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WWDC to Be Moved Online
- css 7y agoFull press release: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/03/apples-wwdc-2020-kicks-off-in-june-with-an-all-new-online-format/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/03/apples-wwdc-2020-kick...
- tpmx 7y agoThanks, there's slightly more information there. The messaging is still sickly over-positive. There is not a single mention of the cancellation of the physical WWDC. It's merely alluded to. This is weak sauce. I don't really understand the motive. Would the stock market be more upset if this message spelled out things clearly?
- 1123581321 7y agoApple hadn’t announced WWDC dates and location before this, so there was nothing official to cancel. The motive for the positive tone is probably to build faith that the new event format will still be exciting and as valuable for developers.
- tpmx 7y agoListen to yourself trying really, really hard to believe this lie. (Yes, of course, strictly speaking you are correct. We're not in the strictly speaking land anymore though.)
- 1123581321 7y agoPlease indicate where WWDC was previously announced then.
- tpmx 7y ago(Sorry, please see my edit just now.)
- inapis 7y agoAs someone who has followed apple for some time, their messaging has always been overly positive. I agree that it could be plain and blunt but this company is frequently torn to shreds by the internet for even a slight misstep. So I am not surprised that apple adopts an overly cautious tone.
- rvz 7y agoAs expected, Google I/O, F8, MWC, WWDC, E3 have all been cancelled in person by the looks of it and some have been moved online instead. If the decision is reversed to call off the Olympics (I hope not), then 2020 is completely cancelled.
- judah 7y agoBuild, Microsoft's premier dev conference, was also moved to online.
- hrktb 7y agoAt the risk of sounding grounchy, the Olympics is one of the show a lot of people actually want to get cancelled. Population was mostly against it. And a part of it would have been about “volunteers” (like school/university kids/sponsor company employees requested by their board to participate due to lack of actual volunteers) working in the heat of the summer for a for profit organisation getting super preferential tax and financing treatment. We have global events every year centered about the athletes, I wont be crying any tears for the IOC and officials not getting their payback.
- chrispeel 7y ago> ...a lot of people... Do you mean many Japanese?
- hrktb 7y agoyes. I know very few people irl that are positive about the impact, and the polls where mostly negative as well (except those done by the IOC itself, who got up to 70% support at some point, go figure) Anectodtaly that’s the usual reaction I see about the event: https://twitter.com/audiophilefreak/status/1238627067727458306?s=21 https://twitter.com/audiophilefreak/status/12386270677274583...
- minimaxir 7y agoThis was extremely expected: not just because of the fact that everyone is cancelling conferences out of an abundance of caution, but the Santa Clara county ban on gatherings over 1,000 people would have made WWDC infeasible.
- whatshisface 7y agoIf you look at the models, it's not so much an abundance of caution thing as a basic public health duty. (In California, large conferences are more or less guaranteed to result in spreading.)
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- BooneJS 7y agoWWDC has always been, like some of their devices, “exclusive”. More demand than supply. Will they keep limited registration, or might it open up to another tier of registrants?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- duxup 7y agoObviously many of these events are sort of special in person events that involve in person stuff that people like, social stuff, being there and etc. But when I think of announcements of products and things I always think of now Nintendo went to Nintendo Direct... some of this stuff really is just fine being recorded and streamed only.
- HeavenFox 7y agoWWDC is far from a press event. It is actually a developer conference. From what I understand, the most valuable part is not the sessions, which you can stream online, but the access to Apple engineers who wrote the APIs you depend on.
- unlinked_dll 7y agoespecially because the documentation has gone to shit and WWDC presentations have become the canonical docs for a lot of the less visible stuff.
- saagarjha 7y agoWWDC presentations and half-remembered quotes from engineers in sessions.
- unlinked_dll 7y agoit's frankly a miracle any software is released on their platform
- luigi23 7y agoI think this might be a trailblazing WWDC - when they notice that there are many engineers that wanted to get help, but they couldn’t afford the travel to California. I’d bet that in 2021 there’s gonna be WWDC as usual in San Jose and they’ll delegate some of the staff to support remote engineers. Hell, I’d push for better FaceTime to promote it as a ‘perfect’ replacement for Zoom... Think about it! If I were Craig, I’d move some of the finest engineer to make a really compelling contender for other videochat apps. You’re green bubble in Messages - out of style. You’re not using FaceTime for remote call - get out of here...
- rfoo 7y agoBut hey it just can't be really compelling if it is Apple device only.
- SamuelAdams 7y agoYep, I'm guessing 90% or more of Fortune 500 companies use Windows computers. FaceTime will only run on MacOS / iOS devices, so even if it was a superior video chat product the exclusivity of the app is what kills it. Zoom, however, works on just about all devices.
- obmelvin 7y agoJust had some coworkers complaining the other day in slack about use of RingCentral since its rebranded zoom but software won't run well on their linux dev machines! Zoom itself they have no issues with, unless other people join using the RingCentral client apparently. tl;dr - yes, a compelling video chat software must run well on all employee devices for real success
- gargs 7y agoIt doesn't have to be, though. Just like iMessage is hugely successful despite being limited to Apple devices, and even then widely differing in features and reliability, for example, between iOS and macOS. A wonderful collaborative experience could just be a USP for the platform. FWIW, the now obsoleted iChat was way ahead of the curve compared to the current iteration of FaceTime in group settings, anyway.
- charliemil4 7y agoThis is how you 'do Coronavirus' - no 'abundance of caution,' no fear, just 'this is going to be new and awesome. We are excited to try this new format.' Everyone knows the underlying reason, but it's less fearful and more 'we got this, relax.'
