One Canadian’s Comments On Life Lucien W. Dupont’s weblog

Inside the keynote.

 

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

Awaiting the start.

WWDC Keynote line

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

The long wait begins.

Snow Leopard

This morning when I started reading rumors of Apple announcing 10.6 at WWDC on Monday, I thought “not gonna happen”.

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….

Healthy WWDC

Healthy WWDC

(Via Downshift.)

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

Quote From Mark Twain

This has been staring me in the face for a good month or so at work, as I test and fix some final bugs on the product I’m working on. I figured I’d post it here as a reminder to take some risks in life.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. - Mark Twain

CocoaHeads Portland - Core Animation Demos

Tonight CocoaHeads Portland meets at Extensis in downtown Portland.

The topic is Core Animation, folks will be showing little examples that they’ve written, and what they learned about Core Animation.

5:30 pm - snack and chatting before we start
6:00 pm - Q&A Session (bring your Cocoa questions)
6:30 ish - Show and talk about Core Animation
7:30 ish - finished, hang out time

Feel free to arrive at 5:30 pm for some snacks and chatting before we start up. If you arrive late (past 6pm), you will need to call my cell phone and we will send someone down to let you in.

Apologies for the late details - join our Google Groups list to get the very latest:

http://groups.google.com/group/pdx-cocoaheads

Extensis Portland (Google Map Link) - 1800 SW 1st Ave, Portland, OR - Suite 500

Update: Thank you for the very cool demos and good discussion - and the hangout time afterwards! I hope to post code later on in the month.

Why repealing the gas tax for the summer is bad

Please, go and read this. John McCain and Hillary Clinton don’t understand basic economics.

My pocketbook is hurting too.. but maybe it will force us to drive less, purchase far more efficient and smaller vehicles, and eventually switch to hydrogen or plug in vehicles like the Chevy Volt.

Wall•E

 

 

Wall•E, originally uploaded by Lucien W. Dupont.

I am really looking forward to this movie!!!

Web 2.0 Typography

Web 2.0 Typography

(Via Manage This.)

Jim posts a pretty cool article about the Web 2.0 Conference going on now in San Francisco, and the designs of the free stuff. Well worth clicking through to read.

A short video of me at Extensis

Click through and go watch it. Yes I do need to work out more.

Interview with Extensis software engineer, Lucien Dupont