This week, I had the opportunity to attend Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). I’ve been to a number of other WWDCs with the last one being in 2008. Things have changed significantly in the past years as the popularity of iOS (iPhone and iPad OS) increases. Unfortunately, I don’t think that the changes are for the better.
I’ve been writing handheld software for almost 17 years and been writing Objective-C software for around 10 years which now makes me one of the old timers in this game. In order for Apple to cater to everyone (all 5200 attendees), they have had to dumb down many of the sessions. In addition as indicated in the keynote, WWDC was going to cover Lion, iOS 5 and iCloud. With iOS 5 being released in the fall, it will be a long time before I actually get to use features in iOS 5, so I’ve sat through many sessions containing information about stuff I can’t use for awhile. Typically the apps I write can’t drop support for an operating system for about a year. (There are some cases where we can use newer features, but for the most part, we have to use the same features across all OS versions.) As my products are now requiring iOS 4, I can learn some of the information from last year’s conference.
WWDC has grown each year which caused it to sell out within hours this year. I was on top of things, so I was able to get a ticket. With all of these people clamoring to absorb all the informations they can, attendees end up waiting in lines for each and every session. This gets old quite quickly. Last year Apple put out the WWDC videos pretty soon after the conference and I hope they do that again this year; watching the videos may be as valuable, or even more valuable, then being at the conference.
The real value, for me, was hanging out with my co-workers and meeting other members of my group that I’ve only met by email. This, of course, is invaluable and there is really no substitute for it.
Will I be coming back next year? I’m not sure.