The Worldwide Developer Conference ( WWDC ) has always been the focal center of Apple ’s evangelism efforts toward developers who call its technologies home — and for good reason . WWDC bring together thousands of programmers from all corner of the humanity , give them both an opportunity to perfect their accomplishment and to connection with their match .
In addition , hundreds of Apple engineers — the very mass whowritethe software on which developers work up their apps — are in attendance and unremarkably useable to answer questions and talk about the best code - wrangling techniques with other attendees . It ’s no wonder that , despite the in high spirits admittance toll ( and the cost of travelling to San Francisco ) , WWDC usually sells out in just a few days . ( Or less than a Clarence Shepard Day Jr. in the case of this yr ’s conference . )
This year ’s instalment , which Apple herald Monday , promises to be even more authoritative than those that have convey place in recent eld , thanks to the coming release of OS X Lion .
The introduction of a Modern major loss of OS X is usually a informant of both pleasure and trepidation for developer . On one hand , there are unexampled and exciting applied science that their apps can take advantage of ; on the other , the concepts on which those technologies are free-base must be learned , assimilated and put to recitation .
Unlike Snow Leopard , whose most significant changes were under the hood and designed to take full advantage of the feature article provide by the Intel computer architecture while shedding as much dependence as possible from the PowerPC legacy , Lion represent a true evolution in the way OS ex interacts with its end exploiter . As a result , developers and designers have to learn a whole raw visual and design dictionary that is going to define the “ Lion experience , ” such as it may be , and then utilise it to their own apps .
This , by itself , could explain why Apple has eject a “ developer prevue ” of Lion well ahead of the OS ’s as - yet - unannounced release appointment . The fine folks from Cupertino want developers to start actively using it , progress software designed to work with it , and then interact with the caller ’s engineers direct at WWDC . developer will have an opportunity to better understand how Apple intends for Lion to work , and Apple will have a chance to get first - hand reports of how interacting with its shiny new operating arrangement is from a software engineer ’s period of persuasion . Talk about perfect synergism !
There is more at interest , however . As my fellow worker Dan Moren points out in his opinion piece on the subject , Lion is not just “ the next version of Apple ’s screen background operating organization . ” Indeed , it represents the intersection of the company ’s two flagship technologies — OS X and iOS — into a cohesive user experience that encompasses desktop , wandering , and consumer devices .
From a developer ’s perspective , the focal point in which Apple is take its operating systems has several consequence . The most obvious is that the acquisition sets required to work with either oculus sinister are blend to come closer to each other ; despite the fact that OS X and iOS share a common inheritance , writing package for one has , so far , been a very different experience from doing so on the other .
The end resolution is that , with Lion , iOS developers should find the learning curve to write OS X apps much easy to sail , with the same also being dependable in reverse . And that should usher in a richer ecosystem for all users of Apple hardware and computer software .
This trend has already been ongoing for some meter . All one need to do is look at recent democratic operating system X apps , likeSparrowor Twitter ’s official OS X node to see that iOS ’s design chemical element are rapidly do their way into the background populace even without Apple ’s combat-ready help . Lion simply make the synergism functionary , opening the doorway for developers on either operating organization to strain their hand at the other .
All in all , therefore , 2011 should be a streamer yr for Apple - centrical software system exploitation — and WWDC will be the lieu to be for developers who want to take vantage of things to amount .
