Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iTunes, Apple, iPhone
Apple posts iPhone SDK Roadmap event on iTunes
Not a fan of streaming video? Then Apple has done you a solid by posting the video of Thursday's iPhone SDK Roadmap event on iTunes. The video clocks in at 796.5 MB, but the download speed is very snappy.
I am a big fan of Apple making these videos available so quickly, but does anyone else find their method of distribution odd? Using iTunes is brilliant, but why create a one shot podcast for each event? It seems to me that creating one 'Apple Events' podcast would be the way to go. We could all subscribe to it, and get the latest video right when they are available. That's just how podcast is supposed to work!
Thanks, Jeremy.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jonathan Allen said 4:07PM on 3-08-2008
I have wondered for a while why they haven't put them all under the same podcast.
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Joe said 4:38PM on 3-08-2008
i think they dont because of the bandwidth needed to serve all of the subscribers it would have would be too much for them to feasibly handle for a non-profit aspect of their business
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Kuy said 4:38PM on 3-08-2008
I think it's because they secretly know that it will cause Mail.app to blow up if anything big is attached to an RSS item.
Does it still do that?
-Kuy
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Galley said 4:48PM on 3-08-2008
Just in time. I tried streaming it last night but it kept timing out.
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Bassir said 4:48PM on 3-08-2008
I noticed it can also stream to your iPhone if you simply go to the page on Apple's site and chose "watch" and it'll load the event via Quicktime in Safari.
I was really quite impressed when I found this out.
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Dr. Dave said 6:44PM on 3-08-2008
I think the point is probably to drive people to the iTunes Store home-page, rather than get the new goodies automatically.
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Scott Reynolds said 6:23PM on 3-08-2008
I agree that the method of distribution is a little odd, but that's about as much as I've thought about it. Really, what I'm most concerned about is simply being able to watch it. It's a lot more convenient to do this on the Apple TV.
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ramond said 7:56PM on 3-08-2008
I hate how they don't tell you the resolution. Like is this for the ipod or 720p for the apple tv or what?
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Doc said 3:24AM on 3-09-2008
I wish they were 720p(HD)!
You can stream HD but can't DL it, if anyone knows of a HD DL **PLEASE** post a link our better yet tell us how to find the link in the future:)
Anyway I am really happy they release these. I used to have to get these by way of bit torrent, thanks steve
Anyone interested in some older apple keynotes/videos checkout the links.
http://www.mahalo.com/Steve_Jobs_Keynotes
&
http://www.esm.psu.edu/Faculty/Gray/movies.html
Rick said 8:20PM on 3-08-2008
yeah, i've thought that as well. maybe someone should create the podcast themselves and only link to Apple's videos... is that possible?
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deanr said 11:29PM on 3-08-2008
Because people subscribed to the podcast would set it to automatically download the new videos and fubar the server when alot of the subscribers would not be interested in every single video
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Kelmon said 6:07AM on 3-09-2008
In fairness, I started watching the HD streaming feed yesterday in Belgium and was thoroughly impressed with the image quality and the speed at which it streamed at. Definitely a good experience for this broadcast and gives me cause to hope that the Movies Rentals service for the Apple TV, as and when it launches, will be very good in terms of performance.
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punkassjim said 1:49PM on 3-09-2008
They've also started posting their SDK/xcode tutorial videos to iTunes U for free. I thought that was pretty sweet. I downloaded the 11 videos, so now I can watch them on my iPhone on the go.
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Samuel said 6:01PM on 3-10-2008
I'm glad you're in charge of this blog. Its comments like this that make me feel the internet is the place to be
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dispatchevent said 12:03AM on 3-11-2008
I think the reason why they don't just put it all in one podcast, is that although people can subscribe to a podcast, not all are all that interested in listening or watching them. How many here are subscribed to a bunch of podcasts, that you've fallen woefully behind in, and probably don't intend to catch up. That's maybe 50mb wasted each podcast episode?
So imagine each of these 900 - 1300mb keynote videos being downloaded onto users machines.
Users get upset because they're not being told when massively large files are being downloaded. It's their fault in my opinion, if you subscribe to a podcast, that's exactly what you get.
Secondly the bean counters would cry when they calculate subscription numbers, multipled by video size, multiply by cost per mb.
Having on demand one-shot podcasts for each event solve both of the above issues. People who really care would subscribe to the one-shot podcast.
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