Did you catch that? Event livestream is Mac and iOS only
Most of you noticed something a bit... oddly specific about Apple's streaming announcement for the 9/1 event:
Apple® will broadcast its September 1 event online using Apple's industry-leading HTTP Live Streaming, which is based on open standards. Viewing requires either a Mac® running Safari® on Mac OS® X version 10.6 Snow Leopard®, an iPhone® or iPod touch® running iOS 3.0 or higher, or an iPad™. The live broadcast will begin at 10:00 a.m. PDT on September 1, 2010 at www.apple.com.
What's missing from this picture? About nine-tenths of the Internet; specifically, anyone using a Windows PC. As pointed out on ReadWriteWeb, there is no QuickTime X for Windows yet and no client supporting HTTP Live Streaming. I'm not sure why RWW's Adrianne Jeffries is convinced that it's up to Microsoft to implement QuickTime X (hint: it's not), but Apple's engineering team is still working to flesh out the new QuickTime stack on the Mac -- no surprise that the Windows version is lagging behind.
Yes, HTTP live streaming is an open standard, but that doesn't help much without a working implementation (as Adobe's John Nack is pointing out). Having a fallback stream of plain old RTSP wouldn't just be a nice gesture for the rest of the world -- it'd also be welcomed by the millions of PowerPC Mac users who won't be able to watch the stream, either. Yep, that requirement specifies Safari on Mac OS X 10.6 -- no Intel, no joy. Of course, even if you can't tune in for the video goodness, you can still come here for our lively and informative liveblog.
Update: MacRumors points to this test stream and also suggests that VLC may be able to watch the stream, at least in fits and starts.
