Steve jobs used to run these things with this kind of theatrical precision that made everyone nervous. He'd stand there in his black turtleneck, walking across that stage like he owned it, and you'd just know something massive was about to get announced. Jobs could make you want something you didn't even know existed.
Tim Cook's no Steve Jobs. I don't think anyone expected him to be, and honestly that's probably fine. But WWDC's different when it's not Jobs at the helm. There's still the keynote energy, the demo moments that make or break a product announcement, but it feels less like church and more like a really well-organized company gathering. Which I guess it is.
Anyway, the keynote kicks off at 10 a.m. Pacific time, and I'm actually sitting here refreshing Twitter and waiting for people in Moscone to start posting live reactions. There's always that weird liminal space before a big tech announcement where everything's still uncertain. You've got months of rumors floating around, and most of them are probably wrong, and some are probably right, and nobody actually knows which is which until it happens.
iOS 6 is coming. That much we know. I'm less excited about that than I probably should be. iOS 5 came out last October, which means we're right on schedule, and honestly iOS updates have started feeling less like "whoa, new capabilities" and more like "okay, here's the next batch of features." Which, again, is probably fine. Apple's going to keep the train running. But the days of "look what a smartphone can do now" feel pretty far behind us. Look, I'm not complaining—my iPhone 4S is a genuinely great phone. But the leap from iOS 4 to iOS 5 felt bigger than the leap iOS 5 to whatever we're about to see will feel.
There's something about Siri that I haven't quite figured out yet. I use it sometimes for setting timers in the kitchen, which is legitimately useful. But mostly it's this thing people talk about in videos, you know? Everyone gets excited about the idea of talking to your phone like a person, but in reality it's awkward and slow and requires you to be in a quiet room. I get why people think it's the future. I'm just not sure future is here yet.
Mountain Lion's supposedly getting announced today too. Or, I guess, shown off more officially. There's been enough leaks that we basically know it's happening. I haven't been following the betas super closely because I'm still running Lion and it's fine, but I'll probably upgrade when it comes out. That's what you do. I don't have a ton of feelings about it either way.
What I'm actually waiting for is to see if anything weird happens. Like, Apple's usually pretty conservative with WWDC. It's a developer conference, not a product launch event. But every once in a while you get something unexpected. New hardware reveals, surprise announcements, stuff that wasn't in any of the rumors. That's the part that keeps me actually paying attention instead of just casually checking the news later.
Also I want to see how many times some Apple executive says "magical" today. I've got it at like six times minimum. Could be wrong.
The thing nobody really talks about is that WWDC is insanely expensive for developers to attend. You've got the ticket, which isn't cheap. You've got the flight to San Francisco, the hotel, meals, transportation. If you're a solo indie developer trying to stay on top of everything Apple's doing, WWDC is this exclusive, expensive thing. And yes, they livestream it, and yes, there are videos afterward. But being in that room matters. The networking matters. The vibe matters. The whole thing's got this weird prestige attached to it that makes sense and kind of bothers me at the same time.
Anyway. Keynote in a few hours. I'll probably be refreshing Hacker News and Twitter instead of actually watching it. That's what happens when you've got a normal job and these things run during the workday. Live updates will show up in your feed whether you're looking for them or not.
Let's see what Apple's got.