Apple to offer live video stream of Wednesday's keynote

The Cupertino, Calif., company made the announcement as a media alert Tuesday evening. The live video stream will be available when the keynote begins Wednesday at 10 a.m. Pacific Time, 1 p.m. Eastern, at apple.com.

"Apple will broadcast its September 1 event online using Apple's industry-leading HTTP Live Streaming, which is based on open standards," the company said. "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."

Apple used to provide a webcast of its keynote events, but stopped doing so in 2005. This week's apparent change of heart could have been inspired by the Wi-Fi meltdown that occurred at the iPhone 4 unveiling, when Chief Executive Steve Jobs had difficulty showing off the company's latest handset because there were too many Wi-Fi hotspots in the Moscone Center.

Jobs asked members in the audience if they could turn off their Wi-Fi devices, but many did not comply, and Jobs was unable to demonstrate some of the features of the iPhone 4. Jobs revealed there were 570 Wi-Fi base stations within the auditorium.

Wednesday's keynote will be at a different location, San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. In addition to Apple's official live stream, AppleInsider will also have its own live coverage.