It’s the end of the week and I’m bushed. I suspect there’s a few folks even more “bushed” than me – it’s been an intense week of talking, learning, and “socializing”. I ran across a bunch of folks I’ve seen before, and I think I was introduced to an equally huge number of folks. Hooking up with some other geeks from work was really interesting as well. Sitting around chatting with Michael Johnson about web applications and codecs used in video production may not sound all that interesting, but he’s a funny dude.
The pieces that excited me the most from the conference is the detail that we learned about “Grand Central” and some of the associated componentry within the next release of the OS: Snow Leopard. Outside of the NDA boundary, there’s not a lot of information – but I walked away from the sessions with a deep appreciation for Apple’s forethought and insight into how to not only keep up, but take full advantage of the concurrent/multi-core world that we’re heading into.
Outside of Snow Leopard I spent a huge amount of time focused on the various iPhone technologies and details. The labs and UI review at the conference are amazing wells of technical help that I wish were available more often. Priceless help, to be honest. I’m glad that I spent the time to get myself into a state where I could take advantage of it. I actually walked away this afternoon wishing I’d done more so that I could take even greater advantage of what was available.
In addition to my own work, I saw a lot of fantastic applications that are going to be great to get out into the market. Nobody was committing to a date on the App Store launching, but there was an intense amount of interest on who would have applications ready to roll for launch, with the understanding that it was coming up pretty darn quickly in the future. My own personal bet is July 11th, but I’m not convinced as I think Apple will have their hands full with the new iPhone launch at that time as well. So if not then, shortly thereafter I guess.
And no – I didn’t see any 3G iPhones. I’ll be waiting with the rest of the masses to get my grubby paws on one.
Rhonabwy 