Apple will be holding a music-orientated event today, September 1st, at the Yerba Buena Centre, San Francisco (6pm GMT). As with any Apple event, speculation is rife - Steve Jobs is expected on stage to deliver updates to the iPod family, with further rumours suggesting a new Apple TV and announcements regarding the iTunes store.
Live Streaming
For the first time in a number of years, the event will be live-streamed via the Apple website - this time using ‘HTTP Live Streaming’ - an open standard championed by Apple and built into Quicktime in Snow Leopard and iOS devices. Unfortunately, this does mean that Windows and PowerPC users may not be able to view the stream (although, if you’re willing to play around with VLC, take a look at a possible workaround here).
We’re looking forward to a video keynote - previously we’ve all been glued to the text/photo updates from various live blogs such and Engadget and Gizmodo (which will still be happening, if you’re one of the unfortunates mentioned above). It’s been suggested that one of the main reasons for this approach is to test the $1bn data centre Apple have been building in North Carolina, as well as the possibility that they’re launching a streaming version of iTunes, similar to Spotify. If the latter, the live-stream would be a suitable demonstration of Apple’s capabilities in this arena.
Rumor Roundup
In the past few years, several case manufacturers have given us a preview into upcoming Apple products by leaking their new case designs in the weeks prior to a Keynote. More recently there have been leaks of individual parts and even complete devices - take the infamous iPhone 4 leak, for example. Here’s what we’ve seen so far:
- Leaked Nano cases and touch-sensitive display - this would take the Nano down to almost shuffle size, but what of the recently introduced camera?
- iPod Touch with front and back facing camera - suggesting Facetime capabilities.
- New Apple TV - an update to the much neglected media device - now with iOS?
- iOS 4 for the iPad - promised at the last keynote - iPad owners are chomping at the bit for this missing update.
