VelociPeek

Song of The Day: Feeling This - Artist: Blink-182

So I just got back from the WWDC 2007 Keynote delivered by Steve Jobs. It was a great time. Without further adieu there were three major announcements, which most can be viewed on Apple’s updated site today:

• Safari 3.0 on Windows
• Leopard OS X with 10 major features
• iPhone 3rd party apps via Web 2.0, AJAX, and the Safari 3.0 engine

The Leopard features listed and reviewed by Jobs were:

1. New Desktop (menu bar, dock, stacks (of files and downloads)
2. New Finder with iTunes-like Cover Flow
3. Quick Look (i.e., to view docs without executing apps)
4. Full 64-bit support (e.g., in Cocoa too)
5. Core Animation
6. Bootcamp (stock with Leopard)
7. Spaces (i.e., virtual desktop-like application)
8. Dashboard with Web Clip and Movies widget
9. iChat with Theater
10. Time Machine

There is a lot to write, but I’ll have to get to some of it a little later. The keynote opened with a video of the “PC-guy” claiming to be Steve Jobs, so here is a cell phone partial clip of it:

Fake Steve Jobs - clip1

Fake Steve Jobs - clip2

Steve Jobs opened the keynote proclaiming that more than 5000 WWDC attendees with over 950,000 developers world-wide, 200K more than last year. A partial cell phone video can be seen here:

Real Steve Jobs - clip1	Real Steve Jobs - clip2
Jobs on Leopard	Jobs on 64-bit processing

Jobs on iPhone - clip1	Jobs on iPhone - clip2
Jobs on iPhone - clip3	Jobs on iPhone - clip4

One of the more surprising aspects of the keynote was the proclamation that Safari 3.0, that will run on Leopard and Windows, is 2x as fast as IE7 and 1.6x faster than Firefox 2.0 according to iBench:

Jobs on Safari 3.0 and its speed

As an unexpected treat, John Carmack presented new technology for game developers and designers. I have a couple of mini-clips of it here:

John Carmack - clip1	John Carmack - clip2
John Carmack - clip3	John Carmack - clip4

When I arrived at 5:30am to get in line for the event, I wasn’t the only person standing there nursing coffee!

I have to give a special thanks to Ryan and Charlie (pictured above) for helping me bide the time away with great conversation. Ryan develops his own Mac software at Chimoosoft and Charlie works at UCLA, College Library Instructional Computing Commons.

More to come later….

Tags: Eric O’Laughlen, Apple Computer, WWDC 2007

Song of The Day: Coming Up - Artist: Paul McCartney

It’s been a while since I blogged, but today seems like a fitting day to check in. I’m in San Francisco this week for the WWDC 2007. There are various thoughts about what will be announced, but it would be nice to hear an official announcement involving the iPhone and 3rd party integration. How nice would that be?

Steve Jobs alluded to this already at D5, but it would be great to hear some more news. Regardless, it will be a fun and rewarding week.

One thing I never tire of, unashamedly, is the conference loot. :) This year’s black t-shirt has “WWDC07″ on the front and the quote “Power to the programmers” on the back. Attendees also get a carrying bag, a badge, and conference maps upon registration.

The conference registrars tell attendees that all sessions are confidential except the keynote, so I’ll be sure to publish a few thoughts and notes about the keynote afterwards. As usual, all the major news outlets will cover things, but I’ll provide a personal account for any interested.

Tags: Eric O’Laughlen, Apple Computer, WWDC 2007

Song of The Day: Inside Out - Artist: Eve 6

It’s been a while since the WWDC 2006, but thought I’d still share a few thoughts about my experience. WWDC is Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, which was held in San Franciso, CA between from 8/7-8/11 at Moscone Center. Overall, the conference was great and it was nice to be a part of the hype, announcements, and technical overviews. From the people to which I spoke there seemed to be two primary camps and attitudes: a) those that were ecstatic about the enterprise updates to Xserve and MacPro, and b) those that were slightly let down that a “new Apple device” (e.g., something like a cell phone) wasn’t announced.

What was the hidden major accomplishment in my opinion? Well, maybe not hidden, but it didn’t seem to garner as much attention: Apple’s complete transition to Intel processors from PowerPC processors between the two WWDC conferences. I think that’s a pretty remarkable achivement for a company. I know that the groundwork was probably there for a while, but a lot could have faltered along the way, and, well, nothing did.

The atmosphere was set with various banners at the conference. For example one proclaimed, “Hasta la vista, Vista.” Another read, “Redmond has a cat, too. A copycat.” One even heralded, “Introducing Vista 2.0.” The accompanying pictures are below.

The week was sure to bring some interesting twists…more in future posts.

Tags: Eric O’Laughlen, WWDC 2006, Apple Computer