4 ms·

This website says that live streaming requires OS X or iOS. Why would they only allow already-customers to watch their presentation? Locking out non-customers

This website says that live streaming requires OS X or iOS. Why would they only allow already-customers to watch their presentation? Locking out non-customers seems not the best way to get some.

jonursenbach 12y ago
This is nothing new. Their streamed events have always been locked down to Safari on OS X and iOS.
AlexeyBrin 12y ago
Check the comments, someone already solved this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8290769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8290769
- Aardwolf 12y ago
  Well, still, for a company that tries to make everything "simple and beautiful", why don't their video streams just work everywhere out of the box? That is the question.
  - seren 12y ago
    Everything is simple and beautiful if you are already embedded in the ecosystem/walled garden. If you are an outsider, it is another matter... Isn't it more or less the goal of every tech giant ?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - MCRed 12y ago
    What Apple's live streaming does, is in a CDN friendly way dynamically adjust the bandwidth going to a stream consumer. It's a great invention and there's no reason other people haven't adopted it. It's not being proprietary, it's simply being smart, because it's not trivial to do this kind of broadcast on the internet. Here's the reality of video, and this goes for a lot of things that Apple makes "simple and beautiful". They fundamentally aren't. Video is a fundamentally difficult mess, a PITA, and the only way to have it work really smoothly is to have enough control over the entire stack to ensure that things work they way they are supposed to... and even then it doesn't always work. People adopting MP4 as a standard has gone a long way towards making things "just work" generally, but it's not sufficient by itself for a quality live stream. I remember trying to watch a previous live stream from south america and the difficulties I had, even though I was using Apple devices and software the whole way. Simple and Beautiful is a contradiction from "everywhere out of the box". Those are two opposite goals. This is an important thing to understand about software broadly, but with video it borders on impossible.
    - simonbh 12y ago
      The thing is that any cable company in the US and Canada that streams content to their customers via the Internet is using adaptive bitrate streaming either using HTTP Live Streaming, MPEG DASH, HTTP Dynamic Streaming, or Microsoft Smooth Streaming. It is far from impossible.
  - nyrulez 12y ago
    Apple fans can justify anything - so don't expect anyone to say, yeah they are behind the curve on this. The better answer is probably: "They simply don't care". No ifs and buts. Probably making it a bit exclusive and hard to get to only adheres to their marketing philosophy.
- efa 12y ago
  The community has closed this channel due to terms of service violations
bla2 12y ago
They probably use https://developer.apple.com/streaming/ https://developer.apple.com/streaming/ , an HTTP streaming mechanism that's implemented by Safari that didn't get adopted by any other browser.
- MCRed 12y ago
  Ever since Apple originated consumer computer video with Quicktime back in the early 1990s, they've done a great deal to make it better, first for CD Roms and in a proprietary fashion. But when the net came around they opened up their proprietary format to become a standard-- the Mpeg4 file format is the old MOV format. They've also proposed a lot of improvements along these lines for other people to adopt. Like Bonjour, I really don't understand why other companies don't adopt these open standards. They don't benefit Apple particularly. It's not like Apple has some competitive advantage in HTTP Live Streaming. Meanwhile these competitors rush to copy everything else Apple does. Frankly, I think its appalling that youtube, for instance, is still running on flash. How many years ago did they first trial MP4 streaming? Why I can't I access all the videos over MP4? Why would you want your browser to be bad at streaming video?
  - lostgame 12y ago
    What, what? YouTube has been doing an HTML5 based web player for quite some time now[1], and I believe it supports FLV video as well, though I can't find a reference for that. [1] https://www.youtube.com/html5?gl=CA https://www.youtube.com/html5?gl=CA
    - MCRed 12y ago
      I have uninstalled Flash from my system. A great many videos on YouTube give me the "you need the latest flash player to watch this video" error. Yes, several years ago, I was getting MP4 video, and today, a portion (say %30-%40) just launch with MP4. But most of the time I get the "you need flash".
      - archagon 12y ago
arrrg 12y ago
Because it ultimately doesn’t matter. Those who really want to watch it already have some device that can play it and the rest doesn’t care about it anyway so much to watch a 2hr commercial and will just read about it somewhere or see it on TV later. I think it’s as simple as that. That’s why Apple doesn’t really try to make this work for as many people as possible.
efa 12y ago
Yep, I noticed that the other day on their developers site. Couldn't watch a video on Swift because I'm not on OSX Safari! Something Microsoft would do 15 years ago.

