
WWDC 2012 Session Videos - abijlani
https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2012/
======
pohl
The user experience of watching WWDC session videos on the iPad has always
been a thorn in my side.

Back when the 2011 videos were new, I downloaded them all to my computer (in
Standard Definition) and synced them all to my iPad so that I would have
immediate offline access to them all should I find myself with a free hour to
spend.

Sadly, the Videos application has one horrible UX problem: the names of each
session video was very long, but the label in Videos is too short, and so they
all endup being truncated, like "Session 205 - Introducing Collection Vi...".
Even in landscape, mind you! Half of the screen was wasted with a graphic that
added no useful information.

Halfway through the year, things got a lot better when the "iTunes U" app was
released, and browsing the 2011 videos immediately became much better. The
Videos app still has the same usability issue (and I think they should still
fix it), but the iTunes U app is better so at least I can avoid the bad app.

Well, last night I downloaded the 2012 session videos and synced them over to
my iPad, and now iTunes U has a horrible UX, because the videos from 2011 and
2012 are all mixed in the same list, and there's no way to tell from the
session title which year it came from.

It's as if no one at Apple dogfoods their own applications with their own
content.

 _Edit: just to be clear, none of my complaint here is about iTunes or the
iTunes store. Those applications (though I admit the former is a bloated
dumping-ground of features) have always behaved perfectly for me. Rather, I'm
specifically refering to the "iTunes U" mobile app (see link below) and the
"Videos" app that is bundled on the iPad._

<http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/>

~~~
robomartin
I've always found iTunes and iTunes Store UI's to be deficient in many ways.
My theory is that the continuous overloading of iTunes with a wide range of
functionalities is creating a mess. What makes sense for music files doesn't
necessarily make sense for videos, books or apps.

Searching the iTunes store is horrible, particularly on an iPad or iPhone.
More often than not it is easier to use Google on a browser to search the
iTunes store.

Importing content into iTunes is equally fraught with issues. I had to import
a library of hundreds of music CDs from Windows Media. Thousands of songs.
iTunes refused to maintain the grouping of songs per album (as they show-up in
Windows Media) and required manually editing and sorting of thousands of songs
in order to clean-up the mess. I understand that it has to do with metadata
issues, but if MS can do it iTunes ought to be far more intelligent and do it
right and offer to auto-magically fix the issues during import.

This is very similar to what happened with XCode 4. Before XC4 browsing
documentation was a good experience. Now they chose to overload the iTunes-ish
Organizer with all manner of things, including documentation. Now browsing the
docs is ugly and difficult. It sucks.

What I'd like to see is for iTunes to return to being the best app for
managing your music while new specialized apps are introduced to manage your
iPhone and other content.

~~~
DaveJewell
Totally agree with all you say. The current philosophy of just adding more and
more disjoint functionality to existing apps is simply creating one hell of a
mess. A mess to use, and (I strongly suspect) a mess to maintain.

Remember the old UNIX philosophy: Write programs that do ONE thing and do it
well. Whoever is in charge of overall software development at Apple (both apps
and dev tools) needs to have this drummed into him. Preferably with a large
hammer. ;-)

------
angerman
Any recommendations for what sessions to watch first? What are the most
substantial new features, one should pay close attention to with respect to
iOS?

~~~
carson
The videos for sessions 205 and 219 would probably be the first two I would
recommend if you are an iOS developer.

The videos for sessions 600 and 601 would be good if you are developing web
apps.

------
donmcc
Always a good source for iOS devs. A (free) Apple developer account is
required. Previous years are also available.

------
m_st
Now I know why they've been this fast: The other years you always got to see
the presenter, this year you just see the slides and get the audio. So they
simply had to join the audio source with the slides. Works fine though and
having them earlier is certainly nice.

~~~
jonhendry
For the last few years, at least, the 'kickoff' overview videos include the
presenters, while most (all?) of the session videos are just the slides and
audio.

------
jasonlotito
And there goes my free time.

