WWDC 2004
So I'm wrapping up at Apple's World-Wide Developer conference, and it has been very interesting.
While there was nothing really earth-shattering at the conference, the incremental advances seem strong. We already pretty much knew that there would be a comprehensive meta-data situation in the new OS, but I was reassured to see a (fast) working prototype. It will be very interesting to see the degree to which this changes the way I use my computer.
Dashboard seems pretty neat (although its resemblance to Konfabulator is troubling to some indie developers) — you really have to see it in action to understand its utility — it is an interesting irony that Apple has gone full-circle in its approach to so-called 'desktop accessories'. Dashboard {gad,wid}gets are basically webpages with CSS3 and JavaScript, which seems odd to me, but we'll see. I am a little bit worried that Apple seems to be adopting JavaScript as a programming language (either to lower the barrier-to-entry for new programmers or perhaps for political reasons they need a common language which is neither Objective-C nor C nor Java?). I certainly don't disagree that a languagelet is needed, but I don't think JavaScript fits the bill. It simply has too much baggage.
Unfortunately, Tiger won't be released until the first half of next year, so no new apps that rely on all the nifty new features will be released until then.
I've noticed that there are a lot of foreigners (German, Australian, French especially) here. And a cadre of Russians running security. The had people at every entrance, near every restroom, at every escalator entry point, and had badge scanners at every room entrance.
All of the sessions except the keynote are under NDA, but one thing I can talk about is Rendezvous (Apple's name for the earth-shattering ZeroConf). The have come up with a way to use ZeroConf globally (i.e in addition to service advertisement and discovery on .local. you can also Rendezvous on an arbitrary domain, so you could ask for all open IM clients at .stanford.edu.).
I've been experiencing overwhelming information overload — I've had to review the program to remember what I saw that day. But I've managed to lose the program now, so I guess I'm screwed. Most of the sessions were great — there were only a couple of clunkers (and these seemed to be very interesting to other people) I've been working on about 5 hours a night of sleep for the whole conference, so my data-retention has been quote poor. I've taken short naps over the lunch break when possible, but this is not enough.
I've also been able to see some people I hadn't seen in a while. Marco and Jessica let Ben and I park our cars in front of their apartment in Berkeley so we wouldn't have to pay the ridiculous fees for parking in the city ($45 a day in the hotel!). I had dinner with them three times and am going out to dinner and seeing Spiderman 2 (I can't wait!) with them at the Metreon tonight. I also had a drink with Andres and his friend last night and have seen lots of Stanford people running around the conference. It has been very interesting to match meatspace people with their e-mail and blog personas.