Apple Launches WWDC 2013 iOS App With Session Video Integration
One week ahead of the start of its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Apple today launched a new WWDC iOS app to help attendees stay on top of the latest news and events going on at the conference.
Context & Ripple Effects
A week before WWDC 2013 opens in San Francisco, Apple has shipped an iOS app that puts session video and conference news on attendees' phones during the event itself — a step beyond last June's post-conference release of WWDC 2012 session videos, when developers waited until the talks were over to watch them.
The pickup is unusually broad for what is nominally a logistics story — TechCrunch, Engadget, Wired, iMore, SiliconANGLE, The Next Web, SiliconBeat and Reuters all ran it — because the app lands into a charged rumor cycle: MacBook inventory tightening and entry-level Mac Pro retail supplies drying up are both confirmed, consistent with the widely reported (though unconfirmed) expectation of new Macs at the keynote.
First-order effects
- Attendees at next week's San Francisco conference get live access to session video and schedule updates in-app, collapsing the gap between a talk being delivered and being watchable that defined the 2012 cycle.
Second-order effects
- The app gives every attendee a real-time publishing channel, which amplifies whatever Apple announces — including any Mac refresh — straight from Moscone West to the developer and press audience before Apple's own newsroom posts.
Third-order effects
- If Apple keeps investing in the event's software layer, WWDC shifts from a one-week gathering toward a year-round distribution surface for developer content, with the app as the persistent touchpoint between conferences.
The trend: Apple is turning its developer conference from a physical event with follow-up materials into a continuously served software platform, with session video moving from post-event archive to in-event product.