WWDC 2007 Keynote Day
6:00 AM Wake up. Ouch
7:00 AM We are on our way to Moscone West and arrive to see the line heading off down the alley from around the building
8:00 AM We are standing in the “holding pen” on the first floor
9:00 AM Stand in line beside gay programmer from law firm in NY that have no Macs. Nice enough guy, but clearly at WWDC for the boondoggle. We make jokes about very large man in green shirt behind us, hoping he does not hear. He must be 6′8″.
9:30 AM We are let up the escalators to run around finding good chairs in the auditorium that already is half full with media and VIPs.
10:10 AM obligatory screen telling us that we can’t record the talk. I have my Sony DSLR and am happily shooting photos like lots of other people.
10:30 AM Steve comes on stage. I have been awake for 4.5 hours already and only had a juice. Ready for exciting news!
To see photos of keynote (you can skip the ones above, go here.
Summary:
- Apple has more fun with the PC guy. (this is starting to get old)
- There are lots of developers writings apps of some kind for OS X.
- Steve likes Paul Otellini from Intel.
- EA and id are writing games for OS X.
- Leopard has a number of cool usability, performance and experience features.
- Apple wrote a version of Safari that runs on Windows
- Developing an app for iPhone means writing a web application.
- iPhone will not support Flash or Java.
11:45 AM I walk out of Keynote underwelmed. Jobs ends Keynote on a low note. Developers are not excited about either iPhone development or Safari. Developers don’t get early access or preferred access to iPhone. Apple is rolling out a new platform, but only they can do the power features. A big let down for a developer conference.
2:00 PM I attend State of the Union talk about OS X. We are reminded that this material is under non-disclosure. I am hopeful that my pilgrimage will prove fruitful after all. Some cool Leopard tech is discussed. Nothing shocking. It will run faster. Not exactly a surprise. Some of the address is just the same material that Jobs reviewed. Yawn.
4:00 PM I am determined to get my money’s worth. I go to the OS X labs to find out if Safari 3 will support extensions so that we can get a version of Sxipper for Safari. Hey, it would now run on a PC and on iPhone! Unfortunately, no, Apple has not seen the value of the addon market that Firefox and IE have. Apple plans to increase their browser share because their app is 2X faster. Wow. 2X faster then instantaneous is irrelevant. Pages are slow because of the connection, not because the browser is slower. We have people switching to Firefox from IE or Safari because they want Sxipper. I just don’t see why people will switch because ti is faster. I do learn the name of the guy in charge of Apple web tech and that there is a Webkit party later on.
7:00 PM I visit the Apple store that is over on Stockton to see what it will take to get an iPhone. They are selling them at 6PM on Friday the 29th. Might as well be Friday the 13th for how crazy it will be. No love from Apple here either.
8:00 PM I go to the Thirsty Bear for the Webkit party. Usual crowd of open source geeks. I collect a Safari sticker and find the man in charge. I ask about extension support. After 10 minutes he finally understands what I want and defers me to someone else. I walk away feeling I have cast my one little vote for a feature request. I talk to some other developers and get the same sense that Apple is not really listening. Too bad. Was hoping we could get Sxipper on an iPhone. Likely not for a while.
Summary:
This was the most attended and least interesting WWDC that I have been to. No iPhone love. Leopard is cool but late. Games are nice, but most of what was shown has been already seen. Given that one can watch a video of the Keynote already from Apple’s site, I don’t know if I will make this annual pilgrimage next year. Will I buy an iPhone. For sure. Will I get Leopard and continue to use Apple gear. Definitely. Am I an Apple fan. Not really.
I have a PowerBook G4/1GHz, and many web sites are slow. Not the connection, the web sites. MSNBC.com on Safari 2 hangs the whole browser.
Comment by pudge — June 12, 2007 @ 8:13 am
It looks like I’m not the only one that was severely disappointed in this years keynote content.
I was really hoping that we would see something new, but it all seemed so familiar that I just had to go and watch the keynote from WWDC’06. With the exception of the new desktop, everything else seem to have been covered last year. Did they forget to do a new presentation this year and just decided to use the old one?
The only thing I can say about the iPhone "SDK" is AARRRGGHH! There dies another application I planned.
I’m still sad I could not make it this year, since the technical sessions still looks like they would have been worth the trip.
Have a beer for me, or at least a good whiskey on the rocks
Comment by Calman Steynberg — June 12, 2007 @ 11:15 am
Does Safari 3 run faster for you? (are you running Safari or Firefox?
Comment by Dick — June 12, 2007 @ 1:47 pm
I think this was a good year to miss. The tech sessions always provide value, but I look forward to hearing about new Apple directions live at the WWDC keynote.
Comment by Dick — June 12, 2007 @ 1:49 pm
Safari 3 is MUCH faster on certain sites, especially MSNBC.com. No more spinning beach ball!
I use Safari most of the time, I use Firefox for a few things, and for JS debugging (Firebug rules).
Comment by pudge — June 12, 2007 @ 9:41 pm
Glad to hear that Safari 3 is helping! I have not had a perf issue myself with Safari, but have switched to Firefox so that I can user Sxipper!
Comment by Dick — June 12, 2007 @ 9:48 pm
Dick - female here. sense of humor is part of identity - re your post-it joke… and obviously that ad was written by a male — a real woman would’ve been long gone.
But I wanted to ask whether this all ‘identity as effect or affect of a persona-cause’ isn’t so Earth 1.0 — isn’t cloud 2.0 all about the holographic ‘effects actually driving the cause?’ - that you are trying to imprison with credentials what is fastly atomizing? Heed the firefox lesson re Apple - aren’t we all just a pile of add-ons and post-its to one another’s holograms?
Comment by quanta — June 13, 2007 @ 1:55 am
Safari 3 beta for windows is a yawn too.
Comment by Matt MacKenzie — June 13, 2007 @ 1:13 pm
I see the digital world enabling us to express ourselves in ways that might not have been easy or possible in the physical world, but our physical world related attributes are still a significant part of who we are and will be.
Look at the rise of Facebook that reflects the physical world much more then MySpace which is more a free for all.
But this all may be my point of view not being a "native" of the Internet.
Comment by Dick — June 14, 2007 @ 12:09 am
That is what I thought it might be.
Comment by Dick — June 14, 2007 @ 12:09 am
I use Firefox myself, and I advocate it to my friends. When it’s a friend using IE I have a lot of reasons for them to switch, but when it’s a friend who uses Safari the only reason I have is Add-ons. It’s like Wordpress, it’s getting to the point where there will be an add-on for everything. I just turn on my laptop and show them the different things I can do with it. I use Add-ons for everything. SEO and Social Networking, I use firebug also, Sxipper… I have over a dozen Add-ons. I don’t know for sure but I really have the feeling that this is getting more and more popular. I sort of grew up with the internet, and I’m usually right about these things. Apple will realize how critical this is but it’s probably going to take failure to have them realize.
Comment by Klyde Beattie — March 25, 2008 @ 12:40 am
I agree completely Klyde. Mozilla has built a platform with Firefox that enables lots of little bits of innovation.
This is what happened to Perl 5 with the ability to create modules and the birth of CPAN.
Comment by Dick — March 25, 2008 @ 1:10 pm