Head Spinning

I think this will be the first of a few posts about WWDC.  The first thing anyone should know is that it is a full on week.  There are sessions to go to starting at 9am and finishing at 6pm.  And this does not cover the opportunities provided by arriving early and using the hub/breakout lounge for connecting; the queueing; the labs; and the evening social activities.  I was pleased to hear that I was not the only one feeling a little weary during a session or two!

Announcements

By now, most people have heard of the announcements of WWDC – the HomePod, especially.  But there were more things for software developers: –

• Xcode 9 – rewritten in Swift and with refactoring
• ARKit – for those times when reality is not quite enough
• Machine Learning – for vision and object recognition
• Drag and Drop of iPad applications
• High Sierra for the Mac

Quality

What most impressed me was the quality of the venue, the organisation and especially the speakers.  There was one technical hitch during the week (a presentation clicker failed to work); and, without exception every speaker was knowledgable, entertaining, confident and took to the stage – in front of 1000 or more people at some sessions – as if it was a walk in the park.

Next Steps

• Time to dive right in with the beta of High Sierra and Xcode 9
• Try some of the excellent sample code provided at WWDC
• And some the tutorials being posted
• And maybe try out an idea or two I have …

Watch this space