Apple Building Massive Structure at Flint Center for iPhone 6 Event

[johngordon]

My best guess would be this. Unlike others, they have done that Apple thing of waiting until they thought they had solved problems, or come up with something they think fulfills a role. I think the whole wearables thing is a hard sell to be honest, given how much we can do with our phones - do we really need something on our wrist as well?

So if anything, I think maybe have (or at least think they have!) come up with actual worthwhile use case scenarios where a wearable makes sense, and offers something our phones can't, presumably through integration with HomeKit and HealthKit. If any Apple wearable can actually send meaningful data to HealthKit, and we can start to do useful things in the home with HomeKit and connected devices, then it might start to sound interesting.

Although still a hard sell - lighting is an obvious example - something like lights going on and off automatically as you go from room to room. Clever and futuristic and all the rest of it, but flicking a switch isn't that much of a chore.

They can't be oblivious to the significance of the venue, so presumably wouldn't have attached that significance if they didn't think they had something pretty great. That combined with the talk of the great product pipeline for the last 18-24 months should make it a pretty interesting one.

 

[firewood]

This place holds more than the WWDC venue and WWDC is normally the biggest event of the year.

Nope. Moscone West holds more than twice as many people as does Flint Center.

 

[Vanilla Face]

I wonder how many Apple employees know what's being announced at this event?

Very, very few. Apple is a need to know company. If you were working on the product development, you don't need to know when that product is being announced (you may have your suspicions because of deadlines). If you know when a product is being announced, you likely wouldn't know what other products are being announced that day. Very few people will know how September 9th is to pan out in its entirety.

 

[Michael Scrip]

Strange how Apple seems to be pulling out all the stops for one single event. They really are going all in on this pre-holiday season without a need for spacing out events. And they still might follow up with October event too!

Apple will have to top the September event by building a skyscraper for the October event...

The iScraper

 

[Locoboof]

Very, very few. Apple is a need to know company. If you were working on the product development, you don't need to know when that product is being announced (you may have your suspicions because of deadlines). If you know when a product is being announced, you likely wouldn't know what other products are being announced that day. Very few people will know how September 9th is to pan out in its entirety.

Hhmm... That's makes sense. It's a way to keep Cupertino specific things a secret.

----------

Apple will have to top the September event by building a skyscraper for the October event...

The iScraper

The "iScraper" sounds painful. Lol

 

[MentalFloss]

Really looking forward to the 9th September, iPhone 6 in two sizes and maybe an iWatch will be announced. I can't see there being anything else, it would take too long on the keynote which tend to last around 1-2hours long. iPads and Macs will probably be announced at the October event.

Exactly. We all know how much the Apple execs like to talk about products that they are really excited about. If it's really a new iPhone and an iWatch, then two hours is already terribly short.

Tim Cook: "Hi everyone. Apple is great. Look at this video of our stores. Now the new iPhone. Super cool. Pictures. More pictures. Here it is in my hand. Watch this video of how we produce it. Now feature 1. Feature 2. Features 3, 4 and 5. Super cool. Here is the TV ad for iPhone 6. Listen to Jony Ive's silky-smooth voice. Available in one week for these prices for these operators in these countries. Now on to the next... wut? 1 1/ 2 hours are over already? Fu**!! What about the iWatch, the new iPads, the new Apple TV, the new Macs, the new Yosemite features? Oh... heh... can I actually say fu** here? No? What? We're live? I didn't realize that. Well, then... fu** sh** co** pu*** monkeyb*lls! Heheh. Ok now, on to iWatch..."

Or something like that. Really, don't count on more than two products in one keynote.

 

[fullauto]

Home

 

[macgabe]

My guess is it's a fashion show. Of Burberry Macintoshes!! Think about it for a second, Angela Arendts from Burberry, the original venue of the Macintosh, real wearables that nobody had thought of. It ticks all boxes. Plus it's the perfect time to show off the winter collection. They'll be $2000 for a full sized one and will track all your movements plus tell you if it's raining or not and will have a nice check lining, which Jonny Ives will gradually pare down over the coming years.

 

[iucpa]

Look at the logo for HomeKit

Sound familiar? Three levels? Bingo!

 

[Dave245]

Exactly. We all know how much the Apple execs like to talk about products that they are really excited about. If it's really a new iPhone and an iWatch, then two hours is already terribly short.

Tim Cook: "Hi everyone. Apple is great. Look at this video of our stores. Now the new iPhone. Super cool. Pictures. More pictures. Here it is in my hand. Watch this video of how we produce it. Now feature 1. Feature 2. Features 3, 4 and 5. Super cool. Here is the TV ad for iPhone 6. Listen to Jony Ive's silky-smooth voice. Available in one week for these prices for these operators in these countries. Now on to the next... wut? 1 1/ 2 hours are over already? Fu**!! What about the iWatch, the new iPads, the new Apple TV, the new Macs, the new Yosemite features? Oh... heh... can I actually say fu** here? No? What? We're live? I didn't realize that. Well, then... fu** sh** co** pu*** monkeyb*lls! Heheh. Ok now, on to iWatch..."

