In mid March – after a weekend working on a project, I set the alarm for 6am so I could be one of the first to register for WWDC.  Of course that is not a requirement these days with Apple providing a lottery system for tickets to their conference.  However the buzz of repeatedly pressing refresh, checking Twitter, and making sure my credit card was ready did add to the excitement.

 

Less than a week later I got the email.  I was going to my first WWDC.  I was a little suspicious as it was April Fools Day, but I checked the next morning and I’m pretty sure that I’m all registered.  And certainly my credit card got hit with the registration fee as expected.

 

The first challenge was flights and accommodation.  From New Zealand to San Jose is a little challenge.  Two flights, but one of those is about 13 hours. To ensure I didn’t miss out I booked the flights and hotel as soon as the dates and location were announced.  All booking could be changed if I didn’t win the lottery, so a little more expensive, but I had those two important aspects all sorted.  As it happens I am very relieved – my hotel is just a couple of minutes walk away from the conference centre, so very convenient. 

Ok, enough of the mechanics of tickets and travel.  What do I expect from WWDC 2017?  Actually I have no real expectations.  I am prepared to be surprised, informed, educated, and entertained.  But there is no wishlist that I have for features, tools, products, or hardware that I am expecting to be announced.  There is a lot of noise out there about new hardware and hopes for new features.  But a lot of it is just guesswork.  

 

And, also, it is all part of the journey that Apple provide their users.  The software in WWDC supports the hardware released later in the year which is enhanced by the software released in the next WWDC and so on.  There have been quite a few times where a Swift feature or framework is released that doesn’t quite make sense until the new iPhone is release later in the year.  At least with software Apple have more control over leaks than they do over hardware.

 

So, next up will be a summary of WWDC.  Watch this space.