
WWDC to Be Moved Online - css
https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=03132020a
======
luigi23
I 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
But hey it just can't be really compelling if it is Apple device only.

~~~
SamuelAdams
Yep, 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
Just 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

------
jedberg
This 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.

~~~
nathannecro
Your intuition is correct. To contextualize this, I own and operate hotels and
restaurants in the US and internationally.

In this particular case, my cluster of hotels in the Bay Area have seen our
revenues drop by roughly 50-60% in the first week of March and it's only going
to get worse. I've seen the numbers for Seattle, and it looks like the Bay
Area is about 3-4 days behind on the revenue drop.

I also own several restaurants in San Francisco and on average, revenue is
down by 70-80% this past week. Along with many large restaurants in San
Francisco, we're planning on closing permanently (or perhaps offering only one
service per day) for the next two to four weeks.

Even though my top line revenue is falling through the floor, my expenses are
largely unchanged. In the SF market, labor is my most significant cost and
with our restaurants, rent is close behind. Without people to service, my
direction has been to prepare for the future -- deep cleaning rooms, scrubbing
kitchens spotless, constantly patrolling public spaces with cleaning solution
and wiping everything down, and performing as many renovation/repairs as
possible.

The worst part about all of this is that at some point, with no revenue, I
won't be able to afford to keep paying my employees even if they're busy
cleaning. I'll furlough them, but I know that this may cause some (many) of
them to not be able to pay for housing, food, or transport in the near future.
I'm currently working on contingency plans to make sure that my employees are
properly taken care of, but it's been rough.

~~~
jacobolus
It’s really unfortunate that as a country we haven’t yet figured out how to
offer relief for people in industries harmed like this.

If it were up to me, we’d be figuring out how to temporarily suspend rent,
loan payments, and taxes to people who are
quarantined/isolated/hospitalized/furloughed due to the crisis, and
temporarily block evictions. We’d be expanding public food assistance and just
directly paying affected workers. We’d be figuring out how to deliver food and
medication (and test kits) safely to those in need. We’d be figuring out how
to scale out childcare for any child whose caretakers all get sick.

We’d be closing all restaurants to the public but organizing restaurant
workers to (while taking strong hygiene precautions) make prepared deliverable
meals. We’d be organizing taxi drivers to work as delivery workers. We’d be
maybe organizing empty hotels to e.g. host medical workers who need to be
quarantined away from their own families for a while, or potentially even
turning some into temporary hospitals.

We’d be retooling existing factories to produce necessary equipment like face
masks, antiseptics, mechanical ventilators, ...

This is one of the richest societies in the history of the world. A pandemic
is an economic challenge but we _can_ afford to keep everyone going through a
few months of acute crisis, if we make it a policy priority.

~~~
saidajigumi
> we’d be figuring out how to temporarily suspend rent, loan payments, and
> taxes

This. Under society-wide crisis, it's madness that the economic impact is
supposed to just stop at landlords, moneylenders, etc. There are instances
where individual organizations are trying to do the right thing, but the only
humane thing to do is spread the impact (and recovery measures) across
everyone.

~~~
gwright
> it's madness that the economic impact is supposed to just stop at landlords,
> moneylenders, etc.

Who is advocating this position that you think is "madness"? This is an
evolving situation that individuals, local, state, and national officials are
figuring out as we go along. There is no consensus on any of this and the
response needs to be (and actually is) distributed not centralized, IMHO.

Never mind the fact that the huge difficulty with this situation is that the
ultimate impact is unknown at this point. How many people will need to be
hospitalized? What treatment plans will be discovered? What is the impact of
putting the economy on life-support for weeks? Will social distancing be
enough to stop the spread?

~~~
zackmorris
May I ask your age? You sound a bit young. The things you talk about are well-
within the purview of the government.

If this were happening in the 1980s, I think that we would have kept our calm
better. I was a child then, and my grandparents were in their 50s/60s and had
seen the Great Depression and World War II. My parents' generation (the
boomers) were full of well-trained doctors and nurses. There was a general
level of competence and a willingness to give of oneself then that I believe
was higher than today, even though we have more access to information now.

What I'm saying is that we need central solutions. Scientists and medical
experts should be directing this. Like they used to, before several decades of
being undermined by political and religious dogma.

~~~
gwright
Not young at all. Your belief in the wisdom of centralized groups of
"experts", is historical naive and dangerous.

Note. I'm pretty much poking fun at the idea of things being centralized and
driven top down. Not at the notion of "experts"

------
maxehmookau
As someone who's developed for Apple devices for years and having never
attended WWDC due to distance and cost, this is potentially quite exciting :)

------
css
Full press release: [https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/03/apples-
wwdc-2020-kick...](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/03/apples-
wwdc-2020-kicks-off-in-june-with-an-all-new-online-format/)

~~~
tpmx
Thanks, 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
Apple 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.

------
minimaxir
This 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
If 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.)

------
duxup
Obviously 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
WWDC 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
especially because the documentation has gone to shit and WWDC presentations
have become the canonical docs for a lot of the less visible stuff.

~~~
saagarjha
WWDC presentations and half-remembered quotes from engineers in sessions.

~~~
unlinked_dll
it's frankly a miracle any software is released on their platform

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benguild
That’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.

~~~
turdnagel
Not doable unless Apple also wanted to delay release of the iPhone. New iPhone
means a new iOS which means new APIs, and Apple wants those APIs in
developers' hands as soon as possible.

~~~
saagarjha
They may not have a choice, depending on how things are going in China.

------
gregoriol
This 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
Most 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
We are in 2020, the face-to-face can clearly be done online, even more when
the audience is all over the world and technical.

------
charliemil4
This 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
It's Pollyanna marketing.

~~~
hinkley
And it's made Apple and their shareholders _billions_.

------
rvz
As 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.

~~~
hrktb
At 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
> ...a lot of people...

Do you mean many Japanese?

~~~
hrktb
yes.

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/12386270677274583...](https://twitter.com/audiophilefreak/status/1238627067727458306?s=21)

------
cltsang
Facebook, 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.

~~~
mcny
> 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
Microsoft 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/)

------
hinkley
I 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).

------
dolguldur
I 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.

------
BooneJS
WWDC 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?

------
_bpgl
...

~~~
hinkley
Half 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."

------
tpmx
That's an insanely vague message. I don't even really know if the HN title is
correct.

~~~
chrisBob
Some 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
We're entering the realm of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremlinology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremlinology)
here.

~~~
kylec
"Cupertinology", perhaps?

~~~
tpmx
I like your term.

> cupertinology.com

> Make offer

Oh well.

