According to Hoyle...
WWDC '09 Preview
June 2009
by Jonathan Hoyle
jonhoyle@mac.com
macCompanion
http://www.jonhoyle.com
For the second year in a row,
Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference is
sold out. In
2008 when it first happened,
everybody was surprised ... everybody except
Apple
that is. Although there had never been a sold out WWDC previously, Apple was
seeing steady surges of attendance over the past few years. After the long
lines and wait times experienced in 2002, Apple was forced to change its venue from the
San Jose Convention Center
to the more spacious
Moscone Center
in San Francisco. However, this merely postponed the inevitable.
After three straight years of record attendance in
San Francisco
(3,800+ in 2005,
4,200+ in 2006,
5,000+ in 2007),
the next jump was easily expected to max out even the capacity of the Bay Area's
largest convention center. What surprised even Apple was how quickly this
sell-out took place.
After factoring in the necessary number of Apple engineers,
security, media, support personnel, etc, the
Moscone West could
accommodate not much more than 5,200 attendees. That
number was reached a good three and a half weeks prior to the start of the June
2008 conference. Apple made its
sell-out announcement in mid-May,
catching a lot of would-be attendees off guard (not expecting that they could
actually be locked out).
But of course, that was last year. The economy
was relatively good in comparison.
According to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, the
unemployment rate in April 2008 was at a reasonable 5.0%
(and improving slightly from
5.1% of the previous month). This
year is completely different, with
the April 2009 jobless rate standing at a whopping 8.9%.
Businesses are laying people off at record numbers. Companies
are slashing salaries, bonuses, cutting back travel, and even asking employees
to take
unpaid furloughs. Since
conferences and conventions are considered to be discretionary spending, many
figured that WWDC was vulnerable to a dramatic attendance drop this year.
Once again, Apple appears to have broken the rules. Not
only were WWDC ticket sales as strong as ever, and not only did WWDC sell out
yet again, but the sell-out took place even sooner than it did in 2008: by
April 28, 2009
(mere days after early registration ended). All tickets were finalized a
full six weeks before the start of the show. Those lucky enough to obtain
their tickets early (including yours truly) were grateful that they had done so.
As with last year, WWDC tickets are being scalped on
eBay. As
I write this, the bidding war on three WWDC tickets stand at $2,500 and higher,
with plenty of time left to go before these auctions end. How high they
will go it still yet to be seen (as of this writing). Last year's record
was $3,500 for a WWDC '08 ticket. This is pretty impressive, considering that
the videos of all WWDC sessions are made available after the conference for only $1,595. This
year has already broken that record with a winning bid of $4000 for a WWDC '09
ticket [Ebay auction #120421105470]. With still more tickets to be sold,
and the remaining number of days shrinking, one can only guess how high a ticket
price will eventually become.
Expectations
It's a little bit of a risk to write a preview of
WWDC in a monthly column. After all, what you are reading now will be of
interest only for the first week of June. On June 8th, real WWDC news items
will flood the electronic media, making this column all but moot for 23 of its
30 days of life. You fine readers won't be able to read my words of wisdom
about the conference itself until July 1st.
Rereading
last year's preview column of WWDC,
I think my predictions were fairly accurate. I believe I was actually the
first person to publish the possibility of
Snow Leopard
being the name for the next OS. Furthermore, I was also correct in that
10.6 would be
Intel-only. However,
I did miss out on guessing that
Rosetta
(Mac OS X's
PowerPC
emulator) becomes
an optional install item with 10.6. I
had privately assumed Rosetta would not be reduced to optional status until at least
10.7,
and not dropped completely until
10.8. It
appears now that Apple is further ahead in planning obsolescence.
We see that the topic for this year's conference is,
once again, 10.6 Snow Leopard (rather than a 10.7). In fact, Apple intended
to officially launch Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard with this year's WWDC, and it
is clear that its management team is very disappointed that this will not happen. Instead,
attendees will be given what is marketed as
"the Final Developer Preview release of 10.6 Snow Leopard". Of
course, these are just weasel words for "another beta-release" (plus
the added hope that no further release is needed).
At
WWDC '06,
Apple announced some of the new features for its upcoming
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
operating system, which it planned to be released in the summer of 2007. When
WWDC '07 rolled around, Apple added a bit of a surprise with a number of new UI
look & feel, and pushed off Leopard's release to the Fall. Is history
about to repeat itself? At WWDC '08, Snow Leopard was announced with no
UI changes. Yet the rumor mill is all abuzz about a new Snow Leopard look
& feel codenamed
Marble. A
number of web sites are posting pictures and videos of Snow Leopard, which quickly
get removed after legal threats from Apple. Rather than participate in such
risky behavior, I will merely mention it here and rely on my readers' knowledge
of Google to see more.
One casualty this year appears to be the Scientific
Poster session. It had been part of Apple's big push into the scientific
community, and by all measures it was a wonderful display. Running since
WWDC '06,
it appeared to be rather successful. Sadly, it is MIA in Apple's
WWDC Events page. It
is unlikely that this is an oversight. Perhaps the conference is just getting
too big to manage so many events, and this one was at the bottom of the priority
list?
