WWDC Keynote
Tue, 2005-06-07 13:57 — jrearick
Ok, so if you were really keen, you may have noticed my last post was done after the keynote and I didn't get time to go back and edit a bunch of stuff, so you saw stuff like BLAH and <jp site here> or what not. I actually don't have very good access to the Internet here. Access at the hotel is only in the lobby (I'm on the 5th floor) and their AP does not give any IP addresses. At the Moscone center the wireless network is very unreliable. So, the only time I really have to post or to look stuff up online is when I'm plugged into an ethernet cord So, this explains why I haven't been online much and haven't written in my blog, even-though there has been so much going on. I'm typing this right now in TextEdit since I can't even get to my own web site at the moment. I will end up copying and pasting this into my post next time I have net access. I also have a few other things queued up for INternet, such as bug reports and email.
So, my thoughts about the Keynote:
Overall, it was short. Just about an hour I believe was the length. It started just like any other keynote. iPods, retail, and then the slide that said "Transitions". This slide made most of the room snicker, and me commenting "I don't like where this is going.". Sure enough Steve talks about the transition from OS 9 to OS X, then 68k to PPC, and now the future with PPC to x86. Though what really surprises me is how easy they are making the transition for developers, or, I should say, how easy they say(<- keyword) it will be. Steve really put his reality distortion field to the test today with the announcement. xCode 2.1 was announced (I don't know if that's available yet on ADC or not, I have my copy from after the Keynote), which introduces a nice feature that makes a check box for compiling your app for Intel, PPC, or both. The demos say that just checking the boxes is all you need for most Cocoa apps, otherwise there will have to be just a little bit of tweaking. Carbon apps will require a little bit more tweaking.
By the way, Colin, please stop taring your source. Trying to play around with ATX I found that the untaring process (either in terminal or the GUI app) causes some of your files to get messed up and thus not work with xCode. Please upload it in a .dmg so that I can play with it.
After talking about the transition, Steve brought the guy from Mathmatica on stage to tell everyone how easy it was to port Mathmatica to the Intel OS X. They say 2 hours. Though, for a program like that, I am still skeptical. I don't recall them mentioning how many Apple Engineers Steve sicked on that project last weekend.
After the Mathmatica demo, Steve paraded Adobe and Microsoft so they can say that this is a good move and they will be supporting it (IMHO what else are they going to do?).
The CEO of Intel came up to give a few words as well. He gave a little history of Apple and Intel. He even included the Disco Inferno commercial that Apple did back in 1996 bashing the Intel chip.
The rest of the day is under non-disclosure, some cool stuff in the Enterprise IT State of the Union and the evening reception. Though, I guess I can say that I was able to play with one of the Intel test boxes and ended up BSing with a bunch of other geeks about how Apple will keep OS X from getting installed on a generic other brand PC, how Windows may run and some more technical details of what the final product will be. Though all this BSing is all speculation, even a lot of the Apple people don't know exactly what is going to happen, what parts of these test boxes will stay, what will be replaced, etc. I kind of feel like this is going to be a moment that I tell my grandkids that "I was there when Apple decided to switch from the PPC to x86." While in the halls and BSsing around I saw Phil Shiller (I got a nod out of him, an Apple executive acknowledged my existence lol), and was in a geek discussion about the new platform with an Apple 64bit technologies guy and (I believe was) Mr. Captain Crunch.
Some thoughts about the transition:
Apple is doing really well right now. They have a rather large cash reserve. People think that Apple is going to destroy themselves again by doing this. Because of this official announcement that in about a year, the current processor is going to be obsolete, nobody will be making Mac purchases unless it is completely necessary. Mac sales are going to plummet. Though, this is the time to make such a move if such a move is necessary. If it is required that Apple switch to a different architecture, doing so while Apple is doing really well and has lots of cash on hand makes this endeavor a lot less risky. Apple (or any company) can not be on an ever rising success. Instead of waiting for the roller-coaster to start going down, Apple is taking advantage of its position.
Some good things about the switch is that it will most likely be easier to run Windows apps on OS X via VirtualPC running as a VM and perhaps evern DarWINE which will now not have to worry about emulating the x86. I have no clue how they will be preventing Windows from being installed and how they will keep people from installing OS X on the bargain box.
So, thats about it for for Monday. At this point of the entry, the wireless network is actually working at Moscone and I'm in a session.
Laters.
So, my thoughts about the Keynote:
Overall, it was short. Just about an hour I believe was the length. It started just like any other keynote. iPods, retail, and then the slide that said "Transitions". This slide made most of the room snicker, and me commenting "I don't like where this is going.". Sure enough Steve talks about the transition from OS 9 to OS X, then 68k to PPC, and now the future with PPC to x86. Though what really surprises me is how easy they are making the transition for developers, or, I should say, how easy they say(<- keyword) it will be. Steve really put his reality distortion field to the test today with the announcement. xCode 2.1 was announced (I don't know if that's available yet on ADC or not, I have my copy from after the Keynote), which introduces a nice feature that makes a check box for compiling your app for Intel, PPC, or both. The demos say that just checking the boxes is all you need for most Cocoa apps, otherwise there will have to be just a little bit of tweaking. Carbon apps will require a little bit more tweaking.
