It occurs to me that Apple did make a major change to help those who don’t or can’t attend WWDC: they release the session videos remarkably soon after the conference ends. Watching the videos is not the same thing as being there (no labs, for one thing), but it’s a big improvement over years past, when the videos were released many months after WWDC was over.

This is great compared to the past years, but why not take it one step further?  Why not stream the sessions live?  So that people around the world can feel like they’re there without ruining the experience of actually BEING there.  This could even enhance the experience, sort of like watching a football game on a big screen TV.

Now, it might be a little more difficult to stream the readily available supply of free Odwalla they had at WWDC 2010… actually being there would still have its perks.

Agreed.

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

There’s a middleware community of folks that have invested tons of time and effort (and money) into writing a layer of tools that allow other developer folks that aren’t savvy with the native iPhone development platform (which consists of Cocoa Touch and Obj-C) to still be effective at creating Apps using their language/platform of choice.  Apple is now stating that these solutions are no longer acceptable and will not be approved for distribution in the App Store.  Apple has always recommended that people use the native tools, and has never supported the middleware community.

So now there’s a huge uproar of folks saying that Apple has made a terrible move and that Apple doesn’t realize what they’ve done.  They’ve ruined the community and are going to lose revenue in the App Store, etc…

Really?  It’s Apple.  They know exactly what they’ve done, and they did it for a reason.

Yes, it sucks for all those people that invested time to create these middleware solutions that empower developers of other “faiths” to create iPhone apps.  I feel bad for all these “wasted” hours (hopefully we can figure out a way to repurpose all of this spent energy).  However, I think this is a great move on Apple’s part from a business perspective.  They’re ensuring the success of their platform by ensuring that people learn how to use it, and not some other middleware solution that could one day not exist or be 100% compatible with the Cocoa Touch tools.  They’re removing any dependency on third party solutions that could stifle their success.

There have been a lot of angry remarks out there about Apple’s decision (*cough cough Lee Brimelow cough*).  These remarks are coming mainly from the people who are currently using middleware solutions or who were going to use CS5 to create iPhone apps.

But y’know what?  Cocoa Touch isn’t THAT difficult for a developer to learn (specifically a .NET developer), and neither is Obj-C.  Yea, it’s not C#, but it’s not assembly for Christ’s sake.  If Apple had this TERRIBLE platform that was hardly usable and difficult to learn then it wouldn’t be in their best interest to force people to use their platform – the quality of the apps would suffer and the iPhone App Model would fail – but that’s not the case.  They have a very decent developer experience. I made the switch from .NET (WPF and Silverlight) to Cocoa and it wasn’t the end of the world, nor was it a huge time suck.  I’m thoroughly enjoying the entire Cocoa Touch experience now, and the more people that use it, the better the experience will become.  Platform adoption is the reason .NET and it’s tools have become so successful.  What’s wrong with Apple forcing the same approach with their own platform?  Absolutely nothing.

The absolute best way to improve your coding skills is to read the absolute best advanced MVVM book EVAR!

If you’re programming WPF or Silverlight, don’t pass up the opportunity to give Advanced MVVM a read. Written by one of the best WPF developers in the known universe, it’s sure to be useful and worth the mere pennies that he’s charging for this gem.

Got your attention?

The sensor device that is used has an RGB camera, depth sensor, multi-array microphone and can detect full body 3D motion capture, facial recognition, and voice recognition.   I’m surprised how well the sensors interpret the physical movement – it seems pretty accurate!

I would love to see the sensor device reach beyond gaming and make it’s way into productivity applications.  It would sure beat capturing gestures with a webcam like we’ve seen others doing.

For more complete coverage of the demonstrations of Natal at E3, check out my buddy’s new blog, Atom6. He’s got some more videos posted there as well.

iPhone OS 3.0 available worldwide June 17th

My weapon of choice this year for the Keynote stream was http://www.macrumorslive.com.  They have a good stream text feed, and an even better streaming pictures feed.  The pictures updated more often than the text, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they caught every slide…  I also listened to the audio stream at http://live.twit.tv.

Without further ado:

iPhone 3GS!

