It’s been five months since Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference ended. This year the WWDC iOS application had the session videos available sooner than ever. I’d been watching them during my commute to and from Portland’s downtown. Well, this past week, I finished watching the last one. And with 107 videos, it’s Apple’s version of Netflix putting up a few years of Doctor Who episodes for people to gorge on.
Truth be told, I would have finished a month ago. So, what was the hold up? iOS 8 released. In doing so, it revealed that some change in the OS caused the WWDC app to crash when you tried to view a video. Very sad. The really unfortunate part is that I was only four videos away from having watched them all.
Well, I’m happy to report that the WWDC app is now working fine and I’d encourage anyone who’s doing OSX or iOS development to take advantage of them. There is a tremendous amount of information on the latest tools, technologies and techniques. Swift and Metal feature prominently.
Now, I’m not saying that these are all Jobsian quality presentations. As much as I appreciate that software development is a global endeavor, whoever decided that someone with a pronounced French accent should be littering his presentation with the word banana should be forced to watch that session from beginning to end. Subtitles would also have helped some sessions.
All-in-all these presentations are well crafted and delivered. Apple also continues its tradition of providing substantive sample code. Nothing is worse than code snippets that don’t convey the true flavor of using an API as you would in practice. Happily gone are the days when the AOCE (Apple Open Collaboration Environment) documentation was 1200 pages of paper with no index. Not the best way to pick up a new technology.
So if you need a break from watching the original run of The Tomorrow People, the WWDC sessions are there for you.
Charles Wilson's Blog 
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