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.

I just arrived in San Francisco, and the first thing I did was stop by Moscone to grab my badge for WWDC and check out what all Apple had done to the location.

   

Apple has two huge Apple logos on the building, which make it easy to spot. The inside is also covered with Apple stuff, mainly about the iPhone and OS X.

I’m scheduled to attend Apple’s 2008 WWDC, and providing I can grab a seat at the Keynote (Monday @ 10AM PST) I’ll update OS X 411 with live updates. Check the tag wwdc08live for up to the minute updates as well as the main page. I will also be posting all announcements to the blog as individual posts.

Counting the days until WWDC08? Download the OS X 411 branded countdown widget for Apple’s 2008 World Wide Developers Conference today. Above is a screenshot of the widget.

Download the OS X 411 Countdown Widget for WWDC08 now, its only 153.3KB.

Today Apple posted the session schedules for their 2008 World Wide Developers Conference, WWDC for short. 

See Apple’s WWDC08 Schedule here.

I plan on posting more about WWDC08 soon, what I can say is that I will be attending it as a student courtesy of Apple and their Student Scholarship program. See my personal blog for more on my attendance.