You may be thinking of the labs, where people can go to ask Apple engineers specific questions about different technologies or just get help with problems.

Workshops to be are really more like hands-on tutorials for learning, which does not exist at WWDC (it does at other conferences).

I do remember them having some freebies and stuff at previous ones

They give you a track jacket and that is IT. The track jacket does not have pockets. One year the did give away a nice, if simplistic, backpack. Unlike many other conferences there are no vendors, hence no other free stuff.

Otherwise, I'm not sure what the point is if you already know how to use the APIs and don't have a problem reading about upcoming changes online.

There are a few points of value that have diminished. The first is that the WWDC sessions have usually a lot of good demos about HOW to use the new technology, which is quite a lot more useful than just reading about the raw API. The second was that people used to ask questions after the presentation, which was not on the video - that was done away with last year though, which is a real shame as the questions were often full of insight about the technology and potential issues.

But since as noted they stopped taking questions, and you can also see the videos a week later that reason is not as prominent (though it doesn't hurt to be a bit ahead of the curve).

schmooze your way into Apple employees' good graces?

That's not really a reason to go as it will not do much for you. But what is still valuable there is that you can talk to Apple engineers directly responsible for the different frameworks across the iOS API. These labs took some time to get to someone who was really one of the primary developers, but when you did reach them it could be very useful to find the answer to some deep problem.

It's also useful just to talk to other developers there, pretty much anyone who is there is usually pretty knowledgeable and has worked on some interesting stuff.

It's also good to take a solid week off work and just think about upcoming changes to the API and direction Apple is going,

Also on a side note WWDC usually has some pretty cool lunchtime speakers, last year for instance J.J. Abrams and Neil Armstrong were speakers (different days), for a few years they had a guy from Pixar with a really good talk. It's not a reason to spend some effort and $1600 on a ticket, but it is a nice break.

Not to worry, they'l soon find new jobs writing pilot scripts for Amazon Prime shows.

Good point, I misread.

But it's basically irrelevant for the vast majority of consumer devices that use lash media, no camera in the next 20 years is going to need more than 4GB to store an image. Not even video will require that much space for some time with most devices having pretty strong compression.

And like I said, the discussion is irrelevant to things like external hard drives - those can be FAT but from a computer you can already use any number of modern file systems without the FAT limitations.

Eventually, we'll need more storage. But at the moment it doesn't really matter.

The maximum possible size for a file on a FAT32 volume is 4 GB, and the maximum partition size is 2TB

Large external disks do not really matter. I'm talking about the flash cards used by a variety of electronic devices that are not easily updated to support filesystems.

For flash cards, support for 4GB was overcome long ago. Look on Amazon, 16-32GB cards are common.

So again, FAT (well really exFAT as the other poster noted) is not going anywhere anytime soon, because it supports large enough storage sizes that it will last for a while as a standard (though RED is I think shipping small pluggable storage units that are custom)

I agree with all your statements, but sadly for the sake of sheer convenience I do buy Kindle content. At least they have done a good job of having a lot of reader choices even though they sell the hardware Kindle.

Sometimes I buy digital TV shows also, but only if I can consider it a one-time watching fee, since there is no aspect of ownership involved.

Digital movies? Never, until they are really mine to use as I wish.

For hardware specific devices, I generally agree - unless you are buying the device for some capability outside the sales realm. I would not be against having an AppleTV just to support AirPlay (I would just use AirPlay clients running on OSX or Windows but they don't always work). But if I were going to buy one mostly to play video Roku is the one I'd most be inclined to support.

Lets say F2FS actually makes it to production.

The reality is that every camera in the world today formats flash storage as FAT. So for about ten more years, you're going to have to support FAT anyway.

Microsoft doesn't have to mess with anything, because the giant market with which you cannot be incompatible already forces many things to happen.

I'd be more impressed if Netflix were doing it.

Not me. I thought it was pretty brilliant of Netflix to have every set top maker clamoring to include support.

Then Netflix has no hardware anywhere, and whatever device you choose Netflix wins a bit.

No, swearing BEFORE I robbed him, on the internet. People of low demeanor often need karma applied directly.

News that was just about House of Cards of the other Netflix shows, I'd agree with you.

But among "Nerds", Arrested Development seems REALLY popular, and so even arbitrary news about it would apply - and an article related to server configuration and Arrested Development DEFINITELY is News for Nerds.

You seem to be taking the "coward" part of AC too seriously it would seem. You have about a minute after the person leaves before it's likely to explode. You have also been watching WAY too many movies.

Perfect advice, and smart of you to post AC to avoid all the crap from cowardly and/or idiotic Slashdot posters that don't understand explosives at all.

thanks for helpfully detonating the bomb by moving it.

Would not have happened in Boston, or in any case where someone was simply setting a backpack with a bomb down in public. You would require some adjustment of the device to set it in "explode when moved mode"

The Boston bombs, and most modern no-suicide bomber bombs, are set off by cell-phone. It's a lot better way to make sure you reach where you wanted the bomb to go off and also to ensure it goes off at some meaningful time. Would YOU wander through a crowd jostling people all the time with a device that was rigged to explode when moved?

Wait, you didn't know from watching the media hype on this tragedy that that is a definite possibility when a bomb is left behind?

You trusted the media for ANY accurate facts whatsoever?

Hint: there's a reason bomb removal squads use special gear and particular tactics

They are dealing with found devices with unknown placement parameters and also vigorously trying not to injure any of the officers nearby.

With a bomb just placed in crowd you do not have the luxury to be that cautious. The odds are much better that moving it will cause no harm (before the cell phone activates it), and if you can even just get it behind a simple obstacle like an alley with brick walls or in a dumpster, potential effects of an explosion are dramatically reduced especially in the case of what is a fragmentation device (a dumpster is thick enough that most explosions would be focused upwards away from a crowd rather than the dumpster becoming shrapnel itself).

Try and position your body so that it's between the device and the crowd while you move it.

Do you understand the meaning of the word "crowd"?

Your internet tough guy-ness will probably shield you from most of the shrapnel.

No, it would blow me apart. I'm not tougher, I just actually care about other people.

You can claim to care all you like but when it came down to it you ran and I acted. Even worse, you created a panic that killed or injured people even if nothing was wrong.

Just a precaution though, because homemade IED's made from plans on the internet are super stable and stuff.

Hey brainiac, how do you think the devices got there?

In fact the devices they made were VERY stable, as any hand-carried devices would have to be to transport. They were triggered by cell phone so as long as I don't dial that number while holding them I'm in good shape, and why you have about a minute of safety while the guy seeks some distance.

See, I not only care about other people but I am intelligent enough to take calculated risks for the good of others.

they really did break their respective markets wide open.

Kudos for coming up with a much more accurate way of phrasing this than I did - "Created" really was a wrong term compared with "elevated" or "break wide open" as you said.

Basically they expanded the market greatly for a number of different product categories, and not just hardware - iTunes and online music counts as well, it was really Apple that made that a consumer market (against the will of the music industry).