority of past Apple live-streams have had problems, though this one was perhaps one of the worst. It's less an issue of Jobs-era vs. post-Jobs-era, and more to do with Apple's culture of control being at odds with the complexities of network scalability. (They should really just outsource it to YouTube.)
The HTML summaries on apple.com were a nice touch, though, which softened the blow.
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.