October 4th Media Event to Be Held at Apple's Headquarters?

AllThingsD reports that Apple's iPhone media event apparently scheduled for October 4th will be held at the company's headquarters in Cupertino, California rather than the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco as has been typical for their iPad and iPod events.

Sources close to the company say the demonstration — currently scheduled for Tuesday October 4, a date first reported by AllThingsD — will be held at Apple’s campus in Cupertino, California.

The report notes that it is unknown why Apple has chosen its own Town Hall Auditorium for the event, but offers a couple of theories including the possibility of uncertainty in locking down a date preventing Apple from booking an outside venue or a desire to give new CEO Tim Cook a more intimate venue for the first major product introduction under his official watch.

apple town hall
Apple's Town Hall auditorium (Source: CNET)

Apple has certainly used its on-campus facilities for media events in the past, most recently last October's "Back to the Mac" event. The site has also been used for the company's iOS media and developer preview events typically held each spring ahead of new hardware releases, as well as last July's press conference to address concerns over antenna performance on the iPhone 4.

Apple's iPhone introductions have until this year taken place at San Francisco's Moscone Center as part of larger events, with the original iPhone first being shown at Macworld Expo and later introductions coming at the company's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts has been Apple's major off-campus site for those media events not associated with conferences such as Macworld and WWDC. It has typically hosted Apple's fall media events that have focused on iPod and iTunes, and has also been the site of Apple's two iPad introductions.

Top Rated Comments

Samuriajackon Avatar
164 months ago
U built a town hall...might as well use it.
Score: 33 Votes (Like | Disagree)
rdowns Avatar
164 months ago
Nailed on IMHO, all fits

If the keynote was taking place in downtown San Francisco or whatever then Steve has to drive or be driven down there, likely in heavy traffic, tiring for a man who is not very well

He would already be on campus doing his chairman's job and holding meetings etc so it easy for him just to pop into the auditorium, less tiring, less effort for him, smaller stage

I am 99.99% certain we will see Steve playing an active role in the launch


I love these theories. Where do people get this stuff?

So Jobs is too weak to sit in a limo and be driven to the Moscone Center but he's on campus holding meetings.

You will not see Jobs at the announcement as his presence would only serve to overshadow Cook and the new product(s).
Score: 30 Votes (Like | Disagree)
DrJohnnyN Avatar
164 months ago
Don't care where it's held... just as long as it's soon! :)
Score: 26 Votes (Like | Disagree)
easy4lif Avatar
164 months ago
anyone notice that its 10 years ago that they introduced the original ipod in October, in the same venue that their using for this event
Score: 23 Votes (Like | Disagree)
applesith Avatar
164 months ago
Maybe because they really are just introducing an iPhone 4S with minor upgrades and perhaps don't want to draw TOO much attention to that fact. :)

This is Apple, it will get huge attention regardless of where they present it or how many people are in the audience.
Score: 20 Votes (Like | Disagree)
QuarterSwede Avatar
164 months ago
The most reasonable explanation from a thread (https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1234128) already on this:

I don't see the location of the keynote reflecting the exact (5 vs 4S) product being launched.

What I do see, is a very dynamic, shifting date for launch, which led to an inability to secure the typical Yerba Buena location. Not knowing the exact launch date makes it a little tough to secure a venue. Whereas if the event is held in Cupertino, Apple can make the announcement when they're damn good and ready.

Something is definitely up over Apple. Something is causing a delay. Bad screens on the (rumored) bigger iPhone 5 screen? iOS 5? who knows... Let the theories and speculation begin!
Score: 20 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

maxresdefault

Apple Announces 'Let Loose' Event on May 7 Amid Rumors of New iPads

Tuesday April 23, 2024 7:11 am PDT by
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple Vision Pro Dual Loop Band Orange Feature 2

Apple Cuts Vision Pro Shipments as Demand Falls 'Sharply Beyond Expectations'

Tuesday April 23, 2024 9:44 am PDT by
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
iPad And Calculator App Feature

Apple Finally Plans to Release a Calculator App for iPad Later This Year

Tuesday April 23, 2024 9:08 am PDT by
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
iOS 17 All New Features Thumb

iOS 17.5 Will Add These New Features to Your iPhone

Sunday April 21, 2024 3:00 am PDT by
The upcoming iOS 17.5 update for the iPhone includes only a few new user-facing features, but hidden code changes reveal some additional possibilities. Below, we have recapped everything new in the iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5 beta so far. Web Distribution Starting with the second beta of iOS 17.5, eligible developers are able to distribute their iOS apps to iPhone users located in the EU...
Apple Silicon AI Optimized Feature Siri

Apple Releases Open Source AI Models That Run On-Device

Wednesday April 24, 2024 3:39 pm PDT by
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...