While there still hasn't been an official announcement from Apple (as of this writing), Fortune has reported that Steve Jobs will don the black shirt and blue jeans to deliver a keynote address on June 9, kicking off WWDC '08.
It's not a surprise, of course, as Steve typically talks during the show. Also expected is the announcement of a 3G iPhone, as well as plans for international distribution, as rumors have been at their usual pre-event levels for a couple of weeks.
Apple has announced the submission deadline for the Apple Design Awards (ADA). The ADA take place every year during the World Wide Developer Conference, and recognizes the best efforts in several categories including user experience, overall application, student project and more.
Previous winners include Coda (best user experience 2007), CSSEdit 2.5 (Best Developer tool, 2007) and Comic Life (Best New Product for Mac OS X, 2005).
New this year is the iPhone category, which should be very exciting. The deadline for the 2008 ADA is May 12.
Posted Apr 29th 2008 12:00PM by Dave Caolo Filed under: WWDC
Save, save, save! Deals, deals, deals!
An email from Apple is making the rounds this morning with the announcement that early registration pricing has been extended to May 9th. Sign up between now and then and save $300US. Yippee!
WWDC '08 will take place between June 9-13 in San Francisco, CA. There are more than 150 sessions scheduled, including the new iPhone track.
As usual, anticipation (and rumors) abounds as visions of iPhone 2.0, the App Store and more tease us all. Oh, and if you happen to run into Woz, console him on his recent breakup.
Every Mac developer wants a small, softly glowing cube -- as long as it's not made from unstable isotopes or anything like that. The Apple Design Awards 2008 entry period has now begun; with competition in seven categories this year, including two for the iPhone, it's going to be fun to see what bubbles up to the top at WWDC.
Applications in the following areas can be uploaded and entered before 5 pm May 12:
Highlights innovative and compelling new iPhone applications built using the Beta iPhone SDK. Entries in this category must be pre-release, feature complete versions which run within the iPhone simulator or on an iPhone or iPod touch. Apple reserves the right to award more than one winning entry in this category.
Highlights web applications designed specifically for Safari on iPhone, which offers iPhone users innovative, compelling, valuable, and highly desirable capabilities.
Highlights games introduced on Mac OS X Leopard after June 2007, which take full advantage of relevant Leopard technologies and offer the best entertainment value to all ages. Entries in this category must be release versions.
Highlights excellence in design, aesthetics, ease of use, compelling and appropriate use of animation, and pervasive integration with built-in Mac OS X Leopard system services and sharing technologies. Entries in this category must be release versions.
Highlights best-of-breed Mac OS X Leopard graphics and media solutions providing unparalleled functionality, performance, innovation, and stunning visuals and/or audio. Entries in this category must be release versions.
Winners get plenty of goodies: WWDC tickets and travel, MacBook Pros, Cinema Displays, iPod touches and iPhones, and (far and away the most valuable) a free mini-booth to exhibit at Macworld Expo 2009. See Apple's official site for all the rules and regulations, and best of luck! (Yes, that's the developer team of 2007 ADA winner Panic giving a full-on geek salute there in the winner's circle. Seems like they're pretty pumped.)
Apple has posted a listing of the sessions which will be offered at this summer's World Wide Developer's Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco.
There are three tracks to choose from: Mac, IT and new this year, iPhone. Of course, the Mac track has the greatest number of sessions available, and poor IT is dead last.
Early bird registration has begun, so purchase your ticket and make your hotel reservations. And if you're an iPhone developer, we're really waiting to see what you come up with.
Posted Mar 31st 2008 12:30PM by Erica Sadun Filed under: WWDC
If you're hoping to go to WWDC on a student scholarship, better get applying soon. The deadline is fast approaching. Get those applications in by the 10th of April. Scholarship winners will be notified by email by the end of April.
The WWDC scholarship offers a free ticket to WWDC with complete access to all tech sessions and special events, saving you somewhere roughly in the neighborhood of $1600. (We previously wrote about the scholarship here.)
What's more, there's usually an all-day event just for student developers plus a career fair where you can meet hiring managers from many Mac development companies.
With the iPhone SDK announcement last week, some of us here at TUAW were expecting a Worldwide Developer Conference date to be announced. Thankfully, the world has been put to rights, as Apple has now announced that WWDC will run from 9th - 13th June at San Francisco's Moscone Centre (West Hall). With three tracks (iPhone, Mac and IT) if you're a developer or IT Pro this is probably a conference you'll want to be at -- and students are encouraged too, with Student Scholarships usually available. Whilst the ticket prices are forthcoming, it'll Tickets get you 5 days of sessions, Apple engineers, (likely) a Steve Jobs keynote and plenty you can't talk about. With the arrival of the iPhone SDK, we'd wager this years conference is frankly going to be a little popular (what with the full public release likely to arrive around the same time) so it might be prudent to book at your earliest convenience.