------
egb
Try this link to see all the developer videos available in iTunes (you have to
be logged in to apple dev first) in order to have a choice of HD or SD for big
or small video sizes:

[https://deimos.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/BrowsePrivately...](https://deimos.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/BrowsePrivately/adc.apple.com)

~~~
olifante
developer.apple.com looks down from here:
<http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/developer.apple.com>

adc.apple.com looks down from here:
<http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/adc.apple.com>

------
m_st
Wow they're quick. Does anybody else have issues downloading them via iTunes?
I'm on Windows here at work and as soon as the download finishes it is
deleted, nowhere to be found on disk or iTunes. The machine is even activated
in the iTunes store. Guess I'll have to keep streaming until I can download
them tonight on my Mac...

~~~
taligent
They should be stored under iTunes U. Do you have that enabled under
Preferences ?

~~~
m_st
Yes I do. I also see the videos I added from the store in iTunes U. They all
have the "get" button. When I click it the video is downloaded. Once the
download finishes however, the "get" button reappears and that's it. The Video
also isn't in the iTunes folder on disk...

EDIT: Nevermind, I watched the videos on the iPad and will download the others
tonight on my iMac.

------
DeepDuh
Does anyone else have problems with the sound? I've had two videos stop the
sound at some point while the slides still continue. Reloading doesn't seem to
help, it still stops at the same point.

edit: Nevermind, I think it was my SSD running out of space. Still waiting for
that damn retina macbook ;).

~~~
zaphoyd
I had this issue as well with the web streaming versions and plenty of free
disk space. I ended up just pulling them up in iTunes which downloaded the
whole thing and then it played fine. Something to do with the adaptive HTTP
streaming I would guess.

~~~
DeepDuh
Oh ok, so it wasn't just my SSD then. Something fishy going on with that
streaming, it's so proprietary that it needs Safari AND Lion..

------
filmgirlcw
So much good stuff here. I was sad I wasn't able to go last week but the
content, as always, is great.

------
5teev
Note: they've included sample code even for non-attendees, something that was
not done for WWDC 2011.

~~~
yardie
I have the sample code for 2010 and 2011. 2010 was neatly packaged up in one
big zip file. The 2011 samples are mixed in with the rest of the Library
sample code. But you can tell what was used at WWDC because the timestamp will
be updated to June.

------
HorizonXP
So to view these videos, I need to be running Safari for the streaming
version, or have iTunes installed to download the videos?

Can someone explain what's the benefit of doing it that way? I'm on Windows
(Ubuntu also, in a VM) running Chrome. Sure, I could install Safari or iTunes,
but why do I have to? (And don't say "So you can watch the videos.")

~~~
hboon
Chances are, _most_ developers they are targeting are on Macs, so they made it
easy for them.

~~~
Maascamp
On the other hand, chances are that most of those developers still aren't
running Safari.

~~~
hboon
Me neither. I use iTunes to download and watch them and only launched to
Safari to verify that it works there.

I already know what I want to watch so iTunes is good enough. But maybe it's
just me.

But happy watching. It's a great resource, every year.

------
st3fan
Wow! That was quick! I love it! So happy that they did this a week after WWDC.

~~~
jfoutz
I bet you a nickel google will live stream IO next week.

~~~
mattbirchler
Do they stream the sessions as well? I know they do the keynote but it would
be really impressive if they streamed the whole darn thing.

~~~
sondh
Yes, select sessions will be live streamed. Just like last year. Source:
<https://developers.google.com/events/io/>

------
Bjoern
Why is this site forcing me to register? Is my personal information so nice to
have? _sign_

~~~
Karunamon
Oh for pete's sake it's an Apple developer account. Microsoft, Google, and
every other dev platform that matters has the same requirement.

Can we please stop with the "zOMG my data!!1" whenever someone asks for a
registration?

~~~
Bjoern
Neither have any of those. Just because everybody does it (require
registration), does not automatically make it good and ok. Sorry, you can
downvote me if you like.

~~~
Karunamon
I could have sworn that both MS and Google required a live and google account
to actually access their dev tools.. huh, guess not.

That said, these complaints about registering to access proprietary data
always struck me as a bit silly.

~~~
HorizonXP
Yeah, RIM has the same requirement when you try to view content from their
developer conferences (DevCon, Jam, World, etc.). It is an issue that BB
developers have clamoured for the removal of too.

However, the actual documentation and tools don't require an account to
access. Just conference content.

