This year’s Worldwide Developer Conference was, simply put, the best ever. Between the people, the announcements, and the sessions, I left exhausted and inspired as never before.
 
News from the front
 
Nestled quietly in the keynote announcement of iPhone 2.0 is a very cool bit of news: iPhone will soon be available in Madagascar. One of my biggest challenges has been keeping in touch with people for whom electricity, to say nothing of internet access, is a rare luxury. I suspect I’ll be bankrolling a few Malagasy iPhones in the near future, and I couldn’t be happier.
 
While it didn’t get a lot of play in the keynote, the real killer announcement of the week was Snow Leopard. Anyone in this business knows that sometimes you’ve got to stop moving forward and refactor existing code. For something as a large as an operating system, this is a significant amount of work without an obvious payoff for the consumer.
 
Rather, Snow Leopard is an investment in third-party developers and thus, an investment in the platform. I’ve been clamoring for this for a while, but I didn’t think Apple had the temerity to do what needed to be done. I should have known better than to underestimate Big Fruit. Kudos, guys. I’ve never been so pleased to be proven wrong.
 
Quite aside from Apple, I got a lot of feedback from readers who all had the same request — please rename your blog. Between the stories of getting in trouble at work, to the extraordinary amount of trouble people have gone through to be able to access the site, I’m giving it serious consideration.
 
I named the blog as I did for two reasons. First, I think it’s hilarious to have something so benign as a series of essays about programming and changing the world to have a moniker so jarringly unfitting. Second, I wanted to make it clear to anyone who dared enter that I wouldn’t be pulling any punches.
 
At the end of the day, I’ve had my laughs and made my point. Perhaps the time has come to choose usability over artistic vision. Certainly I’ll be considering my options in the next few weeks.
 
Congratulations are in order
 
As a bit of icing on what was already a very delicious cake, I had three friends win Apple Design Awards, and if you’ll bear with me, I’d like to take this opportunity to congratulate them.
 
First, Dirk Stoop and his partners at Sofa and Werck BV took runner-up in Best Mac OS X Leopard User Experience with Checkout. I’ve long bemoaned that Checkout deserved an ADA, but was stymied by the fact it solves a very boring problem — point of sale. With iPhone leading a recent push into the workplace, that has changed, and finally seeing Dirk ascend that stage was worth the cost of admission.
 
Second, the Omni Group claimed their sixth design award with OmniFocus for iPhone. I’ve been increasingly buoyed by the recent renaissance at the world’s oldest Cocoa shop, and this design award is a nod to, and hopefully inspiration for, their continued evolution.
 
Finally, my friend Craig Hockenberry and his team at the Iconfactory brought down the house with Twitterrific for iPhone. Much like Dirk, Craig has been overdue for inclusion in the pantheon of ADA winners. The Iconfactory has been supporting Apple’s platforms since before OS X, and it’s nice to see their efforts recognized officially.
 
No competition among friends
 
I saved Craig for last, because it brings up an important point. For some reason, people thought I would be displeased at seeing an app that competes with Twinkle win an award. People even went so far as to suggest that Twinkle should have won the award. This thinking is really based on two misconceptions.
 
First, the version of Twinkle I showed off at WWDC looks nothing like the version we submitted for judging. Seeing what Craig had, and knowing what we had, clearly the best app won.
 
Second, Twinkle and Twitterrific are not actually competing apps. I would go so far as to advance the theory that there actually is no competition among the central core of Mac and iPhone development. Allow me to explain, using Twinkle and Twitterrific as an example.
 
Craig and I have different visions for our respective applications. If we had the same vision, we’d work together. As it stands, Craig is trying to build the best iPhone Twitter client, and doing a hell of a job. I have different plans for Twinkle, which go a lot further than Twitter. When a user choses between these two apps. It’s not a matter of right versus wrong, or which app is better. Rather, they will choose the app whose vision best matches their own.
 
Competition does exist in our market, but it’s mainly perpetrated by visionless hacks who see money in an app and try to recreate someone else’s work in an attempt to cash in. These people aren’t really part of the community, and frankly, I’d like to see it stay this way.
 
A sense of community
 
My first engineering job was writing corporate training software in Java. The company maintained their own stable of programmers, which we weren’t a part of. Rather, we were snuck in under the RADAR with inaccurate titles in the name of getting things done. Rather than welcome us, the official IT department did everything they could to destroy us.
 
For example, in the years I was there, I never got access to a database, that being the purview of IT. I had to write my own DBMS using XML and JavaScript to persist my users’ data. They also did things like removing the JVM on all company computers the day before we released, and other dirty tricks.
 
When I left that job and tried to break into Mac development, I did my best to stay away from the community lest I find myself once again the victim of constant dickery. Lucas disabused me of that notion and started introducing me to people like Brent Simmons, Daniel Jalkut, and, of course, Craig Hockenberry.
 
What a difference a platform makes. The Mac developer community, almost without exception, welcomed me with open arms. People were so quick to offer any help, any encouragement, and the rest is history. As much as I owe to Wil, and to Lucas, I can say unequivocally that were it not for the community, I wouldn’t be where I am today.
 
So how could I feel anything but pride seeing my friends, people like Craig Hockenberry, up on stage, joining the rather exclusive club of ADA winners, when they were the ones that got me there? On a personal level, I would much rather see someone else from the community win the design award. I’ve already had that honor; it’s someone else’s turn.
 
So many people to thank
 
There’s a very good chance that you, reading this now, had a lot to do with how awesome this year was for me. Quite aside from the amount of work Apple put into the show and its content, so many of you brought your Club Thievey lemurs, bought and donned United Lemur shirts, or just came up, shook my hand, and told me you loved my work.
 
You made this show special. I can’t begin to express how grateful I am to each and every one of you. So, thank you.
 
        Addenda        
 
Mark Howard
Hi Mike, longtime reader, first time poster. New to the iPhone development platform, and development in general. That's the power of the iPhone platform, if it motivates *me* to get my lazy butt moving :) Brewing my own little dead simple iPhone app which I think will be pretty interesting & looking forward to what you are cooking up with Tapulous. Best of luck!
Joel Norvell
I love the NSCoder Night in Campbell, but getting there has been a problem for me.

Would you be interested in participating in an NSCoder Night in Palo Alto?

(My phrasing could be better: I'm fairly sure you'd be "interested"; but given that you've just started a company, I realize that "bandwidth" could be an issue for you.)

Sincerely,
Joel


http://frameworker.wordpress.com
Mike Lee, to Joel
I'd definitely be interested in an NSCoder night in Palo Alto. Just let me know where and when, and I'll let you know if, for some reason, I can't make it.
Joel Norvell
Thanks Mike!

I do have a place in mind TXET LAICOS (in reverse) but I have to obtain their OK first.
charles
NSCoder nights in Palo Alto? I am in!
mikeash
I don't have a lot to say about the rest (other than "yeah, pretty much") but please don't rename your blog! If I want to read some carefully inoffensive Mac-related blog I already have thousands to choose from.
 
So many of you brought your Club Thievey lemurs, bought and donned United Lemur shirts, or just came up, shook my hand, and told me you loved my work. Photo by Mary Brunson.
Monday, June 16, 2008
WWDC ‘08