7 ms·

WWDC2014

74 points by pohl 13y ago

andymoe 13y ago
Finally a lottery. Hope this works out better for everyone. See you there... Maybe.
spicyj 13y ago
Approximately a dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7522433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7522433.
- dang 13y ago
  So it is. Thank you.
unicornporn 13y ago
12" Retina MacBook Air pretty please?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
frankus 13y ago
I went ahead and booked a hotel with a reasonable cancellation policy, which is probably a good idea if you want to end up close to the event.
- Jtsummers 13y ago
  For some places you may be able to transfer that room to someone else without having to pay any cancellation fees. I've looked at doing that for conventions in the past where I wasn't 100% certain I was going to go, but somehow managed to get into a good hotel for cheap with the housing block. EDIT: An example of how to deal with this. Say you can't go, but know someone who can. Coordinate with the individual to contact the hotel. Tell the hotel reservation manager that you're wanting to transfer the reservation to another name/CC. Have the second person contact them (likely need your reservation # that you originally got) and give the hotel the info (like CC, name, address). You can contact the hotel afterwards to confirm that the transfer has occurred and that you're no longer on the hook for the room. This is also a useful trick for getting out of leases early. They transfer the lease to the new person's name and you don't have to break it.
  - protomyth 13y ago
    "For some places you may be able to transfer that room to someone else without having to pay any cancellation fees." Perhaps when the actual lottery occurs we could have a thread to do that.
    - Jtsummers 13y ago
      That'd be a good idea. I've never (and won't again, not an Apple dev) attended one of these, are there official forums? Housing block for the hotels near the conference? If there's an official housing block it maybe easier, there should be a group managing it that you can contact directly. If you need a room, get put on a waitlist, if you have a room they'll offer it to those on the waitlist. Official forums or very popular industry forums would be great places to host this discussion because it'd have the greatest chance of reaching the audience that needs the rooms. (And HN would likely count as a popular enough forum, but with no subforum concept it'd last a day or two and then fall off the front page.)
Eleutheria 13y ago
iWatch is coming. My bet is on it. They will showcase the platform to develop apps for the iWatch.
- dangero 13y ago
  Since phones have clocks on them isn't a watch really just a fashion accessory now? What makes it more likely than any other wearable computer? I guess I'm just not sure if watches are a big enough market for Apple. They seem kind of niche now because I bet if you polled people who have iPhones there's only a small percentage that want to bling the brand on their wrist like that. My parents for example both have iPhones, but neither of them would wear a watch unless it really had some extra special usefulness. What is the killer feature? I feel like the Pebble has proven that the killer feature is not that obvious because a lot of Pebble users say they stopped wearing it.
  - hershel 13y ago
    There we're rumors they are working on watch that detects heart attacks by listening to your pulse.
  - teej 13y ago
    I wear a Fitbit. I feel like I was incepted in to wearing a watch - I never wore one before. I thought I was buying a device that tracked my daily fitness but what I ended up with was a watch that has to be recharged weekly and tells my friends how lazy I've been. I imagine Apple will take a similar life-data approach, especially with the rumors around Healthbook (http://9to5mac.com/2014/03/17/this-is-healthbook-apples-first-major-step-into-health-fitness-tracking/ http://9to5mac.com/2014/03/17/this-is-healthbook-apples-firs...).
- mortenjorck 13y ago
  I highly, highly doubt WatchKit is going to make a surprise debut at WWDC this year. Much more likely is that we'll finally see an Apple TV SDK. If there is an iWatch this year, my money is on it starting out as a "hobby" just like the Apple TV did (and is presumably about to graduate from).
gotoblob 13y ago
What do you get for the ticket fee? Do they give away free things like Google I/O? Will you build lasting networks of app developers? I wouldn't blame anyone for going just for the experience but I probably can't afford it for that alone.
- dangero 13y ago
  Normally you get a cheap jacket or backpack, and yes, lots of opportunities to make contacts with Apple developers at labs or people from other companies. One year I was working on a kernel driver and I got acquainted with several Apple kernel driver developers during labs at WWDC. After the conference I could email them directly when I had issues. That was extremely valuable compared to going through Apple's official technical support incidents.
- eridius 13y ago
  Apple doesn't give away free stuff at WWDC (besides incidentals like tee-shirts, jackets, and bags). WWDC is valuable for 3 reasons: 1. All the information. This has historically been very important, but Apple's getting faster and faster at putting out videos these days, so if you just want the sessions, you can save a lot of money by watching them from home. 2. Direct access to Apple engineers in the labs. Depending on your needs, this can either be irrelevant, or it can be priceless. 3. Networking. A lot of people at WWDC don't even bother going to a session every time slot and instead wander the halls talking to people (plus all the time set aside for socializing, such as lunch, after hours, and the few minutes in the halls between sessions).
  - Aqua_Geek 13y ago
    The problem with the labs is that the slots fill fast and you end up waiting in line for hours behind developers asking the most basic of questions. I really wish they'd do two conferences — one for those new to the platform and another that would be a deep dive for the experienced devs.
    - collias 13y ago
kbar13 13y ago
I'm curious to see what new stuff Apple has to offer. I'm not entirely sure why pretty much every piece of Apple marketing these days involve short, staccato sentences of incomplete "sentences", but it's really annoying. In addition, text as images ,_,

WWDC2014

74 points by pohl 13y ago

andymoe 13y ago

Finally a lottery. Hope this works out better for everyone. See you there... Maybe.

spicyj 13y ago

Approximately a dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7522433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7522433.

dang 13y ago
So it is. Thank you.

unicornporn 13y ago

12" Retina MacBook Air pretty please?

