Dear Apple: Please free the keynote

Many moons ago, Apple keynote day meant huddling around the computer, and watching a live feed of the proceedings. What would happen!? What would Steve reveal!? How would the crowd react!? This was in the late 90's early 00's. Then in a strange technological step backwards, just as more people could watch the broadband presentation, and just as Apple's popularity began to soar, the live feeds disappeared. Now we're left with the clipped text of bloggers in attendance to fill us in, as to what's happening as the event unfolds.

Granted the surge in popularity also would mean increased bandwidth concerns if the event was live. At the same time, bandwidth costs have fallen dramatically, and continue to do so. Also, Apple has increased it's "rainy day" fund to over $20 billion. Granted there are plenty of ways people would suggest spending that money, but providing a live feed (especially when the event is already professionally taped for later download) would be a literal drop in the iPod bucket.

Apparently though, it's not the money that keeps Apple from providing the stream live. For WWDC, just as we did for MWSF, we asked Apple to allow us to stream the keynote live, with our humble little site footing the bandwidth bill, and taking the heat for any performance issues: All we asked was to tap into the feed from the production company. Those requests were, denied - a surprise to no one, including us.

The point isn't whether we ever stream these events, but rather that it only makes sense for Apple to make them freely available. Wouldn't be better for the first impressions of the keynote to be directly from Apple? (At least from Apple's standpoint) Wouldn't that be better than having the information passed on by bloggers who could err with specs/pricing, as well as add their own commentary/spin to the coverage?

We're not asking Apple to do something groundbreaking: we're asking them to return to a previous practice that was ahead of its time, and in the process, they will gain more control over the message taken from each keynote.

In the meantime, we'll continue to provide what we believe is the next best thing: Live video coverage before, during, and after the event. If Apple wants a tiny site to be the first with live video of new products via our correspondents at these events, that's perfectly fine for us. But for Apple fans in general, it's a shame we can no longer hear the latest and greatest straight from Steve's mouth.

Ready for a phone buying trip to 1992?

Many years ago, the only way to buy a cell phone was to go into your local carrier store, pick a phone, get it activated, and leave. If you want to take a trip back in time, it looks like Apple might be ready to fulfill your wishes.

Curiously absent from the phone info, is any mention of purchasing the phone online. Further, reports are starting to surface indicating you have to activate the phone in the store, and there might be a penalty if you don't activate within 30 days.

The original iPhone broke new ground, and Apple showed the industry an all-new, and for the consumer, far more convenient way to activate phones. What seemed to be a bold move towards a new customer-empowered world, has fallen back to the old bricks and mortar purchase and activation model.

At the original launch this may have made more sense. After all, the phones could be sent anywhere in the world to be unlocked and used. Now that 22 countries will have the iPhone with several more before the end of the year, the black/grey market for the phone is shrinking. It's a terrible time to decide to fall back to the old way of doing business. Although come to think of it, we didn't have copy and paste, or MMS on phone in 1992 either. Thanks for the trip, Apple.

All (or most) of your .mac to Mobile Me questions answered

If you're like us, today's Mobile Me announcement left a lot of unanswered questions. Fortunately Apple has now addressed those concerns / issues here:
.Mac Support Article.

What we got. What we expected.

And so the WWDC Keynote is in the books. The 3G iPhone was announced. The rumored video chat features were not. The GPS was there, the apps store is there, although not today, and Apple did manage to hit the $199 price point.

To call it underwhelming would be an understatement. We were staffed, and prepared for an afternoon of putting the new applications through their paces. Of showing people just what wonderful things they could do with the new phone. While the new phone, especially the price point will increase sales, especially in new markets, frankly there's very little reason for existing iPhone customers to run out and get one. (even though you can't. Not 'til July.)

This was one of those keynotes that raised more questions than it answers: why can we still not copy and paste? Why is there no mms? Why is mobile me any better than say push email, and why does it seem like such an awkward .mac replacement?

All we know is, the phone will be here next month, along with the apps store, although not even all the demo'ed apps will be available then.

And so, along with mundane things like copy and paste, we didn't hear anything about iChat for Windows, a new tablet, or iPod touch changes. We didn't even get the traditional "up and to the right" sales graph. And no "one more thing."

We can only take comfort in the fact that Phil Schiller made an appearance on stage. At least some keynote traditions remain.

Final Reminder: Live video coverage of keynote announcements Monday

Just a quick reminder that we'll be serving up our live video analysis of the WWDC keynote beginning at noon ET / 9AM PT. We'll be your first source for keynote developments, video of the new device(s) and reaction from the Mac Çommunity. Everyone watching will be able to chat and interact with us live on-air via iChat.

If Macworld was any indication, we expect a big crowd, so here's a few tips:
1. Load the videostream early. We will need to initially cap the the video connections at 30,000, allowing more people to view depending on bandwidth/web stability.
2. Secret second stream. If our main website goes down, you'll also be able to watch the live video at www.mogulus.com/tdl .
3. There's no step three!

We look forward to a fun event, and hope you'll join us. We'll be bringing the latest and fastest reports from the Keynote that we can.

See you Monday!