Last week’s trip to San Francisco was my first visit to the city and first time at WWDC. I flew in from NYC since I was on another trip and arrived Sunday afternoon. Getting up early for the Keynote on Monday was easy since I was still on east coast time. Several friends and I got in line at 6am and ended up having a pretty good spot for the keynote.
The Keynote
After taking the stage, Tim Cook gave his usual numbers about WWDC attendance, app revenues, and retail stores. A startup called Anki demoed small electric racing cars powered by artificial intelligence algorithms from within an iPhone. Aside from a minor hiccup, the demo was exciting and aims to pioneer a new kind of real word gaming experience. You can find information about Anki and their new product in the Anki Drive app. Several people expressed opinions about the strangeness of this demo during the keynote. They felt like it came from nowhere and lacked relevancy. As I watched this demo, it seemed natural that Apple would lead with a focus on what developers had done and were doing. This is a developer conference. They wanted to showcase developers’ creativity and products that go beyond apps. Lastly, with the announcement of game controllers, the demo was a perfect example of the new innovations in iOS as a gaming platform.
Next came Craig Federighi’s demo of OSX Maverick’s new features. I loved the focus on optimizing the operating system and applications for battery life. These battery life improvements combined with the newly announced MacBook Air’s 12+ hour battery life will really be a game changer. OSX certainly could use better battery life, but hopefully iOS will get similar improvements as well. The improved multi-display support in Mavericks will be helpful, but it’s almost like one large bug/oversight that has been fixed, rather than a feature.
Phil Schiller previewed the long awaited refresh for the Mac Pro. For me personally the Mac Pro’s processing power is enticing, but for the presumably steep price tag and my constant need for a portable, I’ll probably pass on getting one. Several have criticized the ‘trash can’ or ‘R2-D2’ design, but I kind of like the little guy. It’s quite small in person, and I think the symmetry works well for the product. If you haven’t seen the product page for this computer, you should definitely check it out now.
Apple announced iWork for iCloud in the browser. Although I am perfectly happy with the native apps, I think with the proper collaboration features, this could be a competitor to Google’s alternative. Also, since the product is cross-platform, iWork has the potential to convert Windows users over to the Mac.
And then it happened, iOS 7, the largest redesign of iOS to date. The boldness of the colors and icons were very surreal at first, and a few of the icons still don’t sit well with me. After seeing several demos I think the best redesigns were the new Calendar and Photos app.
There were so many announcements at the Keynote. All of Apple’s quietness in the past months makes sense after seeing this one huge event. There were so many announcements that you may have forgotten a few:
Car Display: Beautiful iOS integration for your car. Coming in 2014. Unfortunately no BMW or Mini support yet. Besides most noticeably Toyota, many large car manufacturers have signed on. I would love for an aftermarket screen that would work in any car, but that’s probably wishful thinking.
iRadio: The long rumored Apple Radio service was announced. This service seems threatening to Pandora and is supported by iAds.
Siri: Apple announced several new voices for Siri. Also, Siri now uses Bing for web searches.
I talked more about iOS 7 in another post sharing my thoughts about the design changes.
The Week
The rest of the conference was a great experience as well. All of the sessions and labs are under a non-disclosure agreement so I can’t discuss them explicitly. I will say that Apple has been very busy and has made huge improvements for developers. Apple has made great apps so that developers can make great apps. After visiting a few sessions, I started to loose interest, knowing that these would be readily available as videos. I turned my time to the labs which were hosted by Apple engineers who were ready to give code level advice. I went to numerous labs to answer questions and get advice on several projects I had been working on. With the engineers’ help I confirmed a bug in MapKit in iOS 6 that one of my apps suffered from. I also had a great experience in one of the labs talking with an engineer who supported my implementation of a complex feature by saying that was how it was implemented in iOS. I even met with some of the heads of the app review team. One morning I got up at 7am to get in line for the User Interface Design labs. There was a huge line, but I was able to make an appointment. I think this lab was especially coveted because of all the major design changes in iOS 7.
Throughout the week I fell in love with the city. The weather was beautiful and the people are friendly. I loved the cities practical initiatives for recycling. Most stores will aim to reduce waste by asking you if you need a bag instead of blindly giving you one. If you do need a bag, it is made out of recycled paper and costs you 10 cents extra. This is such an elegant solution at almost no cost to the store and little cost to the consumer. Also to my enjoyment, organic and healthy food options were quite prevalent in the city. The Asian cuisine was particularly amazing and I visited several noodle places with friends
The trip was a great experience. It was enjoyable to meet so many other developers and be able to talk about the vast amount of work Apple has been doing. It was also great to pull back the curtain and get to meet so many of the people at Apple. I’ll miss the food, the ability to pop into a lab with any questions, and overhearing a random person in a restaurant talking about some obscure part of iOS development.