• Same external design, all new internals
• Faster than the 3G.  2.1x faster loading of messaging,  2.4x faster sim city load, 3.6x faster for viewing an excel attachment , 2.9x faster for loading the NYTimes app.
• Brand new Camera: 3 MP, autofocus camera.  Also captures video (finally).  30 fps.  640×480 video.  You can scrub and edit video and send it straight to YouTube, MMS, email, and MobileMe too.  These features are also available for developers to use in their applications.
• Voice dialing
• Digital Compass
• support for Nike+
• Better battery life: 30 hours of music playback, 10 hours of video playback, 12 hours of 2g talk, 5 hours of 3g talk time.
• $199 is the price for the 16Gb.  32Gb $299.  Black and white colors. 3G is still available for $99 dollars!!
• 3GS iPhone is available June 19th.

iPhone OS updates:

• there are 100 new features… Cut/copy/paste/undo (works across all apps), landscape mode in Mail/Notes/Messages, MMS support (send and receive photos/contacts/audio files/locations) in Messages app (29 carriers in 76 countries will support MMS at launch — AT&T not until later this summer), search (mail — even on server, calendars, media, notes), spotlight (search everything in one place — first page of the home screen).
• rent and purchase movies from your iPhone!
• Parental Controls
• Tethering: Share iPhone’s internet connection with your computer (but I’m sure it’s going to be expensive…) Works wired and wireless over bluetooth. Seemless experience.  BUT AT&T DOESN’T SUPPORT IT!!  GARBAGE!
• Javascript is 3x faster.
• Inclusion of right to left languages and others.  Now support more than 30 languages in the iPhone OS.  One of the big advantages of a software keyboard.  They all have portrait and landscape mode keyboards.
• FindMyiPhone.  MobileMe users will be able to log in to MobileMe and find their phone if they lose it!  GPS location and everything!  It’s crazy.  Tons of awesomeness there.  You can play an alert sound from the webpage, and even wipe the data from your phone so that people can’t see the info you’ve got on it.  Then when you find it you can just restore the phone from a backup.
• Peer to peer connectivity over bluetooth!  Available in any application!
• Turn by turn directions and google maps can be integrated into any application.
• Push notification

Updated Laptops: MacBook Pro spec update and the starting price dropped $300.  They also added a 13″ MacBook Pro.

Expose has been updated (the dock at the bottom of the screen): The functionality is more like Windows 7.  You can click and hold an icon in the dock and Expose will show all of the app’s windows.  The same works for dragging things into an application – you can drag items to the dock, have the app’s windows pop up, and the drop it into the correct window.

Exchange 2007 (latest version) is now supported in Mail, iCal, and Address Book!  This is big for all the Mac users that work in large corporate environments that use Exchange. You can even see previews of Microsoft Office documents if you don’t have Office installed.

Every feature of the platform was obviously thought through.  The whole time I’ve been watching the video (I’m still watching it right now) I’ve been thinking “why didn’t we all think of that before?”

This is a video from the Google Wave Developer Preview presentation, during the second day of the Google I/O 2009 conference.

Without further ado… watch this:

Anyway – keep that in mind the next time you’re worrying about your application’s interface.  Let your users know what is happening.

This screenshot is NOT a fake, as many people have been eager to point out at other sites.  The screenshot is actually even posted on Apple’s support pages.

Maximum PC’s Multitouch Surface Computer from Maximum PC on Vimeo.

At IdentityMine I spend some of my time building Microsoft Surface applications.

I was watching a session from MIX09 this morning titled “Deep Dive into Microsoft Silverlight Graphics.” The session was hosted by Seema Ramchandani and surprisingly (though, not too surprisingly) she was conducting the session from her 17″ MacBook Pro. She’s teaching the intricacies of a Microsoft product from the comfort of Mac. Wonderfully ironic!

The only reason I bring this up is that I constantly get comments from people about my MacBook while traveling through meetings and offices at Microsoft’s Redmond campus and recently at a Silverlight Training that I was conducting.  I’m sure she got lots of comments as well.  A few things are commonly agreed upon:

1. having a MacBook in a Microsoft office is just wrong – it involves too much cross-pollination of kool-aid,
2. MacBooks are definitely sexy,
3. and Everybody wants one.

Everybody wants one and they want to know how it runs Windows.  “How’s the performance?”  “How’s the driver situation?” Of course, they also want to know what I like about it compared to other notebooks.  The typical “why buy a Mac?” question.

The answer really isn’t that complicated.

One of the immediate reasons that tops the list among the nerdier crowd is that as a developer I feel that I need a machine that can code for the Mac OS and for Windows.  Developers are just more 1337 that way (and coding for Mac is more important nowadays too).

I think this was a cop out for the real reason that I bought a MacBook, however.

The real reason is that I just feel a little spoiled with my MacBook.  It’s like buying an expensive car.  I bought it because I appreciate the craftsmanship, the attention paid to the details.  I don’t just “go fast” – I enjoy the ride.