Pricing for this year's WWDC is US$1295 for a single ticket, US$5180 for 5 tickets (saving you $1295). Apple are also offering combined packages of ADC membership and a WWDC membership.
What the heck happened to resolution independence?
In Gruber's review of the Powerbook a few years ago, he trumpeted the coming of a feature long evading the Mac faithful, a resolution independent interface. Others at the time expected the same thing to appear in Leopard: UI elements that were completely independent of the screen's resolution, and, finally, a fully scalable interface, and freedom from whatever screen you were working on. Higher resolutions without squeezing down the UI elements. And as we got closer to Leopard, more and more word went around that OS 10.5 would have it. At WWDC 2006, some developers even confirmed it. And Apple even filed a patent to get it done.
Except now it's November, Leopard is out, and resolution independence is nowhere to be found, at least at the user-accessible level. What gives?
And now EA has told Apple Insider that Mac faithful shouldn't have held their breath on those promises-- Madden 08 was the big release on Tuesday, but while it did appear on PC, the Mac version has been officially delayed until "September or October" (which means late December, in videogame-release-speak). Additionally, even EA doesn't know what's going on with its own games-- they claim that Battlefield 2142, Command and Conquer 3, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and Need for Speed Carbon are all in stores, but when asked which stores they were actually in, EA didn't have an answer.
I can't say I'm surprised-- for all the talk at WWDC, the Mac isn't quite the platform of choice for most game makers, and who knows who would have actually bought any of those games on Mac if they had been released (I wouldn't have). But the fact is that EA stood on stage at WWDC, and got lauded for it. Don't talk the talk if you can't walk the walk, Electronic Arts.
Digging through the archives we came upon the lost tape of WWDC: an interview with Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software. Red Sweater sells MarsEdit and Black Ink, among other apps. Daniel was kind enough to talk WWDC, iPhone and show us around Black Ink, a very nice crossword app.
The gang from Over the Edge gave us a sneak peek of two new features in Unity 2.0: a cool terrain tool and real-time dynamic shadows. Check out the video, but also check out their page of all the other features coming soon to Unity.
[Note: we'll have all these WWDC videos available for direct download soon!]
With all the hype surrounding a little device known as the iPhone, its sometimes easy to forget that Apple actually makes some other stuff too -- including a world-class operating system now currently known as OS X Tiger version 10.4.10. And unless you've come to the Apple fold only for the iPhone, you probably also know that Apple is currently working to bring the next version of its terrific operating system out into the world.
This upcoming version, known as OSX 10.5 (aka Leopard) was one of those things discussed rather thoroughly at the recent World Wide Developer's Conference -- in addition to that other big thing coming out next Friday. And now, thanks to Mac Scoop, there's more information about the future roadmap of Leopard, its upcoming milestones and its eventual release. Among the details, its reveled that Leopard is expected in August to achieve a feature-full build -- where the various features of the OS are "frozen" and finalized with no more to be added.
Next, Leopard will move towards final candidate status in September where developers have stopped including new features into the OS and instead, focus on testing it in various ways. Finally, after four to six weeks of testing, Leopard will then move to Gold Master status to prepare for its expected release date in late October. With all the iPhone talk around the net and at recent Apple events, its nice to hear a little about Apple's other plans. Don't get me wrong, I want an iPhone. But I'm first and foremost an Apple computer user and am glad to see that in the rush to become the king of consumer products, Apple doesn't seem to be forgetting about its millions of loyal customers who were there before it made iPods and iPhones.
Wolf Rentzsch is another Mac developer so devoted to his craft that he comes to WWDC just for the fun of it. Wolf loves code so much, in fact, that he started C4, an "indie conference for indie developers." Scott sat down with Wolf to talk about Mac dev work, his own work, iPhone and C4.
NOTE: This should be the last of the "Perpendicular Subject" series, we hope you've enjoyed the side views!
Brent Simmons has earned a spot in our docks for years now with NetNewsWire, perhaps the premiere RSS reader on the Mac. But Brent loves developing Mac apps, and he's a big fan of the platform in general. Funny how that works. Mr. Simmons was kind enough to sit and chat with Scott about the WWDC keynote, his competition and some cool new features in NNW3.