> I wonder whether Java will get displaced by Swift on the server at some point. Anyone want to place bets?
Last time I checked developing with swift requires xcode, which requires osx, which requires spending excess $1k on what should be commodity x86 hardware, to have it labeled "a Mac".
Nope. No links to video on non-Mac systems. PDFs only.
Do I need to pay the apple-tax just to use their web-pages? That's basically a huge middle-finger to web standards. Absolutely useless crap, borderlining offensive.
Apple is doing some pro-grade trolling here. Not even Microsoft is doing stuff like this anymore.
They probably think that you are not going to download 1GB+ video on mobile. I don't know, you must ask them.
Anyway, there is no conspiracy to deny the WWDC videos to non-Safari users or to piss them off. It's just how the Apple is, they have protocol they were pushing for a long time (HLS), they are certainly not going to use competitor (MMS or DASH).
In Firefox on Android, check Request Desktop Site and you will get the download links. Or use Chrome for Android, it supports HLS streaming. Meanwhile, you can file bug to Firefox bugzilla and ask for HLS.
I don't think Swift would replace Java anytime soon either. From JVM languages Kotlin has better chances, from non-JVM languages probably Go. (Sorry Rust fans, a typical enterprise programmer is not going to learn how to appease the borrow checker).
I have links to download a >1GB video file on Debian/Chrome. That feels like a pretty big middle finger to web standards as far as I'm concerned. No thanks.
Apple uses HLS, because that's their protocol, competitor to DASH (strictly speaking, neither one is a web standard, though DASH is an ISO standard). It does not work for Firefox or Chrome for OSX users either.
As others already said, Swift is opensource and runs on Linux. With Swift 3, also the standard library (Foundation) should be available on Linux too.
However, Swift for Linux is not yet "productized" in the same way, as Swift for Darwin is. You can download a tarball for Ubuntu only, unpack it somewhere and call it a day. It will take a while before you can use 'yum install swift' from EPEL on your shiny Centos/RHEL workstation.
Last time I checked developing with swift requires xcode, which requires osx, which requires spending excess $1k on what should be commodity x86 hardware, to have it labeled "a Mac".
So a big fat no chance there.