Roger Fingas
Drumming up publicity for Monday's press event, which starts at 10 a.m. Pacific, Apple is already running a purported "livestream" from the Steve Jobs Theater at Apple Park, usually showing little more than a empty stage.
The stream nevertheless cuts between angles occasionally, also capturing empty seats. It's not clear whether it's genuinely live or staged, but Apple normally saves its bandwidth until minutes before an event begins, and some of the onscreen graphics don't appear to blend properly.
As of this writing the feed has been ongoing for hours. In that time only a few incidents have disturbed the stream's emptiness, such as a phone call from actor Chris Evans. Evans is playing the role of Andy Barber in "Defending Jacob," one of the many TV shows Apple may preview tomorrow as it announces an on-demand video service.
That service should mix original material with subscriptions to outside services like Starz, Showtime, and HBO, possibly at a cost of $9.99 per month each.
The event should likewise see the debut of an Apple News subscription service, offering access to various magazines and newspapers at a cost of $9.99 per month. To the disappointment of many it's thought that the Washington Post and New York Times won't be onboard, rejecting a rumored 50/50 revenue split.
AppleInsider will be live from Monday's event with updates as they happen.
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22 Comments
I am not getting the live stream...is anyone else?
It plays a very short video every once in a while. You just have to keep the stream going and you’ll eventually see it.
One of the images that flashed on the screen was the actor Chris Evans calling in as Captain America. There may be some kind of Avengers: Endgame tie-in here?
It was just running (Sunday, 6:35pm) a video of what appeared to be a high school rehearsal, with a young girl singing I'll Never Get Over You Getting Over Me.
It's mostly blank, but around 11pm I saw a couple of minutes of Snoopy and Schroeder on the screen. But what I saw gobsmacked me. The video of these Peanuts characters was being projected onto an invisible screen. I couldn't see the screen at all. They were floating just a few feet from the front of the stage. The spotlight that was on the floor looked like it was part of the video but it extended up to about a foot from the front of the stage. But that's impossible: there's no screen at the front of the stage. Either I'm an idiot and you're all gonna ridicule me in the morning, or I've spotted something really special. If you are still up this evening, wait for a video and see if you can see the same thing. Do a video capture. Could there be some special video projection technology in this theater? Could JJ Abrams be involved? Or am I just an idiot?