WWDC - Day 2

Well, there isn't a whole lot I can say. I respect the NDA I signed and therefore can't reveal the contents of any sessions. However, I can say that I almost fell asleep in a number of sessions; some of the presenters assume zero knowledge from the attendees. While that may be the case for a number of the developers, I've been doing this for awhile.

I did run into someone that I knew from college; Dean Dauger has been a Mac developer for ages. I remember in college he had a prototype Quadra 840 AV. I thought it was so cool that he had prototype Mac hardware.

I'm still quite excited about iPhone; I just need some good ideas for some apps. Some of my posts in about a month may reveal more information and some of my concerns about the iPhone, but for now, I have to keep quiet.

Oh, I've been reading more and more about the pricing and it looks like the minimum AT&T plan for the iPhone 3G is $70 per month. That is a bit steep compared to the awesome plan I have; however, I got my plan at the start of the smartphone era before carriers really knew what was going on. This, of course, keeps me with Sprint as no one can match it.

WWDC Keynote - My take

Lots of web sites have their opinions on the WWDC keynote (pretty much all I can talk about all week), so my comments will be brief.

I really, really wanted a new MacBook Pro; my machine is now 2 years old running a Core Duo processor and not the newer Core 2 Duo. My machine is quite sluggish and as soon as Apple announces new MacBook Pros, I'm ordering one. Likely by then, I'll be able to get a 320 GB 7200 RPM drive which will be great, but the machine won't be available soon enough.

The 3G iPhone was a given, so that wasn't a surprise. The GPS wasn't a surprise either, nor the enterprise features. What was a pleasant surprise was the $199 price. This pretty much means that the number of iPhones is going to sky rocket and the market will be huge. I'm hoping that this will translate into more work for me with companies wanting me to build iPhone applications.

The rest of the keynote really wasn't all that catchy. I was hoping for the "one more thing", but we didn't get that.

One thing that the person next to me commented on is that Steve looked a little thin and that Phil Schiller may have gained the weight that Steve lost. Could that have affected the pizzaz of the keynote? Was Steve not feeling well? Or did Steve not want to upstage the 3G iPhone? It's quite probably that this conference will be basically an iPhone conference. Another thing that surprised me is that Apple will basically have a 2 month lack of iPhone inventory. I guess this will cause people that bought not to be pissed off by getting an older model, but 2 months of sales is a lot to sacrifice.

I've noticed that there are a ton of people that haven't done Mac or iPhone development judging by the list of sessions. With my 6 years of Cocoa experience, I hope that this gives me a leg up on doing iPhone development. We shall see; I'm sure that there are a number of talented developers that will create excellent applications (I've been amazed at some of the demos I've seen).

Today has been a long day and I'm quite excited about the iPhone; I keep running into people I've known for years and have enjoyed talking to them about what the iPhone means and where it is going. I'm not sure what the rest of the conference will hold, but it better slow down or I'm going to collapse before the end of the week!

Oakland Airport vs SFO

When I was booking my flight to attend WWDC, I could fly into either SFO or Oakland. I'm been flying into Oakland for a long time anytime I've come into San Francisco. Back in 1995, the first time I came to Macworld San Francisco, I flew into SFO because I didn't know better; I then took a bus into town. Pretty much after that when I came into San Francisco myself (I came a number of times for work and we always took cabs in), I flew into Oakland because BART went to Oakland Airport via the AirBART shuttle and Southwest stopped flying into Oakland. My last trip to San Francisco, I got annoyed with Oakland because I didn't have the exact fare for AirBART (now $3) and had to scramble to get change and the 15-20 bus trip to transfer to BART was a pain.

So, for this trip, I decided to try SFO because Southwest started flying there again and a BART station was built at the airport a number of years ago, connected via a tram. I must say that it was much smoother flying into SFO as I got off the plane, walked to the tram, took it to the BART station and made it right into San Francisco. In addition, it is slightly cheaper. I'm now a convert to SFO!

Misinformed Runner

In today's local paper, a reader wrote that he was disappointed that the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon was 26.5 miles and not the standard 26.2 miles according to his Forerunner 305. The letter annoyed me as the author is a bit clueless about marathons. I've thought about writing letters to the editor all the time, but finally pulled the trigger.

I read the letter from Joe Chavez about the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon and was very annoyed that the author thought he knew more about the marathon than the organizers. If he had done any research, he would have known that a marathon is measured as the absolute shortest distance along the course; this means taking all of the inside corners and not zig zagging on the course, like many runners have to do in order to pass slower runners. In addition, while the Forerunner 305 is an excellent training device, it is not 100% accurate. I ran the marathon in 2006 and 2007 and my Forerunner 305 also registered 26.5 miles; I know that I had to zig zag to avoid runners and definitely didn't take all the inside corners.

Joe should have done a little more research before accusing the organizers of stretching out the marathon.

Scott Gruby

San Diego

I'm not sure if they'll publish it, but it felt good to write it. If the author was around, I'd slap him upside the head.