I usually write for myself and in the process some others actually read my stuff. This post fits that mantra – after watching the keynote and digesting some other accounts of it I have some opinions of it all. Take it or leave it.

The live stream sucked ass in a big way. It is just embarrassing that a company of Apple’s size with all the money in the world cannot get this right. Hell – pay for two separate infrastructures and just switch over when one doesn’t work right. The whole thing felt like amateur hour and Apple is not a bunch of amateurs. There is really no excuse for not being able to pull of an event of this scale unless the numbers were just too big but I think this was more a case of errors than too many viewers.

First there was this takedown of it :: http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2014/09/why-apples-livestream-failed.html

Some folks are saying this is not an accurate analysis but I think there are some valid points in it. If they did use S3 and Akamai together – that was a huge mistake. It just doesn’t work well together. Akamai is maybe the king of CDN’s but it is the old school internet and is funky to work with.

Other folks are pointing to this article which is good and I even left a comment there but I don’t think it gets to the bottom of what happened. Apple is the inventor of HLS – they should have it nailed by now. Someone just majorly fucked up is my take on it. We may never know.

Either way it ruined being able to watch it in unison with others and as live as possible. Someday I may be able to make it to a real event but for now I am stuck with the live stream. Apple could do a better job of it for all of us staying up late wanting to watch it.

The phones. Nothing dramatic really but we have come to expect it now. I am on the fence as to which phone to get. Sometimes I want the big one but then I think it might be too big to carry around. I do a lot with my phone and with the big one I envision only needing a phone and a laptop and won’t use an iPad anymore. Then again I think I want the smaller one and a new iPad Air. Thus using laptop less. I don’t know yet. I honestly think I want to play with them both but at the same time I am curious about new laptops. I know I need more than one device but now I use three. So the idea for me is I want to get to 2 devices and I don’t know which two yet. I may have to wait for laptops and iPads to hit first.

I think iOS 8 is huge but we shall see when it hits and when the new dev stuff kicks into gear.

Before I get to the watch I just want to say the whole U2 thing was dumb. It came of as cheesy, it didn’t pack the punch Apple expected and I think they should be pushing Beats – not shitty iTunes. Anyway. Who cares but it ruined the close of the event for me.

The watch. I am in no hurry to get one but if it can track my biking and walking well, plus manage notifications easily and look cool – for me it replaces any sort of need for a fitness band. I am still confused what it does when not tethered to a phone since for example – I don’t want to carry my phone when I go running just to track fitness. I had a nike fuelband and digged it but was not married to it. I still don’t feel like I need one but this might be just the right combo. However if I am charging it every night, like the Pebble, I am not in a rush for it.

That being said – to me this is all about wearable computing. We all know it will happen in some form or another. Apple thinks it might be the watch. I tend to agree but is it this version of it? Come on. It’s a 1.0. I didn’t use an iPhone until number 4. I know this has a ways to go but wearable computing is inevitable. This is just their vision of it. It looks pretty amazing but like the new phones – I want to play with one first.

This is what sucks about Singapore for me – where is a real Apple store. Tired of this retailer shit.

okay. back to real work.