Meeting people is key @ WWDC
Yesterday I was chatting with Mike and Jonathan when someone in a mic head set said, hey would you guys like to be on a pod cast. I, being the ham I am, jumped up and said Sure!
Turns out the guy in the head set was Lee Givens of the Mac@AOL Blog and the podcast was from MyMac. Fantastic time, I'm hoping to do more with these guys.
Then a little later in the day I ran into Dave Batton. I first ran into Dave way back about jan or feb of last year on his blog. Reading about 'living the life' in Italy was part of my inspiration to just dump the java world and make the jump. I finally meet him face to face @ the Boulder Cocoa Heads a few months ago. Very cool. He just released a new product that looks great, go check it out.
I had lunch with Scotty. Which was great fun to put a face with the guy on the other end of that skype connection. Scotty brought along Uli Kusterer and Craig. Both really interesting guys to hang out with. I'm esp interested in the design ideas that Craig had. Great to talk to people that have an aesthetic instinct, now to integrate that into my own thinking...
And I had a late coffee with Chris. Fantastic guy building some really cool new stuff.
How cool is that! What a blast to meet folks doing creative and fun stuff seemingly randomly. I love this show.
I also saw some amazingly fantastic demos of some really cool technology... But I can't say more (or probably even that) but as always its going to be a great ride over the next 18 months.
Permalink 1 Comment - Add YoursWWDC is a Blast!
So I'm totally wiped out, took my iPhone games to the UI consultation and the metaphor sucks. Of course the UI expert did not say that but the more I think of it the less I like what I did with it. Initially I was going to use Penguins for the characters but switched. I'm going back to penguins... Great feed back and if you do go to WWDC (or you are here) you should definitely take the time to show these folks you app. They can really really help. Very useful and great feedback.
On another note, I was handing out promo cards for my book and taking with the Core Animation people in the lab trying to make sure that my CATiledLayer example in the book was not lame (i'm reworking it if that is any indication) and ran into the folks from TinyPlannetSoftware. Very cool group of folks and the app is fantastic! Check it out!
The awards thing was cool too. Event though Mike did not win, seeing all the cool apps was really fun.
Permalink Add A CommentWWDC Predictions all wrong...
As usual all my predictions are wrong. Fun to speculate.
New iPhone looks amazing, can't wait to get my hands on one. Update from Scott was not really an update apart from the demos, which were cool.
Mobileme looks great, already got my email from .Mac with 'you will be upgraded automagically' which is cool. I was hoping there would be an SDK for it though. What ever happened to the .Mac sdk...
Permalink Add A CommentWWDC Predictions
Back in the day when I was doing mostly Java I would sometimes post about what I figured would happen at Apple events. Now that I'm doing mostly Apple stuff I think I should be continuing that trend...
I'm making this stuff up...
- iPhone 3G, GPS
- iPhone SDK NDA lifted (please oh please oh please oh!)
- App store open on Monday afternoon, I sell 500K copies of my games and retire
- new form factor iTablet thingy
- Apple TV opened up for development with iPhone SDK, game console, use your iPhone as a Wiimote thingy
- 10.6 preview
- 5% uptick in stock price
WWDC 'Extra Stuff' Posted
WWDC Attendee site is up and running. If you are going you can log in and get your schedule planned out and download sample code etc. I used a bunch of this stuff last year and it was really helpful.
Can't wait!
Permalink Add A CommentThe Best Session Thus Far...
I went to the best preso thus far at WWDC tonight hands down. It was fantastic!
So the evening started off with Gus Mueller from Flying Meat talking about what it takes to be an indie mac developer. He had some great stuff to say but the most important thing I got from him is to be organized. Starting back in March when I heard his interview I really liked what he had to say. Be methodical, automate so you don't mess up. Make your processes work so that you don't waste time doing stuff that won't make better product. Its good stuff. Gus also stressed how important it is to have passion and lots of it, because lots of folks will think you are crazy and might say that to your face :-)
Take Home Point: Be Organized
Next up was Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater and he talked about how to get paid as an independent. It was what you'd expect. To get started you can go easy but expensive, to get more control and more of the money you have to invest more time and energy in learning how to do stuff. You can spend time and energy learning how to take money and you will get to keep more of your money but you have to give up the time you could have spent making better features. The stuff he recommended getting started with was Esellerate or Kagi, because they are easy and you can focus on your app. Then you can do pay pal and their Web Site Payments system, then if you are really crazy you can process your own visa payments and such.
Take Home Point: Start Simple
Wil Shipley and he talked about marketing and how he got started. Wil got started by giving away a bunch of free software. At Omni Group they built software and gave it away on the NeXT and got their name known so when they did have a product to sell people knew who they were. Funny statement 'if we give our software to half the people in the world and they convince the other half to buy it we will be very rich'. Another thing he said is that Apple is your best friend. I spent a bit of time in the 'go to market' lab on Monday and it totally true. Apple bends over backwards to make your product known. Wil had a million things to say but mostly what I got from him was 'just do it'. Whatever it is that you want to do, do it, get out there and make it happen.
Take Home Point: Be Passionate
Everyone talked about passion and how important it is to be passionate. What I took from that (and it might not be what they meant) is that you need to have passion, you don't have to be passionate about organizing CD's or local wiki but you do need to be passionate about what you are doing.
Finally Scott Stevens was fantastic for putting this all together and thinking though the questions that were on everyones mind. It was great, thanks again Scott!
Permalink 1 Comment - Add YoursImpressions thus far...
Having been to many many conferences (mostly java focused) I am impressed with WWDC. It is well organized and the speakers seem to be mostly good.
Of the 9 talks I've gone to so far and roughly 15 speakers (they do multiple speakers per preso at WWDC, different than typical java conf). I've seen two presenters read their slides, one was making me crazy cause he would talk long pauses as if to same something profound then he'd read the next bullet... But you get that kind of stuff everywhere (and I've done it to early on) so no complaints here.
So over all I like it. Something that strikes me though as the overall closed nature of Apple vs the Java community. At JavaOne they encourage you to blog everything, write about everything. At WWDC everything is Apple private, I'm not supposed to blog about anything. I don't like that but I guess I should have expected it. The food is bad but they provide juice and coffee almost all the time which is a nice touch.
I have really enjoyed catching up with some old friends and folks I knew back in the NeXT days. I ran into one of the Omni guys that I worked with way back at AT&T Wireless back in 93/94 and another guy I worked with back at Fannie Mae in 94/95.
Fun Stuff!
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