WWDC: Friday

Last day of the show, It felt better attended than Friday last year. Man, do they ever tear down quickly. The last session in some of the rooms was 5:00 PM and by 6:00 the drapes and stages were down.

The WebObjects feedback session was the last session I attended this afternoon, and although not a love-in (not even close), it was much better than I expected. Everyone was very civil and Apple was quite forthwrite and frank about the future of WebO. The news was not all good (or all bad for that matter) but it was good to know. They took suggestions for improvements to the tools and frameworks, and we’ll have to see how much effect that has.

I enjoyed the show, but it will be good to get home, sleep in my own bed, and see Al and the girls again. I’ll have to see what happens over the next year but depending on the release date of Tiger it might not be worth the expense and time to attend WWDC 2005. Time will tell

WWDC: Thursday

A good session on the new Apple Remote Desktop this morning. The integration of VNC looks good and the optimizations are truly amazing compared with ARD 1.2. I also sat in on a session with more advanced details on CoreData.

I attended a really good session on WebObjects Deployment Optimization this afternoon with Max Muller and Bill Bummgarner. Judging by the number of attendees and the size of the croud clustered arround the presenters in the hall after their definately is still interest in WebObjects (and in the details of the iTunes MS deployment).

The Campus bash was this evening, Jimmy Eat World provided the musical entertainment. I had several good conversations, some decent food, and free beer. Can’t beat that

WWDC: Wednesday

The CoreData and Cocoa Bindings stuff is looking more and more interesting. I’m thinking my first Cocoa app will have to be a CoreDate-EOF / EOF-CoreData dictionary (like English-French / French-English). The lineage is so obvious, only the names have been changed.

The WebObjects BOF didn’t really happen, but I did manage have to have dinner with some fello TO WebObjects folk so that was fun

WWDC: Tuesday

An interesting day. The Automator, ACLs, and Xcode sessions were very informative, I’ll have to take a second and try Xcode 1.5 with WebObjects. Maybe after I deliver my current project.

Obviously the session that has received the most attention from the WebObjects community has been the WebObjects Overview. The news (or lack there of) has resulted in a serious flurry of The Sky Is Falling and Run Away! Run Away! posts in the WebObjects developer mailing lists. Personally I am not all that concerned. It is clear that WebObjects is not going away. It and its tools are not likely to be updated beyond bug fixes anytime soon, but then, it will get improvements aimed at Java in general (new Xcode 1.5 is a case in point).

Beyond that it was very nice to see Project Wonder, WOProject, and WOLips, all get mention and stage time. So even if Apple isn’t innovating WebO, others are