Plane has finally arrived, originally uploaded by Lucien W. Dupont.

Off to WWDC 2010!

Off to WWDC, originally uploaded by Lucien W. Dupont.

A few days early for some time with family.

But I wanted to say – wow, what a great conversation – the lady who called was genuinely happy about me coming, and excited for next week. And she’d happily turn off that flag for me in my account.

A pleasant change from faceless application rejections (of which I have not yet experienced).

Inside the keynote., originally uploaded by Lucien W. Dupont.

Awaiting the start.

WWDC Keynote line, originally uploaded by Lucien W. Dupont.

The long wait begins.

My reasoning was the following:

• 10.5 hasn’t been out long enough for a really wide user adaption.
• Users won’t want to pay another $120ish for a new OS so soon.
• Apple doesn’t have enough engineers to add enough new features to an OS to be a big enough upgrade.

Then John Gruber posted a few interesting comments – first to an article about Snow Leopard being ‘pure Cocoa‘. This makes complete sense to me – see the QTKit as an example of the start of that. Having a consistent Cocoa API for everything is a win for newer developers who don’t know (or care) about Carbon.

Gruber also points to TUAW’s post on the subject, in which they comment that it’s a stability and performance release, and even perhaps a grand unifying OS release (Touch/Macintosh/Apple TV).

This unifying theory more than anything makes the most sense to me. Apple, like every Mac programming company these days, is hurting for good people. When they try and hire folks, it’s often a hard sell to get someone to move to the bay area given it’s high cost of living. So, why not consolidate the code, and have one repository containing all three from which you can build off of, with a shared base of source. It would alleviate having to build three large teams, or even three medium teams. One core OS team, and then three smaller teams to do the respective UI and platform specific frameworks.

What would this allow them to provide? Well, we’ve seen two – AppKit and UIKit. How about a third? AppleTVKit? I wonder if one of the unannounced sessions is one on the programming environment for the next release of the Apple TV ‘operating system’? I wonder if Apple will have a built in application store? It would be a fantastic opportunity for Apple to pull ahead in the set top box arena. Netflix Player anyone?

Here’s hoping….

(Via Downshift.)

Justin of Second Gear posts a great article on how to have a healthy WWDC. Wise words if you are going.

But, in no particular order is my thoughts on what we’ll see at WWDC:

- The ‘secret features’ we were promised. These have to appear. Something called the secret features has to be announced by Steve. I have a few thoughts on what they might be, but I think the biggest one is going to be a new look for Aqua. Or something to replace Aqua. Things have just felt bolted on to me in the ‘shall not be mentioned’.

- Free iPhones for all the attendees. Yes, I still remember the free iSights from a few years ago. Yes, deep down I hope Steve surprises us with the ability to either get free iPhones, or buy the first 5000 without having to line up at a store. Deep deep down I hope we can pick one up with our DVD of Leopard. But then I wake up and realize it’s not going to happen.

- No SDK for the iPhone. I haven’t worked on any sort of SDK, but I’ve been around Apple and Apple developers/evangalists/cocoa api engineers enough to know that they aren’t going to have time to rush out an SDK for third party developers. I hope they have time to finish the iPhone to a good enough quality to not spoil the first day purchasers experiences.

- New enclosures for the Mac Pro’s and monitors. We’ve had these encloses for a long while, I think a good 3 years correct? I understood this at first – hey, we’re switching to Intel, but they’re still Macs! Don’t worry, stick with us. Now.. well now, here we are.. everything is Intel based, we’re on second revisions of chip sets, sometimes third. Let’s see what Jonathan Ives and his folks have been doing.

- Wednesday night is TBD. I think we are going to see Ratatouille on the big screen before the June 29th release date. Which would suck because I want to also go to the Cocoaheads meeting at the Apple store in San Francisco.

I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on what we might see.

Speaking of the crowds, I’m pretty shocked at the lines. There are a TON of people here, to the point that rooms are closed as full, not allowing any more people in (probably a fire marshal thing).

Initially during the keynote I said to a coworker “I’ll be upgrading to Leopard just for Time Machine”. After seeing sessions on Core Animation and the Cocoa support for it (all of which I can’t write on) I think Leopard will be most popular because of applications that use Core Animation. There’s enough there to take a chance on writing a Leopard only app.

Last night before the ADC Awards, I headed over to the Metreon to pick up something a bit more healthy than pizza, and I happened upon Brent Simmons eating dinner.. stepping out of my somewhat shy zone, I said hi and introduced myself again, and he graciously invited me to sit with him for dinner.. it was good, but I was nervous – maybe because I’m a user of his software, and I know what it’s like when when users come up and start requesting things.. and he’s a celebrity in a sense.. or at least it feels like it to me.

Tonight I went to a dinner with some of the Portland CocoaHead folks – it was fun, and we’re hoping to restart the group in a few months.

Tomorrow, more sessions, and then the campus bash. Oh, and I have a wicked sore throat.. fun fun!

I arrive at SFO @ 12:05pm, and I’m staying the week at the Hotel Nikko (corporate travel got me a deal). I’ll be at Buzz’s big bash on Monday night too. But I’m up for meeting new developers/students this year. If you want to chat, or hit breakfast in the mornings, give me a shout on my cell phone: 503-819-8904. (I’m pulling a Scoble posting my cell phone number, please be kind).

I’ll be posting here my thoughts, as well as some pictures of what I’m allowed to take pictures of during the week. (Jennifer has kindly loaned me her D20 and lenses, quite the upgrade from the dented S60 I have now).

And no, I have no predictions. Except new professional towers. And maybe 802.11n hardware from Apple.

I’ve only found one on the iTunes music store, but not with a lot of songs..

That being said, I’m missing all the excitement.. I didn’t want to leave yesterday riding in the cab on the way to the airport, I wanted to move back, I wanted to go into work, I wanted to attend the last two days.. but, life can’t be changed that quickly.

Short thoughts on WWDC, I’ll post more this weekend:

- XCode 2.1 is really, really nice. I can’t wait to start using it on QuickBooks (hopefully in the next few weeks).

- The new version of the .Mac Kit that is going to be released July 1st (the only session not under NDA) looks really, really cool. More about that later too.

- I am going to be on a panel answering what questions I’m allowed to answer at the PMUG meeting on Monday evening.

- last but not least, I’m the most optimistic about the future of Apple right now. Imagine, never being behind on the latest CPU technology.. dwell on that thought for a while, and tell me you don’t get optimistic too.

And imagine a dual core, low power pentium in a powerbook..

I’ve heard a lot of doom and gloom at WWDC today from various people.. but I look at it as an opportunity for the future, a potential expanding of the mac market share to 30% in 5 years.

I also think now is the time to purchase a Mac if you’ve been holding off.. what better time to buy one now, something nice and fast, and then in two years or so upgrade to the latest and greatest Mac box with an Intel chip.

Ok.. super tired, getting up in six hours for breakfast with some co-workers. Night. More general impressions tomorrow. (I’m only staying this year until Wednesday, flying home wednesday night).

Banners at the convention centre, originally uploaded by Lucien W. Dupont.

Here’s the nice, dare I guess Tiger blue banners at the centre this year.

I was hoping this would have turned out better.. I need to practice taking pictures.

WWDC 2005 Swag, originally uploaded by Lucien W. Dupont.

Here’s a picture of what we get this year. The standard bag, t-shirt, badge and pen.. this year we also get a water bottle, and guides for each day.. suspiciously Monday is absent.

Update: Not suspiciously, I missed Monday’s, which is on the one with the maps. Sigh, time to go to sleep.