WWDC: A celebration of Mac OS X

This is the first WWDC in a very long time where the centerpiece is real, tangible, and measurable. Steve Jobs began his fireside chat by walking onto the stage with a retail package of Mac OS X cradled in his hands. No words were necessary to narrate this quintessential Jobs moment; his smile and the box communicated all that needed to be said.

With Richard Feynman and Picasso looking down from both sides of the stage, Steve began to pitch, cajole, encourage and hammer home his message: "The Mac OS X train has left the station, and any developer not aboard will be left behind. The epicenter of this conference is Mac OS X. What matters most in the next six months is shipping Mac OS X applications." To that end, he promised Apple would do whatever it could to help developers achieve that goal.

After a brief recap of the iBook introduction, news of the new LCD display and the price cut for the existing models, the topic returned to the importance of shipping Mac OS applications. Jobs held up a Macworld survey that indicated between 57% and 82% (the number< varies according to market segment) of users said they would consider switching from their current application if a competitor released a comparable Mac OS X version. "That's something that should scare you," Jobs said. "The impatience for Mac OS X will surpass brand loyalty. The person who gets the native apps out first will win." Other survey numbers reinforced the same basic message, and they were also consistent with the MacFixIt poll we reported several months ago: The overwhelming majority of Mac users want to migrate to Mac OS X yesterday, but they will settle for today.

Although it was clear that everyone should stay focused on Mac OS X 10.0.3, Jobs promised that Mac OS X is far from finished. The last 58 days are the first few steps in a journey expected to last the next 15 years. Apple will add improvements, such as the three updates already released, and some of the updates would be larger than could be downloaded over the net. He emphasized that Apple realizes that Mac OS X 10.0.3 is not perfect, and they will continue to incorporate the feedback they receive from users and developers into future releases. "All hands are on deck to make it better, with over 1,000 engineers currently working on Mac OS X," Jobs said.

The news that Mac OS X would be pre-installed on all Macs beginning today was popular in the hall. It is still early for a great many users to begin using Mac OS X (and wisely, Apple has chosen to make OS 9 the default) but the strategy may pay off. Now we will see just how many users have been putting off hardware purchases waiting for Mac OS X. Bundling X removes one of the last excuses to put off buying a new Mac, even if all the applications are not ready yet.

I must admit, after sitting though an entire day filled with one demo after another, Mac OS X has a good story to tell, even with its current rough edges. I realize demos are pretty faces dressed up to impress, but users new to the Mac who do not have a shelf full of legacy applications probably won’t bump up against the limits of Mac OS X right away.

Next on the agenda was a look at Apple’s retail strategy. We were treated to a short film documenting the first day in the life of an Apple retail store, followed by another set of statistics: sales of nearly $600,000 in two days of operation, (three times what they would have considered successful), 237 Macs out the door, and – a special favorite given the audience – 935 software packages sold. If the survey stating that users would jump ship to get a native application was the stick, then this was the carrot. Jobs said that Apple would love to feature in-store events for software applications, they can’t wait to get the developer’s wares on the shelves, and essentially, all will be right with the world when developers start shipping Mac OS X applications.

Avie Tevanian delivered the second half of the keynote. He hosted a number of demos, explained how WebObjects and Mac OS X server were built atop the Mac OS X foundation, explored the virtues of Cocoa, and once again reviewed the basic architecture of Mac OS X. He also announced that a large number of new localization packages to support< various languages in Mac OS X is due to ship in the next few weeks.

I did detect a slight sea change with respect to Carbonizing applications. Since the dawn of Carbon, Apple has publicly touted how easy it is to Carbonize an application. Today however, while there were still plenty of testimonials on the ease of converting an application to Carbon, both Steve and Avie emphasized of the importance of optimizing Carbon ports. The bottom line: it was easy to get a Carbon port up and running, but the job is not finished until the application is tuned up. Because the performance metrics for Mac OS X and OS 9 were different, functionally equivalent routines that worked in a microsecond under 9 could drag the system to its knees under X.

Not everything was focused on performance. Avie showed off Drive 10 to illustrate that even an application as utilitarian as a disk utility can be visually elegant and delightful to watch. He joked that now "Disk utilities are raising the bar for all you guys out there." After still more demos, Avie concluded the keynote at twenty minutes past noon, leaving a thousand hungry developers to sprint toward the lunch line.

In the afternoon, Apple hosted a series of overviews that expanded on the basic elements discussed in the keynote. Among the torrent of technical information about frameworks, technologies, strategies, demos, one of the points that I found most interesting – mainly because I had not encountered it before – is that Carbon is not just a bridge from the past, but rather is the procedural framework that sits alongside the object oriented framework of Cocoa, and both will continue to be improved upon as Mac OS X matures. That other framework, Classic, is here, but isn’t getting any attention. This week the world revolves around Carbon and Cocoa.

The first day of my first WWDC was nothing if not exciting. I’m still digesting much of what I learned today. Everything after the keynote slowly blurred together in my memory into an Aqua-colored haze. Tomorrow I plan to spend a little more time taking with developers. The soul of the Macintosh, the Mac OS, is fed and nurtured by Apple, but its heart is created by great applications. And those applications are what this conference is really about.

Reported by Robert DeLaurentis
See also yesterday's coverage of WWDC events (one and two).