This website says that live streaming requires OS X or iOS. Why would they only allow already-customers to watch their presentation? Locking out non-customers seems not the best way to get some.

jonursenbach 12y ago

This is nothing new. Their streamed events have always been locked down to Safari on OS X and iOS.

AlexeyBrin 12y ago

Check the comments, someone already solved this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8290769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8290769

Aardwolf 12y ago
Well, still, for a company that tries to make everything "simple and beautiful", why don't their video streams just work everywhere out of the box? That is the question.
- seren 12y ago
  Everything is simple and beautiful if you are already embedded in the ecosystem/walled garden. If you are an outsider, it is another matter... Isn't it more or less the goal of every tech giant ?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- MCRed 12y ago
  What Apple's live streaming does, is in a CDN friendly way dynamically adjust the bandwidth going to a stream consumer. It's a great invention and there's no reason other people haven't adopted it. It's not being proprietary, it's simply being smart, because it's not trivial to do this kind of broadcast on the internet. Here's the reality of video, and this goes for a lot of things that Apple makes "simple and beautiful". They fundamentally aren't. Video is a fundamentally difficult mess, a PITA, and the only way to have it work really smoothly is to have enough control over the entire stack to ensure that things work they way they are supposed to... and even then it doesn't always work. People adopting MP4 as a standard has gone a long way towards making things "just work" generally, but it's not sufficient by itself for a quality live stream. I remember trying to watch a previous live stream from south america and the difficulties I had, even though I was using Apple devices and software the whole way. Simple and Beautiful is a contradiction from "everywhere out of the box". Those are two opposite goals. This is an important thing to understand about software broadly, but with video it borders on impossible.
  - simonbh 12y ago
    The thing is that any cable company in the US and Canada that streams content to their customers via the Internet is using adaptive bitrate streaming either using HTTP Live Streaming, MPEG DASH, HTTP Dynamic Streaming, or Microsoft Smooth Streaming. It is far from impossible.
- nyrulez 12y ago
  Apple fans can justify anything - so don't expect anyone to say, yeah they are behind the curve on this. The better answer is probably: "They simply don't care". No ifs and buts. Probably making it a bit exclusive and hard to get to only adheres to their marketing philosophy.
efa 12y ago
The community has closed this channel due to terms of service violations

bla2 12y ago

They probably use https://developer.apple.com/streaming/ https://developer.apple.com/streaming/ , an HTTP streaming mechanism that's implemented by Safari that didn't get adopted by any other browser.

MCRed 12y ago
Ever since Apple originated consumer computer video with Quicktime back in the early 1990s, they've done a great deal to make it better, first for CD Roms and in a proprietary fashion. But when the net came around they opened up their proprietary format to become a standard-- the Mpeg4 file format is the old MOV format. They've also proposed a lot of improvements along these lines for other people to adopt. Like Bonjour, I really don't understand why other companies don't adopt these open standards. They don't benefit Apple particularly. It's not like Apple has some competitive advantage in HTTP Live Streaming. Meanwhile these competitors rush to copy everything else Apple does. Frankly, I think its appalling that youtube, for instance, is still running on flash. How many years ago did they first trial MP4 streaming? Why I can't I access all the videos over MP4? Why would you want your browser to be bad at streaming video?
- lostgame 12y ago
  What, what? YouTube has been doing an HTML5 based web player for quite some time now[1], and I believe it supports FLV video as well, though I can't find a reference for that. [1] https://www.youtube.com/html5?gl=CA https://www.youtube.com/html5?gl=CA
  - MCRed 12y ago
    I have uninstalled Flash from my system. A great many videos on YouTube give me the "you need the latest flash player to watch this video" error. Yes, several years ago, I was getting MP4 video, and today, a portion (say %30-%40) just launch with MP4. But most of the time I get the "you need flash".
    - archagon 12y ago

arrrg 12y ago

Because it ultimately doesn’t matter. Those who really want to watch it already have some device that can play it and the rest doesn’t care about it anyway so much to watch a 2hr commercial and will just read about it somewhere or see it on TV later. I think it’s as simple as that. That’s why Apple doesn’t really try to make this work for as many people as possible.

efa 12y ago

Yep, I noticed that the other day on their developers site. Couldn't watch a video on Swift because I'm not on OSX Safari! Something Microsoft would do 15 years ago.