mac developer for a day
Tuesday, 15. August 2006, 16:27:47
After many failed attempts in the past, I was lucky enough to be invited by our Mac development team to join four developers at the 2006 WWDC at Moscone West in San Francisco. A huge perk for someone on the commercial side of the fence. Maybe all of those years clamoring to the exec team for a stronger Mac port and working hard with good ol' Apple back in 2001-2002 paid off? :-) Still a bit sore Opera was not the rendering engine under Safari's hood-- but that's another story...So first off--- I did not stay the entire week. Too much going on and let's face it, how useful can all those developer sessions be for a non-developer like me? Anyway, after registering and meeting up with the Opera devs (who all flew in from Norway), we were lucky enough to get into the first 1/3 of a monstrous snake of a queue slithering through the 3rd floor of the Moscone. Never have I seen so many shiny Macs in one place.
The Keynote was fantastic. It had all the atmosphere of a Coldplay rock concert and the sound and screens to match. When the indie rock stopped blaring and the lights went down, the cheers (for Steve) went way UP. Steve Jobs, Phil Schiller, Bertrand Serlet and Scott Forstall took turns thrilling the capacity crowd with scintilating demo's, portals into the future of the platform and of course, massive jabs at M$. Watch it here. BOOM. Some of the highlights for me in the keynote was the Mac Pro (huge value fot the price and wonderful industrial design), Time Machine (much needed utility as current backup solution is weak), Mail and iChat enhancements (much needed), Core Animation (very cool), 64bit (top to bottom), and Web Clip (hello Opera!).
One cool tidbit was that we spotted multiple people in the audience using Opera and downloading torrents throughout the keynote. Internet access was spotty at best, so they needed the heavy artillery of Opera to get the job done. Good show.
All in all, it was a great experience. Went to a few sessions after the keynote and then one on Tuesday. Very interesting and impressive to see all of the passion and hard work that goes on behind the scenes in the development community and how much Apple does to nurture it. All-you-can-drink Odwalla during the conference sure helped too! ;-)
That night, I took the Opera team out with an old friend, now working for Apple, to Lulu. Had a great meal, some fancy wine and lots of laughs. Still have not heard back on how the rest of the week went for the devs. I am sure it was a fruitful experience for them and hope it translates into one heck of an Opera 10 on Mac!
Redmond, start your photocopiers....
WIDGETIZE