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WWDC 2006: Tuesday Wrap-Up

Tuesdays usually have a number of overview sessions for new and updated APIs. I went to a session on Core Animation, and just to repeat myself, this is a very cool framework. I think it will be a bigger deal than Core Data was for Tiger. I also went to a session on Objective-C and one on Core Data

Tuesday night was the Apple Design Awards. Daring Fireball has all of the winners. iSale was an app I hadn't heard of. I don't do a lot of auctions, but this is a very slick app. One of the winners (Lecture Reading Workflow, University of Michigan) actually had to come from the overflow room. From what I remember, there wasn't an overflow room last year.

Stump the Experts followed the Design Awards. If you've never been to this event, you need to go at least once. The gist is that the stage is filled with a panel of current and ex-Apple employees, and the audience tries to stump them with obscure trivia questions about Apple products and culture. The experts can also ask questions of the audience.

There were quite a lot of questions, but some of the more entertaining ones were (all paraphrased):

Q: Which Apple product can speak the name of its developers?
A: Apple Fax Modem

Q: What city in Utah did Apple dump about 3,000 Lisas in?
A: Logan, Utah.

(this answer was found via Wikipedia, and the expert added that the number of Lisas in the area had tripled in the last sixth months. Some people got the joke.)

Q: What is the number displayed on the icon of the Lisa calculator?
A: 124

Q: Which Mac was on the market for the shortest period of time?
A: The conventional answer was the Mac IIvi, but the Mac Pro won on a technicality.

Q: What is the smallest electric device Apple ever sold (must have power supply, actually do something, and so on)
A: The initial answer was an Apple keychain light from the company store, but it turns out some of the iPod/Nike sensor gadgetry is smaller.

WWDC 2006: Tuesday Wrap-Up
Posted Aug 9, 2006 — 3 comments below

Allen Pike — Aug 09, 06 1537

What I was most impressed by Stump the Experts (this was my first) was that not only did the experts generally know the answer, but that the usually had the story behind why that was the answer (e.g. the guy who was it was determined when the Lisa calculator would say "124".)

I agree that Core Animation will be a Big Deal, but adoption may take some time. Both the degradation on machines with weak graphics capabilities (I asked about this in the session) and the UI guidelines issues (somebody else asked about this to great applause) will add to the 10.5-only issue in causing people to think a bit before they go headlong into Core Animation redesigns of their apps.

Nice meeting you on Sunday by the way.

Carl — Aug 09, 06 1538

I don't get it. Why are there more Lisas now?

Brad — Aug 09, 06 1540

It has to do with wikiality.

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