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

frankus 13y ago

I went ahead and booked a hotel with a reasonable cancellation policy, which is probably a good idea if you want to end up close to the event.

Jtsummers 13y ago
For some places you may be able to transfer that room to someone else without having to pay any cancellation fees. I've looked at doing that for conventions in the past where I wasn't 100% certain I was going to go, but somehow managed to get into a good hotel for cheap with the housing block. EDIT: An example of how to deal with this. Say you can't go, but know someone who can. Coordinate with the individual to contact the hotel. Tell the hotel reservation manager that you're wanting to transfer the reservation to another name/CC. Have the second person contact them (likely need your reservation # that you originally got) and give the hotel the info (like CC, name, address). You can contact the hotel afterwards to confirm that the transfer has occurred and that you're no longer on the hook for the room. This is also a useful trick for getting out of leases early. They transfer the lease to the new person's name and you don't have to break it.
- protomyth 13y ago
  "For some places you may be able to transfer that room to someone else without having to pay any cancellation fees." Perhaps when the actual lottery occurs we could have a thread to do that.
  - Jtsummers 13y ago
    That'd be a good idea. I've never (and won't again, not an Apple dev) attended one of these, are there official forums? Housing block for the hotels near the conference? If there's an official housing block it maybe easier, there should be a group managing it that you can contact directly. If you need a room, get put on a waitlist, if you have a room they'll offer it to those on the waitlist. Official forums or very popular industry forums would be great places to host this discussion because it'd have the greatest chance of reaching the audience that needs the rooms. (And HN would likely count as a popular enough forum, but with no subforum concept it'd last a day or two and then fall off the front page.)

Eleutheria 13y ago

iWatch is coming. My bet is on it. They will showcase the platform to develop apps for the iWatch.

dangero 13y ago
Since phones have clocks on them isn't a watch really just a fashion accessory now? What makes it more likely than any other wearable computer? I guess I'm just not sure if watches are a big enough market for Apple. They seem kind of niche now because I bet if you polled people who have iPhones there's only a small percentage that want to bling the brand on their wrist like that. My parents for example both have iPhones, but neither of them would wear a watch unless it really had some extra special usefulness. What is the killer feature? I feel like the Pebble has proven that the killer feature is not that obvious because a lot of Pebble users say they stopped wearing it.
- hershel 13y ago
  There we're rumors they are working on watch that detects heart attacks by listening to your pulse.
- teej 13y ago
  I wear a Fitbit. I feel like I was incepted in to wearing a watch - I never wore one before. I thought I was buying a device that tracked my daily fitness but what I ended up with was a watch that has to be recharged weekly and tells my friends how lazy I've been. I imagine Apple will take a similar life-data approach, especially with the rumors around Healthbook (http://9to5mac.com/2014/03/17/this-is-healthbook-apples-first-major-step-into-health-fitness-tracking/ http://9to5mac.com/2014/03/17/this-is-healthbook-apples-firs...).
mortenjorck 13y ago
I highly, highly doubt WatchKit is going to make a surprise debut at WWDC this year. Much more likely is that we'll finally see an Apple TV SDK. If there is an iWatch this year, my money is on it starting out as a "hobby" just like the Apple TV did (and is presumably about to graduate from).

gotoblob 13y ago

What do you get for the ticket fee? Do they give away free things like Google I/O? Will you build lasting networks of app developers? I wouldn't blame anyone for going just for the experience but I probably can't afford it for that alone.

dangero 13y ago
Normally you get a cheap jacket or backpack, and yes, lots of opportunities to make contacts with Apple developers at labs or people from other companies. One year I was working on a kernel driver and I got acquainted with several Apple kernel driver developers during labs at WWDC. After the conference I could email them directly when I had issues. That was extremely valuable compared to going through Apple's official technical support incidents.
eridius 13y ago
Apple doesn't give away free stuff at WWDC (besides incidentals like tee-shirts, jackets, and bags). WWDC is valuable for 3 reasons: 1. All the information. This has historically been very important, but Apple's getting faster and faster at putting out videos these days, so if you just want the sessions, you can save a lot of money by watching them from home. 2. Direct access to Apple engineers in the labs. Depending on your needs, this can either be irrelevant, or it can be priceless. 3. Networking. A lot of people at WWDC don't even bother going to a session every time slot and instead wander the halls talking to people (plus all the time set aside for socializing, such as lunch, after hours, and the few minutes in the halls between sessions).
- Aqua_Geek 13y ago
  The problem with the labs is that the slots fill fast and you end up waiting in line for hours behind developers asking the most basic of questions. I really wish they'd do two conferences — one for those new to the platform and another that would be a deep dive for the experienced devs.
  - collias 13y ago

kbar13 13y ago

I'm curious to see what new stuff Apple has to offer. I'm not entirely sure why pretty much every piece of Apple marketing these days involve short, staccato sentences of incomplete "sentences", but it's really annoying. In addition, text as images ,_,