Life Is Rich

Another year, another WWDC. I generally blog after every WWDC, and this year I’m a bit behind. Honestly, I’ve been torn between watching all the WWDC video sessions and taking care of the house of woe (my whole house has been sick or demobilized for one reason or another for three weeks – including wife, both kids, and one of the two dogs).

Overall, this was the best WWDC for me yet — although this one was a bit different than past years. First, I realized, this was my 5th WWDC. That’s a bit mind boggling to me actually. It just seems like yesterday I started tinkering with Objective-C and Cocoa and cursing the bizarre syntax filled with brackets. It took at least a year I guess before I fell in love with the expressiveness and self-documentation of Objective-C, to the point where I prefer it now much more than anything else I have to deal with.

Probably the more significant difference from previous years was the near total focus on the newly coined, iOS platform – all things iPhone and iPad (and probably more in the near future). Whereas most of my opportunities at my day job and even in my free time were focused on Mac OS X projects, the last year has slowly seen my desire to play more with the iPhoneOS rise. The release of the iPad has pushed me over the edge (although the iPad pushed me over like a Mack truck hitting me at 100mph). I have no doubt that the iPad is revolutionary to mainstream computing – much of which can be credited to iOS, and to the applications being developed in Objective-C and Cocoa. So, the timing of this years totalitarian focus on iOS caught me at the perfect peak of my interest.

The sessions this year felt very well focused, well organized, and much more helpful than years past. Not that the quality was poor before – I just think the solitary focus greatly increased the cohesiveness and content of the sessions. Better yet, these sessions have been made available within 3 weeks to practically everyone for FREE (versus past years where they cost non-attendees $500+ and generally took multiple-months to release). This is truly awesome. You can’t see everything at WWDC – this year even more so than in the past. Often, the videos are so delayed, their timeliness has passed and they’ve already gone a bit stale. Not so this year. I’ve been filling all my spare time obsessively watching these things – including the sessions I had already attended. They also look great on the iPad.

As far as aprés sessions, I did a couple things different this year. First, I took the pilgrimage to mecca and visited Apple headquarters on Sunday. A couple folks (Jeff LaMarche and Scott Knaster I believe) graciously organized a chartered bus from Moscone down to Cupertino for a small fee. Amazingly, I’ve never been to Apple HQ, and I really enjoyed the opportunity to set foot at Infinite Loop and talk with a bunch of great folks on the way there and back.

Of course, Tommy’s was excellent as usual (I went twice). And I definitely like Anejo better than Reposado (which I guess makes sense). Wholly different this year, I generally avoided the crowded parties and opted for dinners and drinks and such with smaller groups.

The yearly Stump the Experts was excellent as usual, minus some commentary that it might be the last year for the even. I certainly hope not — this would be a travesty and also eradicate one of the last vestiges of history and homage to the Mac, and everything that has come before. Not to mention, it’s just plain fun. In “honor” of my experience a couple years back, I got introduced to the crowd at the start of the show again and given free goodies. It keeps my Stump t-shirt streak alive at three!

For those who weren’t able to attend this year due to the sellout, please make sure to buy your ticket on the 2nd day after they go on sale to insure getting a ticket (2nd day – since I’ll be ordering mine on the first day and I don’t want to take any chances!)