Or something like that. Really, don't count on more than two products in one keynote.

at the most i think there will be the following:

iPhone 6, available in 4.7" and 5.5" models, Sapphire, 128GB maybe and so on.
maybe the iWatch, available in multiple sizes and colours and so on.

iPads will be at the October event possibly with updated Macs.

Just my opinion, i could be wrong tho

 

[Peace]

My guess is it's a fashion show. Of Burberry Macintoshes!! Think about it for a second, Angela Arendts from Burberry, the original venue of the Macintosh, real wearables that nobody had thought of. It ticks all boxes. Plus it's the perfect time to show off the winter collection. They'll be $2000 for a full sized one and will track all your movements plus tell you if it's raining or not.

You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

--Bob Dylan

 

[iucpa]

Wish we could say more

I think this is a pretty obvious one - whatever they will unveil will involve much heavier use of voice commands... "Saying more". "Apple, turn on lights". "Apple, turn on TV." "Apple, buy song". "Apple, change channel to ESPN" "Apple, change thermostat to 72 degrees". "Apple, record CSI:New York"...

#AmIRight?

 

[sulpfiction]

This announcement has my stomach feeling the same way if felt back in 07. I haven't had that feeling since then, and it feels great. I am just super pumped. And if we get this watch (or whatever wearable device it might be) I will be blown away & shocked at the secrecy behind it. So much so, that I still don't believe it's coming. Not one single leak is almost impossible these days. But by the looks of things, something big is gonna happen. And I just can't friggen wait!!

 

[SMIDG3T]

Nope. Moscone West holds more than twice as many people as does Flint Center.

Oh really, my bad.

I read somewhere that the Flint Center held more.

 

[firewood]

Guys, it is definitely a new building, built on the Sunken Garden location.

Interesting. The De Anza sunken gardens area was already fenced off a couple weeks ago during the HotChips tech conference at Flint center, where an ARM exec talked about all the new ARM chips coming out... except for Apple's. Also presented at HotChips were some new 64-bit ARM chips for servers and data centers. Maybe this building holds a data center with 1M ARM A8's?

 

[aaronvan]

Whaaa.....?

Whew, I almost choked on my Cheetos. For a second I thought Apple was planning to host the event in Flint, Michigan.

 

[SockRolid]

Earlier this year, Apple iTunes chief Eddy Cue said that Apple's got the "best product pipeline" he'd seen in his 25 years at the company in the works, and Tim Cook promised "really great stuff" in new product categories.

My official guess: it's a mock-up of a house for a full-scale HomeKit demo.
Maybe even with a next-gen Apple TV set-top box as the hub.

(If you're not a developer running iOS 8 beta, here's some info on iOS 8 and HomeKit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_8)

 

[franswa za]

steve would approve

 

[GekiRed]

Hopefully a new iPod Touch with 128gb or 256gb of storage will be introduced, because look at it this way, 64gb for a so-called top of the range version seriously sucks ass!

 

[thekeyring]

Actually, there was a very credible rumor going around.
Knowing he was near death, (God I miss him so ....) he made a final product keynote
for some gamechanger product beyond iPhone & iPad.
This event being at the Flint Center, could this be the product announcement the video is shown at?
Could be ....

It was for Apple Found - a search engine designed to kill Google's cash cow. After all, most of their profit comes from search so beat that and they're screwed.

However, it was written by an ex Intel exec who admitted he wrote the article to demonstrate Google's vulnerability. He hinted there may be some truth in it, but we will won't know (he says) until fall 2015.

Original blog post:
http://twothirdsdone.com/2014/04/28/how-apple-crushed-google-in-the-fall-of-2015-from-my-book-the-future-history-of-technology/

Post admitting it wasn't exactly true:
http://twothirdsdone.com/2014/05/04/how-my-blog-post-on-apple-and-search-went-viral-and-my-unintended-experience-with-internet-journalism/

 

[apolloa]

Perhaps Cook is about to finally silence his doubters...

Nah, it's more like they have to do something damn impressive to cover up the years and years they spent slating big screen mobile phones... as they launch their own ones.

Gotta generate a hell of a lot of that Reality Distortion Field this time round Apple.

Yes I am cynical, yes Apple FULLY deserve it.

 

[HiRez]

Whew, I almost choked on my Cheetos. For a second I thought Apple was planning to host the event in Flint, Michigan.

That would explain the extreme security...

 

[R0bert]

I guess they've built the full scale version of that hideous statue.

 

[izyreal]

It's a time machine! They are bringing Steve Jobs back!

 

[Tech198]

This should be interesting..

"Flint Center for the Performing Arts at De Anza"

Are we gonna see a performance like Samsung did ? I could imagine Tim Cook doing the belly dance.

"wait....No, it just as a strange location"