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What software does Apple use for WWDC presentations?

M

Michael.Hill

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 22, 2011
19
0
Wasn't sure if this was the right place to ask this, but it seemed like to fit the best.

The presentations they give for WWDC and other high-profile events are extremely content-rich, seemingly very interactive (can include iPhone/iPad/Mac screen captures), etc. I'm pretty sure stuff like that is impossible to do in Keynote or PowerPoint, and I would laugh if someone said Flash (considering how much Apple hates it).

Thanks
 
Don't rule out Keynote

I Imagine they are using a combination of Keynote and Quicktime. Although I have never tried it, it could be possible to stream through a web link or using quicktime through keynote.
 
I mean...it looks like they've got some kind of cable that allows them to do that. Any idea how this is done?

DF10E.png
 
Most of it is obviously Keynote(-based). They have used wireless cameras before to get closer to products, although it seems there was a switch at a higher (hardware) level to do that.

My guess (and it is just that) is that they use a hardware (perhaps software) video mixer to mix
-a mac running keynote
-another mac running a custom program for demos (for which they use those cables that mirror the screen)
-camera input
-backup mac for the keynote (pure speculation, but it seems like a very logical thing to do, even keynote can crash)

that could explain why demos are surrounded by identical "demo" slides. That would then be one slide, and the transition to the actual demo is handled outside of keynote.
 
They use standard keynote. They actually use a newer version than is available to the public, sort of like a beta, but stable, which is why you'll see example of transitions and animations not available in the current (at the time) version of keynote.

On top of that they have a mac running custom code to allow the simultaneous display of a keynote presentation and live footage as shown in the image above. Putting a live feed from the screen of an ipad on a keynote presentation is actually pretty easy and quicktime doesn't need to be that heavily modded to do so. You'd then just drop this custom quicktime file into the presentation as you would any other. Remember that quicktime and keynote use many of apple's standard set of APIs, available to all developers through the developed programme.

The presentation is not entirely run on Mac computers of course, you still need special hardware, like video switches, but all the content is produced by Mac computers.
 
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I've also read that they have redundant backups running the same software and demos, so if one were to crash, they just switch over to a backup computer and keep on going. (There are actually clips of these sorts of crashes and errors on YouTube.)

There's obviously some digital video switching going on to switch between the outputs of the Keynote presentations, live video feeds, video output feeds from devices (like iPad, iPhone), promo video playback, and screen shots from different computers.

Also, I've never quite figured out what that remote box is that Steve holds in his hand. It looks too square to be an Apple product running remote control software, so I presume it's some kind of custom hardware.
 
Having been to a couple of WWDCs, I can tell you that they have a whole booth of production people/hardware in the back of the rooms to support the presentations. The regular slides are probably Keynote, but they switch to separate hardware for demos. The "special" remote that Steve uses is not really that special; all of the presenters at WWDC have them in the different sessions.
 
New iOS would have display mirroring.

notjustjay said:
But what is it? Is it a product I can buy, or something custom made?
Click to expand...

It's probably available commercially. It's just a clicker. Video, even 1080p do not show enough details of clicker to determine what it is.
 
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