Thoughts on WWDC

About two weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference thanks to Where. It was certainly an intense week. My days were filled with session after session of Apple engineers sharing their knowledge and guidance with thousands of Apple developers. It was a bit like lectures at college, except the content was about something I work with every day. None of that linear algebra junk. I was also surrounded by tons of developers as well as Apple “OGs.” Despite the occasional “developer smell” that permeated some of the rooms, I met a lot of cool people there including the developers of some of my favorite apps (such as Chess with Friends & Words with Friends). I was also in the presence of the inventor of the drop down menu (though I had to Google his name to find out why everyone was applauding).

Can you find the WHERE logo?

The first WWDC was held in 1983, and was obviously all about the Mac computers. Now, there’s clearly a heavy focus on their mobile devices: iPhones, iPods & iPads. And WWDC 2010 had a big focus on Apple’s newest product – iPhone 4. There’s a lot of new, exciting stuff in iOS 4 & iPhone 4. Here are some things that were most interesting to me:

• Background location updates – The iPhone will let apps (like WHERE!) sleep in the background, and wake them up when the location changes, so the apps can do some cool new things. Apps can then pop notifications to bring the users back into the app if it makes sense.
• Local Notifications – These notifications alert the user to interesting updates, without needing to go through the complexity of a server setup.
• Map overlays – The ability to superimpose things like topographic maps over Google maps.
• Calendar integration – Expect to see some more useful planning apps.
• The “Retina” display – I love this name, because Apple is trying to say, “We could make the screen better, but it’s already so good you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.” Everyone who’s actually seen it has been impressed, and I can’t wait to see it for myself.
• Multitasking – I know Android and jail-broken phones have had multitasking for a while now, but at the risk of sounding like a fanboy, it seems Apple may have actually found a good middle ground for enabled multitasking while still preserving battery life.

Attending the sessions was a great way to get a general understanding of all the possibilities and best practices in iPhone development. However, to truly start to “grok” these concepts, you still need to try out stuff on your own. I’m very excited to see what features/apps developers come up with to take advantage of the new OS and device, and I’m more excited to start implementing some killer features of our own.

Other random thoughts:

• Steve Jobs likes: Ok Go and Vampire Weekend. Steve Jobs hates: your mifi.
• San Franciscans don’t necessary like the Celtics, but they do hate the Lakers.
• This app wall was awesome.
• The average Pixar movie takes 4 years to make.
• Xcode 4 looks pretty cool, but there will be a learning curve.
• The iPhone 4 screen has 4 times as many pixels as older iPhones.
• When 5,000 iPhone users attempt to access a 3G network at once, things don’t work out.

There it is!