- lonelappde 7y agoIt's Pollyanna marketing.
- hinkley 7y agoAnd it's made Apple and their shareholders billions.
- maxehmookau 7y agoAs someone who's developed for Apple devices for years and having never attended WWDC due to distance and cost, this is potentially quite exciting :)
- tpmx 7y agoThat's an insanely vague message. I don't even really know if the HN title is correct.
- chrisBob 7y agoSome of the language wasn't clear but "Apple also announced it will commit $1 million to local San Jose organizations to offset associated revenue loss as a result of WWDC 2020’s new online format." makes it sound like there will be no in-person conference.
- tpmx 7y agoWe're entering the realm of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremlinology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremlinology here.
- tpmx 7y agoThe cowards who downvoted this out of some sheer brand cult (without commenting) should out themselves. (Yeah, I'm self-flagellating at this point, I know. Why would any ever comment negatively on a thread dealing with Apple matters? I dunno. I think I just really dislike cultists.)
- jedberg 7y agoThis of course is great for public health, but I feel real bad for the hourly workers who depend on these conventions to get work. The folks they hire to check people in, guard the door, move furniture around, hang signs, etc. Those folks probably don't have much to fall back on. Working in the service industry already sucks -- it's a lot worse when there is no one to service.
- saagarjha 7y agoApparently Apple is pouring a million dollars into the local area to compensate a bit for the lack of business.
- reaperducer 7y agoI read something similar today about Grubhub. It was giving money to restaurants and drivers.
- acomjean 7y agoThe whole hospitality / entertainment industry is going to be hurting. I know pretty much all conventions in mini-convention center attached to my building are canceled. Lay-offs seem inevitable and you are right most people have no safety net. Plus lack of sick leave... Now Andrew Yangs universal basic income would be useful.
- pstuart 7y agoAnd Bernie's M4A as well.
- selectodude 7y agoMedicare for all doesn’t pay the rent.
- saidajigumi 7y agoTrue; rent should be suspended due to the crisis. The mechanics are tricky, and much worse, I have no hope of the actual policy leadership required to see this through here in the US. We're like an off-road vehicle with a suspension system built of cheap glass.
- benguild 7y agoThat’s sad. The developer community is really awesome to meet with in person during these events. I was hoping it would be moved to later in the year, not moved online.
- gregoriol 7y agoThis is finally happening, the real life gathering is so deprecated, only a few could attend while many millions of developers were interested in the subjects discussed. The lottery system was a sign of last breath, now the event can go on and be enjoyed by the large community.
- inapis 7y agoMost of the content was already available online no? People from around the world could see the sessions after the fact. The only valuable component was the face to face interactions which can only be partially replicated online.
- gregoriol 7y agoWe are in 2020, the face-to-face can clearly be done online, even more when the audience is all over the world and technical.
- cltsang 7y agoFacebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple, all host annual developer-focused conference. Among them Apple is the only one that doesn't have a livestream platform. But to be fair though the rest are not all streaming their own event on their own platform.
- kalleboo 7y agoWhile it's not a platform, Apple did develop and popularize the HLS protocol probably to solve precisely this problem - to run extremely popular live streams over commodity CDNs.
- mcny 7y ago> Microsoft For those who had to squint and think for a second, Microsoft owns Mixer (formerly known as Beam) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixer_(service) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixer_(service) Microsoft also has Microsoft Stream which I understand is more for Microsoft 365/Office 365 customers > Microsoft Stream is a corporate video-sharing service which was released on June 20, 2017 that will gradually replace the existing Office 365 Video. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Stream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Stream
- 98codes 7y agoMicrosoft wouldn't use Mixer for something like this, they would use a purpose-built website alongside Azure Media Services[1], as they have been for their big conferences that have had livestreams alongside the in-person conference for a few years now. Microsoft Stream is basically login-required corporate YouTube, and as you surmised wouldn't really fit this model. [1] https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/media-services/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/media-services/
- sixstringtheory 7y agoMaybe not equal to all the others, which I couldn't say because I don't watch any of the first 4's events, but I've definitely watched the livestream of the WWDC keynote and SOTP each year.
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- jmull 7y agoThere’s no tyranny and no abuse because no one is making you watch these things. Just don’t watch Apple events if they make you unhappy.
- hinkley 7y agoHalf of the conferences I'm aware of have cancelled this year. We are talking not-jokingly about cancelling the Summer Olympics. Having a conference at all is newsworthy at this point. And they've had a few weeks or a month to come up with a completely new strategy for something they usually have a year to figure out? Have you ever been involved in planning or running an annual event? It doesn't sound like you have. That people make it look easy is a testament to their skills, not the magnitude of the logistical problem. You used a lot of words to say, "I hate Apple and this schadenfreude is not living up to my expectations."
- dolguldur 7y agoI wonder how this affects teams at Apple. From what I heard before, some teams are already on crunch time before WWDC to bring whatever they’re working on into a state that you can ship as a beta.
- hinkley 7y agoI recall when I first started paying any attention to UX, there were a couple of people who asserted that a lot of UI metaphors get tested out in video games first. Then I noticed several other people suggests that algorithms sometimes follow a similar arc. I think some convention runners might find some ideas by looking back at how Blizzcon has worked over the last half dozen years, where it has been a hybrid between a physical and virtual conference, where if you are lucky you can get admittance to the conference, and everyone else has streaming video of all of the events for a much lower price. There are also satellite conferences which, while not quite as useful for the COVID-19 situation, does allow a degree of camaraderie without carting yourself clear across the country (or having carted yourself, relying on getting a pass that may not come your way).