Although this is being posted about a year before WWDC 2009 kicks off, what I discuss here is something for potential attendees to read. WWDC 2008 was the first time I attended WWDC and overall it went well for me, but I do have some “tips,” that I wish I knew before I attended. My tips are listed below, if you have any tips or questions of your own email me or post a comment below.

WWDC Registration - Register early for WWDC, get there a day early (Sunday), and grab your badge so you’re not having to wait in line on Keynote day (Monday).

The Keynote - Make sure you get in line early, at registration on Sunday, the Apple guy who was assisting me recommended I get there around 5:00am, I arrived at 6:10am, almost a full 4hours before the Keynote began at 10:00am. At the Keynote, get greedy: my friend Jason and I managed to grab seats in the tenth row (which were reserved for VIPs) because we went up to the front and the ushers pointed us to our tenth row seats. 

Lunch - I didn’t know that Apple supplied lunch until after the Keynote on Monday, everyday except for Friday Apple had lunch. The food was mostly sandwiches and salads, each day had a choice of three unique meals, which rotated daily. Tuesday through Friday Apple also supplied a breakfast with free juice and bagels.

Sessions - Most of the session rooms have power plugs, the only sessions I attended that did not have power plugs were in the Keynote room, if you’re attending more than two sessions in that room, make sure to conserve your laptop’s battery. It also helps to read the session description to see if the topic for the session is over your head or too novice.

Beer Bash - If you’re under twenty-one don’t plan on having any alcohol, Apple checked everyone’s ID, even people who were clearly over twenty-one. Wear something warm, a strong breeze in the park can chill the area quickly. Food at the beer bash is all free and at WWDC 2008 it was done to themes, like Italian and Asian; all mostly finger food.

Hotel - If you’re flying into San Francisco book at a Hotel close to Moscone West, I didn’t find out until after I arrived that WWDC was at Moscone West, I assumed Apple had all of Moscone Center (this matters because I stayed at the W Hotel, which was right across the street from the Beer Bash, but a block away from Moscone West). Each day WWDC starts early and ends late, other than sleeping there isn’t much time to spend at the Hotel.

Steve Jobs’ Keynote was THE event here at WWDC, the event that everyone wanted to attend. While many people I spoke with in line waiting to grab a seat at the keynote came to WWDC strictly to watch the keynote, many others are here primarily for the sessions and labs. See my posts: Waiting in Line @ WWDC, The line moved… A little, and On the way to the Keynote.

At the keynote Steve introduced iPhone 3G, MobileMe and Snow Leopard, all of which were in one way or another predicted beforehand. The iPhone 3G is slimmer, blacker/whiter (in 16Gb only), faster, cheaper and available July 11th. MobileMe is replacing .Mac as Apple’s syncing and online storage service, Apple also extended support to Windows computers and added push services. Snow Leopard, the next version of OS X (10.6) was also announced and should be available in about a year. See my posts: Snow Leopard is the next OSX, iPhone 2.0 Software, MobileMe, iPhone’s First Birthday, iPhone 3G and WWDC: Day Two + Snow Leopard.

 

OS X 411’s coverage of WWDC08 was superb and I wasn’t expecting to to go so smoothly. Since I’m attending WWDC as a student I was worried about even getting into the keynote, last year Apple denied access to students. Luckily, this year Apple allowed everyone into the Keynote and I was lucky enough to grab close seats. Just how close? Well, we were less than twenty rows from the front, my friend Jason guessed about ten (see the picture below for the pure awesomeness). We had the actual iPhone development team sitting in the row in front of us, I’m not sure we could have gotten any closer, VIPs were in the closest rows, Al Gore was one of them.

In addition to having great pictures I updated the site with new information within seconds of it being said and had photos up shortly after I updated the text. Although I did not cover the keynote word-for-word like other sites, I got my readers the information FAST. The person I was attending WWDC with checked sites like Engadget, and I had photos and news up before them on a few announcements (I guess there is something to be said for the “little guy”).

Yesterday (Monday) was the big day here at WWDC, the keynote overshadowed everything else offered here. Everything outside of the keynote here at WWDC is covered under the nondisclosure agreement all WWDC attendees had to sign/agree to, so I can not speak about specifics from the sessions. What I can speak about however, is Snow Leopard, the just announced version of Apple’s Mac OS X operating system.

