Apple has been in the news lately, but unfortunately not all of it has been for good reasons. Apple is legendary for keeping the details of their new product launches under wraps until a big event which usually takes place at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters with incredible fanfare. This year was no different as the world watched to find out if Apple could continue its success of releasing incredibly innovative products that take the market by storm.
Public Relations Woes for Apple
Unfortunately, the timing of the September 9th event was not the best. Apple is still recovering from a public relations nightmare after several high-profile celebrities had intimate photos stolen from their phones. Apple was initially accused of being at fault because of a vulnerability in their iCloud platform. While this initial accusation may not have been true, it still created negative press for Apple in advance of their big product announcement.
After this public relations stumble, you would think that Apple would want their big product launch to go off without a hitch. Since not everyone can travel to Cupertino to hear about the new Apple products in person, many Apple lovers around the world were poised to watch the event unfold online. Apple planned for this and touted a slick countdown on their website in advance of the 1pm Eastern start time.
A recent ZDNet article pointed out that Apple struggled to reliably stream their product launch event, which showcased the new iPhone 6 and Apple Watch. What Apple touted as “the biggest advancement in the history of iPhone” turned out to be an announcement that was only appreciated by the few attendees at the event. Apple has been a master at drumming up interest and buzz when it comes to their products. While this worked when the cell phone market was more fragmented, today Apple is forced to show off bigger and better products each and every year. The jury is still out as to whether the iPhone 6 and the Apple Watch will have the kind of effect on the mobile market that the previous generations of iPhones have had. One thing for certain is that Apple should invest in better streaming technology to ensure that next year’s event is reliably streamed to Apple techies around the globe.
Why Did Apple Fail At Streaming Their “Big Event”?
While there are countless stories about Apple’s new products, few have gone into detail about why Apple failed to stream this event on the web. According to Apple, they have been working on building a robust, internal content distribution network. However, for this event they chose to not use their own content distribution network and decided to use Akamai, who has been Apple’s content distribution partner for quite some time.
Due to changes in how the video player worked on Apple’s home page as well as how storage was setup on Amazon’s S3 cloud infrastructure, severe issues were seen by users attempting to stream Apple’s event.
Dan Rayburn who runs a popular blog titled Streaming Media was quoted in the ZDNet article as saying, “it does not appear that a lack of capacity played any part in the event not working correctly. Apple simply didn’t provision and plan for the event properly.”
What Does This Mean for Apple Going Forward?
Unfortunately with this digital hiccup coupled with the iCloud problems from last week, Apple is not exactly looking like a technology leader. In today’s fast paced business world, perception is a huge part of the success of a company. While Apple obviously is sitting on a huge pile of cash and is not going anywhere anytime soon, they still should look at these public relations problems as issues that need to be addressed to further strengthen the Apple brand. The absolute last thing that Apple wants is for the media to be talking about iCloud problems and video streaming issues after the launch of their hottest new products of the year as opposed to the new products themselves.
Is Apple Ready to Run a Content Delivery Network?
The real question after all of this is whether Apple is ready to run a content delivery network that can handle millions of users at a time and securely handle all of this incredibly sensitive information? If you base your opinion solely on the issues that have taken place over the past few weeks, the answer to this question seems to be a resounding no.
What Are Your Options When It Comes to Video Streaming Providers?
It can be unnerving for consumers when events like this take place that put the reliability of a global brand in question. Thankfully when it comes to video streaming providers you do have options. Content providers like TikiLIVE exist solely to disseminate audio and video content to users across the world through a robust content delivery network. Providers that focus on live streaming and nothing else are much more apt to handle huge spikes in traffic than companies that are only providing video streaming as an auxiliary service.
Lessons Learned from Apple’s Streaming Issues
Apple has done a lot of things right over the past several years. It’s hard to believe that at one point Apple was a struggling company focused only on extremely high priced computers. Today, Apple is the dominant leader across multiple facets of the technology industry. While these successes should be applauded, it seems that even Apple has a thing or two to learn about live video streaming.
Don’t Repeat Apple’s Streaming Mistakes – Contact TikiLIVE Today!
If you have mission critical video or audio that must be streamed reliably online, look no further than TikiLIVE. We offer a robust content delivery network that is positioned to handle your content – no matter the amount of users who choose to access it. We understand that your livelihood is often riding on whether your content is accessible and we do not take this responsibility lightly. Contact us online, or give our video streaming experts a call today at (305) 289-4557 to discuss your needs. We look forward to working with you soon!
