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Apple to stream music event--to Apple devices

Apple announces that it will provide a live video stream of Wednesday's music event, but only to those who have Macs running OS X, an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch.

Steven Musil Night Editor / News
Steven Musil is the night news editor at CNET News. He's been hooked on tech since learning BASIC in the late '70s. When not cleaning up after his daughter and son, Steven can be found pedaling around the San Francisco Bay Area. Before joining CNET in 2000, Steven spent 10 years at various Bay Area newspapers.
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Apple announced Tuesday afternoon it will provide live video streaming of Wednesday's music event, but unless you have access to a Mac, iPhone, iPad, or iPod, you are going to be out of luck.

The event, starting at 10 a.m. PDT at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, will be available at Apple.com, but only on Macs running OS X 10.6 and the Safari Web browser, or on an iPad, an iPhone, or iPod Touch running iOS 3 or higher, according to a media alert posted Tuesday by Apple. For those who don't have access to one of the Apple devices, CNET plans to live-blog the event.

To our knowledge, this is the first time that viewing of a company's Web event has been restricted to hardware sold by that company. Some observers say the move effectively excludes the majority of Web users, since Safari commands only 5 percent of the browser market, compared with Internet Explorer's 60 percent, Firefox's 22 percent, and Chrome's 7 percent.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment on that issue.

This year's version of the annual music event is widely expected to include the unveiling of an iPod Touch with front-facing camera and so-called retina display. CNET has heard that there will be new features for iTunes rolled out, including sample clips of songs that run up to 60 or 90 seconds.