Snow Leopard - Apple’s new OS X was announced yesterday by Steve Jobs at the WWDC08 keynote. While it wasn’t covered in great detail during the keynote, Apple has posted a Snow Leopard site. The Snow Leopard site says that Apple’s focus is changing gears, from adding features, to enhancing OS X’s underlying technologies. What the “average” Snow Leopard user will see will not be new features like Quick Look or Dashboard, but instead improved applications. Snow Leopard will speed up everyday programs (both Apple and third-party applications) on your system. Whether this speedup will be enough for the “average” mac user to upgrade is something I haven’t figured out yet, my personal guess is that third-party programmers will write programs strictly for Snow Leopard, just like many are for Leopard now. This may or may not be enough of a reason for mac users to upgrade. Check out Apple’s Snow Leopard mini site for more on Snow Leopard.

Today, Tuesday was not as grand as the “keynote day,” but it was none the less informative for WWDC attendees. I took my camera with me to the sessions today, but didn’t take any pictures (mainly because nothing was worth snapping a picture of). The crowds were almost as huge as the crowds waiting to get into the keynote, and even a large queue formed outside of Moscone Center before Apple allowed us to enter.

Sorry, no “One more thing”…

Everyone trying to leave the Keynote, almost as crowded as when we went in.

Thinner, Black.

       

iPhone 3G to have 3G. 21 seconds on 3G and 59 seconds on Edge in speed test.

3G approaches WiFi, 17 seconds.

408KB file is downloaded in 5s on 3Gm 18s for Edge, 3s on WiFi.

Better battery life.

iPhone 3G has built in GPS.

Live GPS tracking.

Set to be distributed in 12 countries and 25 in the next “several months”. (6 currently).

70 countries in an extended plan by Apple. (This year).

 

iPhone 3G to be priced at $199 for 8Gb. 16Gb model to be $299 and available in black or white.

 

iPhone 3G will be available in 22 countries July 11th.

Ad.

          

Steve is talking about the iPhone.

6 million iPhones have been sold.

iPhone 3G announced!

Exchange for the rest of us according to Phil.

Mobile me will push Mail, Contacts and Calendar.

Works with Mac, iPhone and Windows.

Everything is pushed over the air.

Works with native Apps on Mac and PC, iCal and Outlook.

MobileMe to have web apps that use web 2.0.

Uses the domain Me.com

Will publish photo gallery and upload photos from iPhone.

Store files online.

Demo.

$99 a year and 20Gb of storage online. Has a free trial of 60 days. MobileMe will replace .Mac. Subscribers of .Mac will be upgraded to MobileMe.

Enterprise Support, SDK and New Features…

Enterprise: 35% of the top 500 companies have participated in the iPhone beta program.

SDK: Release of all APIs that Apple uses.

SDK: Core OS is the same as OS X on Macs.

SDK: Same tools as used for Mac development; Xcode, Instruments and Interface Builder.

SDK: Demo on building a app for the iPhone.

Demo: Drag and drop interface design.

 

SDK: Quotes from developers who have used 2.0 software, all excellent.

SDK: Sega to speak about their experience with iPhone 2.0.

SDK: eBay and auctions on the iPhone. To be a free App.

   

SDK: TypePad - mobile blogging.

SDK: Associated Press (AP)

   

SDK: AP App lets you monitor news around your location, view photos and watch videos. Free App.

SDK: Pangea Software: Games ported from OS X to the iPhone. Two apps to launch at 9.99 ea.

   

SDK: Cow Music allows you to create music on the go.

SDK: MLB.com app with video highlights (almost live) and live scores.

 

SDK: Digital Legends Entertainment created a 3D game.

 

SDK: Speaking about Background processes and how to inform users of updates. Performance and battery life take a hit when background processes are running on other platforms. Apple to provide push notifications service with an Apple server. You can push Badges, Alert Sounds and Text Alerts. Available in September.

New Features: Contact Search

New Features: Full iWork support in iPhone as well as for MS Office.

New Features: Bulk delete and move in Mail.

New Feature: Saving images from emails.

New Feature: New calculator (scientific in rotation).

New Feature: Parental controls over Safari, youtube, iTunes, iPod and App store.

New Feature: Multiple language support.

iPhone 2.0 to be released in early July and 9.95 for iPod touch owners.

Apps less than 10Mb can be downloaded over Edge or WiFi, apps greater than 10Mb are WiFi only.

Companies can distribute iPhone apps through their own private servers.

Ad Hoc App distribution with up to 100 iPhone installs.

Right from Steve’s mouth.

He said there were 5300 people attending WWDC.