macOS Is ADC Select worth it?

[berniemac]

I'm a Windows developer in the process of learning Objective C, Cocoa, XCode, etc. I happen to be a student as well so I signed up for the ADC Student membership in order to get a discount on a MacBook Pro. The one time discount was nice but I've noticed there are several additional items offered with the Select account.

I'd appreciate it if anywone with an ADC Select account could answer any of the following questions:

Are the WWDC videos any good?

Are you able to download other software (e.g Final Cut Pro, Aperture) or is it just OS X and OS X Server?

Are there any other resources that make it worthwhile?

Thanks!

 

[Sayer]

Meh...

With Select you get OS X Developer Previews (Seeds of the OS and other things like Dev Tools) and other mailings (I think they still send out monthly mailings?). You also get a "tech support" incident, which basically means you can ask a technical/developer question and get a technical/developer response from actual Apple software engineers.

You don't get Aperture or Final Cut Pro.

If you are a serious developer it is worthwhile just for the advance OS X seeds. Although I haven't really wished I had renewed since my one year Select membership expired, several years ago. With no paid ADC membership you can still log in and get access to Xcode stuff, SDKs and the like. The Apple-hosted mailing lists are all free (and sometimes even useful).

So if you really want OS X preview seeds, pay the $500. Otherwise, save your money. I think they put ADC/WWDC videos on iTunes now...

 

[berniemac]

I get the monthly mailings via my ADC student account but I believe it's all the same stuff you can download with the free ADC account. It also gives me access to any released version of OS X but I think my account is going to expire before Leopard is released.

I tried to access the WWDC sessions on iTunes but the website says you have to have a Select or Premier account. If anyone has used these I'd appreciate feedback on how useful they are.

I have an MSDN Universal account (Microsoft's version of ADC) through my job and it pretty much gives me access to any software Microsoft makes. I thought Apple might do the same thing. I think it would be a good idea because it enables developers to recommend solutions.

 

[Sayer]

With the Premier ADC account you get a "free" WWDC ticket, which is several grand on its own, which is a nice bonus.

Again, even with the completely "free" ADC account you get access to pretty much all SDKs, sample code, documentation and tons of mailing lists moderated/hosted by Apple featuring genuine Apple engineers actually replying to the list (usually).

List of lists (kinda hard to get to): http://lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo

I am sure Microsoft's intentions for giving away all software (well, maybe not ALL MS software) to developers is to get you using *only* MS products end-to-end instead of someone else's products. Products that you may have to pay to upgrade later on - think Vista.

What Apple wants is for Developers to use Apple tools to *make* software specifically for the Mac platform, expanding the available range of products and experienced developers to make more software, hence free developer tools (Xcode, gcc, autoconf, make, ant) with every installation of OS X.

Most of the dev tools Apple ships are actually based on Open Source software such as gcc (compiler) and Dtrace (for Xray).

Now, which company sounds more benevolent?

 

[caveman_uk]

I've just upgraded to select membership. Fortunately a group of events coincided - I needed early access to Leopard to test my app (it works fine BTW), I needed a new macbook pro and the full release of Leopard is out in less than 12 months. For me the combination of discounts and freebies was pretty compelling this year.

 

[berniemac]

Sayer,

I didn't mean to say that Microsoft's offering was better, just using it as an example. Apple gives it's developer tools away which is a big plus. The main difference is that I'm not sure I can get my work to pay for the ADC account!

caveman_uk,

Have you had a chance to check out ADC on iTunes? How many videos are up there and are they any good?

 

[caveman_uk]

I've taken a look at a few of them. They consist of the actual video and a separate package download of the presentation as a PDF. The vids are generally about an hour long and consequently about half a gig in size each. They are a bit odd as generally you get the slides and the speaker...but you don't see the speaker. Off the top of my head I'd say there's about 30-40 presentations on there (don't quote me I don't have iTunes or my mac here at the moment to check).

There's some interesting stuff on there. Sadly I can't say what without breaking the NDA.