Losing Jobs
With the economy the way it is, people are concerned
about the loss of jobs. The same is true at WWDC: we are concerned about
the loss of one of the most important Jobs:
Steve Jobs. (Okay,
okay, feel free to groan here.) Anyway, after 11 straight WWDC keynote addresses,
Steve Jobs will not be giving the WWDC keynote this year. For
2009, it will be
given by Phil Schiller,
who is on the whole a better choice than
Bertrand Serlet
(who typically hosts the Mac OS X State of the Union).
Rumor has it that
Steve might make a brief video appearance,
so he can wow the audience. This would indeed be a welcome surprise to developers
if it happens. Sadly though, that possibility is heavily dependent upon
how healthy Steve can continue to appear. He didn't look great last year,
so I can only imagine how he must look now. If his appearance, even over
video, does not convey a sense of optimism and confidence, then no appearance
(video or otherwise) will likely happen. The rumor mills suggest that his
health is deteriorating worse than is generally known, and if true, Apple will
need to plan a near-term future without Steve Jobs.
Contrary to these rumors, Apple is speaking openly
about Steve Jobs' return in late June to introduce a new set of iPhones. Would
Apple be so reckless as to publicly speak of Jobs' return if it were not confident
that this was likely? If we are to believe this report though, Steve Jobs
will be fine in late June, yet still choosing to miss WWDC, Apple's single most
important developer event. So, I remain skeptical.
Whatever the truth is, we know one thing now: Apple
is publicly stating that Steve Jobs will not be giving the WWDC '09 keynote.
The big question is: can Phil (or anyone else) bring
the same level of excitement and interest that Steve Jobs had in previous WWDC's? Hard
to imagine anyone being able to do what he did. Let's face it folks: Steve
Jobs saved the company. But did he save it well enough so that it can survive
without him? And will conference goers react with the same level of enthusiasm
under Phil Schiller? We shall see. But it should be noted that WWDC
was filled with rabid Apple fans every year, even prior to Steve Jobs' return.
Topics
Apple has publicly posted a partial list of 118 sessions
and 102 labs on its
WWDC web site,
with the same three tracks as last year: Mac, iPhone & IT. Once again,
the iPhone track appears huge: 64 sessions, 45 labs. However, this may be
a bit misleading, since about half of those are actually Mac sessions that are
cross-listed as iPhone sessions as well. There are actually only 33 sessions
and 21 labs that are iPhone-exclusive. When looking at the Mac track, we
see 72 sessions and 74 labs. Not to mention another dozen or so IT sessions
& labs. In other words, this remains primarily a Macintosh conference,
despite the media blitz about iPhone. Moreover, Mac developers can easily
adapt their software to work on the iPhone/iPod with little effort.
Since the iPhone's
Cocoa Touch API
is primarily a subset of Mac OS X's
Cocoa API
(with a few extensions), one might loosely think of the iPhone as another Mac
platform.
Looking at the session list, I see that
Grand Central Dispatch
(Apple's new multi-core API) appears to be getting some special attention, as is
OpenCL
in general. As processor speeds begin to level off, concurrency across processor
cores becomes the next great opportunity for performance improvements. I
also see some interesting sessions on advances in
Objective-C Garbage Collection
and some well-needed updates to the creaky
NSImage
object. Of course the most interesting will be advances in
Xcode. Last
year's compiler session detailed the alternatives of
gcc 4.2 and
LLVM compiler technologies,
and how this advances will be of particular interest.
With
Xcode 3.1's
release last year, we have seen continued improvements with dot releases (version
3.1.2 is the latest, with this writing). But it's the improvements in newer
versions of Xcode that will be of greatest importance to developers at this year's
conference. One presumes that Apple will keep
gcc
as its default compiler in Xcode, but LLVM may become more compelling in the
not too distant future. gcc 4.0 has been Apple's default for quite a while
now, so it is of no surprise this default changes to version 4.2 under Snow Leopard. But
gcc is not standing still either, with
version 4.3
having been released a little over a year ago, and
4.4
this past April. And as we speak,
gcc 4.5
is actively being developed. Perhaps future version of Xcode will become
compatible with these
latest versions of gcc.
Memories
It's funny how memory works. People tend not
to remember the bad things as much as they think they will. Even in such
a short period as one year. I found this to be true with me.
Case in point: I re-read
my review of WWDC '08
from last July, and I am surprised at how negatively I described it (I gave it
a score of C-). My feelings now are a bit more relaxed about last year's
experience there. All of the negatives I cited (no Mac info in the keynote,
over-crowding, lousy food) all remain valid, but they seem a bit less important
now looking back.
Changes with Snow Leopard are evolutionary, not revolutionary,
making me feel less frantic and more optimistic about the Apple's future. With
the huge changes on the face of the Mac over the past few years (new features
dumped in
Tiger, then
an entire processor switch to Intel,
followed by another massive feature dump in Leopard), it's nice to be able to
work with improved API's on the current feature set (rather than have to rewrite
everything from scratch once again). A grade of C- seems a bit harsh in
retrospect, considering I gave
WWDC '06 a grade of B+. The
food was no better in 2006, it was nearly as crowded, and we were staring down
at a lot more work with the upcoming 10.5 changes. A C+ may have been a
more objective grade to have given it.
Coming Up Next Month: Your intrepid reporter
makes his annual
pilgrimage to WWDC
to report on his findings! See you in 30!
To see a list of all
the According to Hoyle columns, visit:
http://www.jonhoyle.com/maccompanion
http://www.maccompanion.com/macc/archives/June2009/Columns/AccordingtoHoyle.htm