By the way, Colin, please stop taring your source. Trying to play around with ATX I found that the untaring process (either in terminal or the GUI app) causes some of your files to get messed up and thus not work with xCode. Please upload it in a .dmg so that I can play with it.
After talking about the transition, Steve brought the guy from Mathmatica on stage to tell everyone how easy it was to port Mathmatica to the Intel OS X. They say 2 hours. Though, for a program like that, I am still skeptical. I don't recall them mentioning how many Apple Engineers Steve sicked on that project last weekend.
After the Mathmatica demo, Steve paraded Adobe and Microsoft so they can say that this is a good move and they will be supporting it (IMHO what else are they going to do?).
The CEO of Intel came up to give a few words as well. He gave a little history of Apple and Intel. He even included the Disco Inferno commercial that Apple did back in 1996 bashing the Intel chip.
The rest of the day is under non-disclosure, some cool stuff in the Enterprise IT State of the Union and the evening reception. Though, I guess I can say that I was able to play with one of the Intel test boxes and ended up BSing with a bunch of other geeks about how Apple will keep OS X from getting installed on a generic other brand PC, how Windows may run and some more technical details of what the final product will be. Though all this BSing is all speculation, even a lot of the Apple people don't know exactly what is going to happen, what parts of these test boxes will stay, what will be replaced, etc. I kind of feel like this is going to be a moment that I tell my grandkids that "I was there when Apple decided to switch from the PPC to x86." While in the halls and BSsing around I saw Phil Shiller (I got a nod out of him, an Apple executive acknowledged my existence lol), and was in a geek discussion about the new platform with an Apple 64bit technologies guy and (I believe was) Mr. Captain Crunch.
Some thoughts about the transition:
Apple is doing really well right now. They have a rather large cash reserve. People think that Apple is going to destroy themselves again by doing this. Because of this official announcement that in about a year, the current processor is going to be obsolete, nobody will be making Mac purchases unless it is completely necessary. Mac sales are going to plummet. Though, this is the time to make such a move if such a move is necessary. If it is required that Apple switch to a different architecture, doing so while Apple is doing really well and has lots of cash on hand makes this endeavor a lot less risky. Apple (or any company) can not be on an ever rising success. Instead of waiting for the roller-coaster to start going down, Apple is taking advantage of its position.
Some good things about the switch is that it will most likely be easier to run Windows apps on OS X via VirtualPC running as a VM and perhaps evern DarWINE which will now not have to worry about emulating the x86. I have no clue how they will be preventing Windows from being installed and how they will keep people from installing OS X on the bargain box.
So, thats about it for for Monday. At this point of the entry, the wireless network is actually working at Moscone and I'm in a session.
Laters.
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I just compiled and played around with the AssignmentTracker X source code last night in Xcode 2.1 from gzipped *.tgz file and everything worked fine for me in fact I trashed the original ATX folder and am working on a backup right now. I was able to get everything working great except for the Intel version which I found out failed during the linking process because I didn't link that version with the Mac OS X 10.4.1Univeral SDK I was linking it with the Mac OS X 10.3 SDK, tonight I think after I fix that everything should be working great for me. I may upload a DMG later on, but the *.tgz should be working fine, I tested it several times before and it worked for me, I wouldn't keep *.tgz'ing it if I knew it wasn't working.
Oh yeah forgot to mention I use DropStuff to create those *.tgz files now instead of
tar -cvf ATX_2005xxxx.tar
gzip ATX_2005xxxx.tar
Additionally I went through and made sure it preserved Macintosh file attributes in preferences before starting those *.tgz files idk what else I can do, projects like Adium distribute their source the same way and it's worked for them.
From what I've heard regarding how they'll keep OS X off the bargain box, and one reason that they're moving to Intel, is that they want to take advantage of the DRM hardware that's coming available. It would be trivial to DRM their x86 implementation of Open Firmware so that it'll only run on certain machines, and I doubt very much that Apple wants to get out of the hardware biz when it comes to computers.
This is all speculation, of course, since none of us know better (who are saying so, anyway).
"From what I've heard regarding how they'll keep OS X off the bargain box, and one reason that they're moving to Intel, is that they want to take advantage of the DRM hardware that's coming available. It would be trivial to DRM their x86 implementation of Open Firmware so that it'll only run on certain machines, and I doubt very much that Apple wants to get out of the hardware biz when it comes to computers.
This is all speculation, of course, since none of us know better (who are saying so, anyway)."
According to the Universal Binary Guide there will be no Open Firmware for Intel X86 Macs and according to Intel there is no DRM in any current or near future processors. This has already been discussed to death in Slashdot & Something Awful.