Apple Music Event Livestream a Test of New Data Center?

Interesting. For the first time in five years, Apple will stream one of its media events live. Late Tuesday afternoon the company said it would broadcast tomorrow’s affair to anyone with a Snow Leopard Mac or iOS device like the iPhone and iPad–live.

Why exclude Windows users? That’s not clear. Perhaps it has something to do with the Live HTTP Streaming standard Apple will use to deliver the broadcast. Perhaps the company is conducting a limited test of widescale HTML 5 video streaming. Another theory: Apple (AAPL) wants to test out the server capacity at its new North Carolina data center.

Either way, it’s hard to view this as a purposeful snub to Windows users. This isn’t exactly an event that they’d likely be clamoring to see–though I’m sure we’ll hear shouts of outrage. Presumably most folks that would drop everything on a workday morning to watch video of an Apple press event are already using Apple hardware.