* WWDC 1999 Misc Summary *

There are a lot of areas Apple provided new and continued direction for its developers. They outlined significant improvements in the MacOS to improve both the consumer and developer experiences. Some of these are highlighted below.

MacOS 8.7+ (Sonata) will continue the trend of solid OS enhancements and bug fixes. There will be a significant movement to make it a bridge for users going to MacOS X client. Multiuser options will likely be one of the biggest changes. Sherlock II also appears to make Apple more integrated with the Internet by allowing for neat added functionality in searching of web resources and e-commerce sites. The addition of Carbon will prep developers for the coming MacOS X client market. Bugs from MacOS 8.6 will also be addressed.

The Nanokernel is seeing some interesting changes helping developers to move to the Carbon and MacOS X application models. Improvements for SMP, power management, and scheduling can be expected to continue. MP tasks will show the power of the someday announced SMP hardware from Apple.

MacOS X Client and Server. Both will move to a common core OS base (Darwin) as the development on both gets along. MacOS X client DP1 given out at WWDC has the major changes complete from MacOS X Server before the client release. There is a lot more to do, but Mach 3.0, the new imaging model, and all of the user level APIs for program development is in place. IOKit is there but can be expected to see major enhancements in device support and ease for driver development. The OS is still getting worked over to ensure Mac customer will never see any Unix remains, but will preserve the low level interfaces as an option.

Darwin will allow Apple to leverage the vast collection of open source projects out in the world to provide as robust underlying infrastructure to construct to Mac user environment. Darwin will integrate the Mach 3.0 enhancements with efforts in the FreeBSD 3 distribution to provide a compelling system level for higher layer services. Darwin 0.2 provides a binary image of the OS for developers to begin the process of improving the core OS. Mach 2.5 and the DriverKit will be synched in the fall with the current MacOS X client core OS underpinnings.Open sourcing the core OS will allow developers opportunities to play with distributed objects, distributed computing, new driver families, new file systems and memory models, ..., and many other previously inaccessible components of the core OS. This will hopefully improve the quality and speed of new features to the Mac platform.

Quartz Imaging Model. Mix of Display Postscript and QuickDraw. The assumption is it gets Apple out of the need of dealing with royalty payments to Adobe for Postscript. Very heavily associated with PDF imaging model. It will allow for next generation publishing efforts. The current DP1 does not have any low level optimization, and performance is already impressive in many ways. It will allow for Apple to continue its strength in the publishing markets.

OpenGL has made MacOS a relevant games platform. It will be a significant boost supporting the 3D de facto standard with games and high end modelling companies. The fate of QuickDraw3D is still up in the air. It can continue as a compelling higher level 3D API than OpenGL. Apple needs to make it clear to developers what they are doing with the technology, unclear statements throughout the week is not helping things.

ProjectBuilder, InterfaceBuilder, and CodeWarrior will be ready for the large changes coming in both MacOS X and hardware throughout the Mac product quadrant. PB/IB is the premier RAD framework available for developers today. Metrowerks is adding many new features to their CodeWarrior 5 release to make development easier both for the MacOS 8.x and MacOS X developer. The limit will continually be pushed to the developer away from the complexity of the tools.

WebObjects continues to gain industry acclaim as a great application server developer platform. The ease and power of the tools included set it apart from the competition. The robustness and flexibility of the framework will continue to be improved.

QuickTime will continue to advance Apple's dominance of the multimedia space. Integration with Java will allow for compelling multimedia solutions today in Java. QuickTime 4.0 and streaming server positions Apple as a key player in a emerging world of broadband video and audio content. RealNetworks and MS beware. Open sourcing streaming server will allow other platforms to take advantage of Apple's multimedia technologies.

MRJ and Apple's Java efforts continue to improve and hone the Java runtime on the MacOS 8.x. Java 2 will remain an issue going into the future. MacOS X and Cocoa are strongly adopting Java as one of the development languages of choice (along side Objective C). Apple continues its commitment of making Java on the Mac best of class.

FireWire and USB will continue Apple's lead in the Plug and Play arena with best of industry compatibility with devices. FireWire 3.0 will allow for bootable hard disks and better performance. Both will be pushed into all levels of Apple products. IOKit will provide a revolutionary model for developing drivers for MacOS X. SMP and AltiVec will do a lot on the performance front for Mac hardware. Nothing was announced, but developers got the hint they should be ready for a flurry of hardware power in the future.

* For the future *

Apple delivered in a lot of areas ensuring continuity of messages from WWDC 1998. On immediate reflection, three significant decisions remain for Apple to resolve: QuickDraw3D, Java 2 and Yellow Box for non-Mac hardware (I am sure others will come up as well). Apple walks a fine line of making minimal commitments and leaving the world in the dark. Some of it is because Apple hasn't figured out the business model that makes sense, some because Apple has focused efforts on more important issues to get the Mac platform back in a stable direction. Apple must make sure that the costs of deciding outweigh lost time and mind share on leaving developers in the dark.

Specific for the NeXT/Yellow/Cocoa developers, I think Apple needs to hear more loudly just how powerful a framework they have. It is nice to keep it super secret and all but I think it is becoming a disservice to developers everywhere. Figure out the business model where it makes sense to release for Apple and hurry up and get it out there. Lots of opinions of what to do with that will be saved for another time and forum.

* Wrap-Up *

And so ending WWDC. Overall, I was very impressed with the Apple engineers and their desire to work through specific customer needs. Marketing and the do not announce products added a cloud to some sessions (like AltiVec, YB-Intel and every mention of SMP for instance), but everyone got the feeling Apple is strongly pursuing these directions and will announce the fruits of their labors when they are ready. There is also a lot of decision making to be made around MacOS X yet. It is still very early in the developer process. From a core base OS foundation, a lot of it is done. But Apple has always excelled at the touchup, compatibility and the consistency of the experience across the whole OS and apps, polish. The engineers are actively seeking feedback of where people are having problems and how current design decisions and future design decisions will impact your individual products. They want to know how you are using stuff (and how it will break going to MacOS X) and what you want to do with what Apple is providing. The WWDC was a pretty happy experience compared to WWDC 98. Didn't attend, but you got the sense people were overall happy with the clearer focus of Apple and the continued movement forward on the OS front. There are still holes, but everything is lightyears ahead of what existed of clarity on Copland and other ill-fated efforts.

I think a lot of the session Q&A by nature focus on the problems and concerns of developers, but I think this must be balanced with a _huge_ appreciation for the employees of Apple and what they are building and what we can build together in the future. It is an incredibly exciting time to be a Mac developer. Not sure what some people were thinking claiming last WWDC 98 would be the last. Oh well. Oops. Thank you Apple employees for putting on a great WWDC and continuing to further the best hardware and software out there.

Thanks Apple. I had a great week. Now I have to go think of the next killer app to spur on the Mac platform for all ... :)

Eric