HN Explorer

Calling Apple out - Make dev material free.

31 points by jmatt ↗ HN
I'm a windows developer and I'd just like to call out the recent evilness coming from Apple. I received an email encouraging me to watch the WWDC08 session videos. I excitedly clicked the link^ where they attempted to charge me for the video sessions.

Microsoft doesn't charge for this type of material now-a-days and I was expecting the same from Apple. Big conferences like the PDC2008 are free^^. And of course there are plenty of free conference materials in other domains (Java, python and ruby).

So what's up with Apple being evil recently? It's been my opinion that one of the few things Microsoft does right is keeping it's developers happy. I would think this would be common sense to a company like Apple.

Has anyone spent 500-1000 to buy the WWDC sessions and was it worth it? Is it that different from material like PDC2008 that it's worth 500-1000 bucks?

^ http://developer.apple.com/products/video/wwdc08/index.html

^^ https://sessions.microsoftpdc.com/public/timeline.aspx

28 comments

[ 8.1 ms ] story [ 161 ms ] thread
mcormier
"So what's up with Apple being evil recently?"

The WWDC videos are nothing new and Apple has charged for them for the last couple of years, if not longer.

jmatt
I agree. Apple hasn't done anything new. While the rest of the industry has noticeably opened up.
davidroe
Charging money != evil

Nevertheless, I agree that asking people to pay for this kind of material is going to get them nowhere. If you want developers to develop for your platform, shutting the door on a large proportion of them is not the way to achieve that.

kstenson
I spent last weekend watching ton's of PDC2008 Videos on-line, checking out the power points and source code that was made available of the sessions. Then I a email from apple telling me that the WWDC08 video are available for purchase.

As much as I love my Mac, in this regard Microsoft come out tops.

ashleytowers
I'm uneasy with this development too. But, if the WWDC presentations were freely available it would be one less reason to go. Also, Apple give me Xcode and supporting tools for free - Microsoft charge lots for Visual Studio.
jcl
Microsoft charges a lot for the Visual Studio with various enterprise/team/automation extensions, but the free version is sufficient for writing and compiling most -- if not all -- Windows programs.
jrockway
Why do people care what Apple does? They do what they do -- if you don't like it, don't use their stuff. Apple thrives on control; if you don't want to be controlled, use a Free OS.
lyime
Thats like saying why does rest of the world care what US does? I think it would be in Apple's best interest to make those videos available for the community. This would directly benefit them. You don't want people to complain, especially the people who contribute to your product that is making you tons of money. Just my thoughts.
anthonyrubin
Your analogy is very poor. When Apple decides to do something that people don't like thousands of people don't lose their lives.
jcl
Yes, and Apple doesn't have nuclear weapons, either. I think his point is that, as the second-most-popular operating system provider, Apple's decisions affect more people than just those using Apple's products, and changing affiliation because of one flaw is not always feasible. In this respect, the analogy works just fine.
jrockway
I agree with you completely, but Apple wants people to pay money to be in The Club. They think that this will work for them.

If you disagree, develop for the competition :)

osi
As a contrast, Apple gives you Xcode and all of the tools for free. Microsoft charges how much for a full Visual Studio kit?
neilc
I doubt Microsoft makes very much money off Visual Studio -- it is far more strategically important for them to have developers writing code on the various Microsoft platforms. That's been reflected in MS giving away various tools, like Visual Studio Express, the MSVC compiler, etc. I'd think a major reason for why Microsoft still charges for Visual Studio at all is to avoid killing off ISVs who make development tools for Windows programmers.
DougBTX
It is a rather large download, but you can get basically all of Microsoft's development tools for free from this download:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c7a...

The image expires at the end of this year, but expect a newly updated image to become available shortly after.

lacker
It doesn't seem evil so much as misguided - isn't it best for Apple to encourage as many developers to use their platform as possible? I can't imagine the money they make off this sort of thing amounts to more than a drop in the bucket overall.
wheels
It's almost like there are three important groups of people: developers! developers! developers!

Ahem.

wmf
One supposed explanation is that Apple only provides beta stuff (and docs for betas) to paying developers to weed out people who aren't serious developers.
aneesh
I would argue that it's not Apple's role to weed out subpar developers. It's the market's role to do that.
gaius
Strategically, Apple doesn't want anything on their platform that doesn't fit in. Nintendo and Sony are exactly the same with their consoles.
sjh
Nintendo and Sony have formal, up-front approvals processes for their respective consoles, which - if controlling what goes on/does not go on the platform is the goal - seems a better way of going about it.

Incidentally, SCEE has quietly dropped the approvals process for PS2 games in Europe.

pgebhard
They could also be trying to avoid tons of poorly built apps that overwhelm the market. I seem to feel that this is somewhat the case with iPhone apps.
HansF
Or are poor.
pgebhard
True, but only at the beginning. I think if you were a great programmer, you would likely build something that made money and you would no longer be poor. This does seem like a chicken-or-the-egg dilemma, though, by not being able to develop something without easy access to docs. Apple Developer Connection is free, however.
silencio
I don't know if it's worth it. I attended WWDC and by far the more interesting and educational experience were the labs and networking, and the videos are close to bordering on "meh". Useful if I want to learn something but I don't know if I'd pay up to $1000 for them, and I most likely could just live without it and asking questions on forums/mailing lists/irc.

I do believe there are some sessions available on ADC on iTunes from older WWDCs that you can watch, as well as some iPhone videos one may find handy that are all free.

aurora72
I'm speechless. I thought the age of video-sharing has lowered the cost of watching videos!
sjh
Apple may perceive a cost in supporting developers who may be less likely (or unlikely) to contribute to their platforms. Inasmuch as charging a fee for WWDC videos, or the iPhone program (or whatever), would deter such developers, not only would it save Apple this cost but it would allow them to focus their support on those who are more likely to contribute to their platforms.