California Dreaming: WWDC 2002 Day 1
Today was the first day of WWDC 2002, and it's not quite what I was expecting. There are tons of people here, so there's not quite that homey feeling that you get at MacHack. But there are a few familiar faces from MacHack of years past, so that helps. Otherwise I'm rather lost in the crowd.
Yesterday we flew in to San Jose on an Airbus. The flight was just about five hours long, no stops to SJC and absolutely packed. We were all seated in the same row but were separated. Jack watched a movie while I tried and failed to get some sleep. I listened to my iPod and started reading Cryptonomicon again.
It was a bad day for traffic in the city. San Jose has a large Cinco de Mayo celebration, and large chunks of the traffic grid is closed off. The cab took us as far as he could, but we ended up walking three blocks to the hotel. We dumped everything off and went to register. We got a laptop bag (apparently the norm) with coupons and goodies in there (a chocolate CD from InstallAnywhere). My O'Reilly book coupon is numbered "1984" for all the good that does me.
After eating we went back to the hotel. Jack and Doug disappeared, and I grabbed my TiBook and went back to the convention center. I wanted to try to run into some people I knew, and I hit a few. Not many. And I couldn't get any 802.11 reception with my 'Book. I gave up after a while and went home.
No one told the Crowne Plaza folks not to build a hotel right next to the runway. Airplanes keep flying overhead.
This morning I got up and went to the conference center for they keynote. I met up with Chuck Plater and quite a few people from U of M. I'm finding that I may have a harder time getting rid of my (/) TN 2034 buttons than I thought. I really need to find some more old-school developers.
The Jobs keynote was cool enough, but wasn't quite as mindblowing as I was hoping for. On the other hand, if something really cool was coming out, the details would have leaked a while ago. Brief meeting with Adobe after, and then three "state of the union" presentations. Nothing there, but at the end of the Java presentation, Gosling was introduced. He thinks of Mac OS X as "Linux with QA and taste." Ouch.
Still no wireless network reception with my TiBook.
After looking around the exhibit hall (CodeWarrior 8 looks really nice), I went with Chuck to the Apple Store. The Apple campus looks pretty cool, so I'm looking forward to the campus beer bash on Thursday. I got an FM transmitter and a jacket. Expensive, but hey.
Today I was hauling around both laptop bags; I just moved everything into one for tomorrow. Looking forward to harassing the Java guys in the lab.