At previous Apple WWDC conferences Apple bused the attendees out to the Cupertino campus on Thursday night for food, beer and music. The so called campus bash. I’m glad I went last year because the bash this year will be held in San Francisco. Probably be in the big ground floor hall of Moscone West. Should still be fun but going to the Apple campus was part of WWDC the long time attendees tell me. Still, I can say I was at the last one 🙂
Tag Archives | Macintosh
WWDC schedule
Not long to go until Apple WWDC 2007. Just done my preliminary schedule based on the published session info so far. See the picture below. Will probably change a bit as there are some slots in the published schedules on the WWDC site that are listed as TBA. These are likely placeholders for new stuff in MacOS X 10.5 Leopard or iPhone. The picture also doesn’t show any of the evening activities such as the Apple Design Awards, The Scientific Poster Session, The Apple Campus Bash and others. There is also a session entitled Mac OS X Scientific Computing State of the Union that is in the full listings but not on the calendar view. It’ll maybe a lunchtime session. I want to go to that. Many of the sessions I’m going to are IT technology related rather than developer related. This reflects that WWDC is taking on a more technical conference feel rather than a pure developer conference. The IT related sessions are of interest for the education technology job I’m doing at present.
Click picture for larger view
Flight to San Francisco on 9th June. 6 weeks to go. Can’t wait 🙂
Toys for the boys
Finally stepped into the High Definition television age. I got a Sony Bravia KDL-40W2000 LCD television and a Sony Playstation 3. The TV has a 1080p HD display and the PS3 has a Blu-Ray HD drive in it. As a bonus I get a games console in the Blu-Ray player for free 🙂 Here is a picture of the beasts in situ. The image on the screen is from a Mac mini that I use as my music centre with iTunes.
The quality of Blu-Ray movies via the PS3 and the TV is stunning. Very, very happy. I had to take the first PS3 back as the fans would come on and once they got to a high speed, whilst playing a game for example, they would stay at the high speed until the unit was switched off. This was irrespective of what the PS3 was doing after the fans speeded up. So if I left it idling the fans would never slow down again. This was annoying when using it to watch movies when in a quiet part of a film. You could hear the fans over the film sound. The replacement PS3 seems to be quieter but I’ve still to test it fully.
The game MotorStorm is stunning on the PS3. Really, really good fun as well. It outputs at 720p resolution and looks excellent on the Bravia. Here is a picture of a bike from the game. It has a bit of motion blur.
So I’ve cast my die into the Blu-Ray camp in the great HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray face off. Hopefully Apple will go down the Blu-Ray route with their HD optical drives in Macintosh machines. A Mac mini with a Blu-Ray drive and a version of DVD Player that allowed playback of Blu-Ray movie discs would make a very nice media hub indeed. It’d need to output 1080p via HDMI cable though.
Scrivener – author project management application
Scrivener is a stunning piece of software. It is designed to help mange ideas, notes, writings research and other items related to a writing project. This could be a book, a short story, a project report, a piece of scientific research, whatever. If it’s a piece of writing then Scrivener can be used to organise the interim drafts and stuff.
It uses a really nice cork board metaphor with notes and ideas pinned to it. Folders can be used to organise the notes. This is only one way of looking at a project. There are other views as well. The interface and attention to detail is very, very good. Take a look at the Scrivener site for more info. If you use a Mac and do any writing then prepare yourself to stump up the cash for this excellent piece of Mac OS software. I did a few days ago 🙂
Papers – Public Preview 2
A 2nd public preview of Papers was released today. Papers is an app for searching PubMed and organising references and PDF files of journal articles. It can also be used to manage any local PDF files already on your Macintosh. It’s like iTunes for scientific papers. The new version interacts with EndNote X which is a nice addition. I’m hoping that Papers will be very useful for a chemistry project course I’ve just started.
WWDC 2007 dates confirmed
As rumoured, WWDC 2007 will be held from 11th to 15th June. Happy days. There is a good chance that the iPhone will ship during WWDC and probably Leopard as well. Looking forward to it. Last year was fun.
Travel Checklist To Do:
Buy WWDC e-Ticket ✔
Book flight from Belfast to Heathrow ✔
Book flight from Heathrow to San Francisco ✔
Reserve hotel room ✔
Book time off from work ✔
All done. That’s me sorted. Now I just have to wait 🙂
WWDC 2007 – June 10th to 15th??
UPDATE: AAUC have removed the entry referenced below from their June 2007 calendar.
Apple WWDC was very late in the year in 2006. August in fact. Hopefully this years will be earlier. Just seen that the Australian Apple University Consortium have an event calendar that has WWDC 2007 as running from Sunday June 10th to Friday June 15th 2007. They even have a deadline for their members to take advantage of a special rate for the San Francisco Courtyard Marriott hotel.
Nothing in the Moscone Center event calendar for those dates yet. But that’s not unusual. I hope the AUC are right as June would suit me. Hopefully Apple will confirm the dates soon so I can get flights and hotel booked. Yeah. Summer in San Francisco.
New build of YAPT posted
Be a while since I’ve done anything on YAPT. Just posted a new build. See the YAPT page. Here is a screen shot from the latest version:
Click Picture for larger view
‘Twas the night before Macworld…
. . .when all through the house not a creature was stirring!
I’m really looking forward to the new toys and software that will be released over the next few days. I hope there is a iPod phone. I hope it works with the Nike+ shoe thingy. I really hope said iPod phone isn’t a lemon!
The ModBook should be interesting. If it can do screen rotation and doesn’t add too much to the price of a basic MacBook it might be a runner for me. The battery will need to be readily accessible to allow an easy sleep->battery change->wake from hibernation cycle.
Just a pity we’re not all in SF to see the stuff in the flesh. Still WWDC to come later in the year. Hopefully earlier this year than last. Anyone else planning to go? I’m making it my summer holiday like a sad git!
ecto and SOHO Notes it is then
I wrote previously that I was testing MacJounal as a replacement for ecto as a blog tool and SOHO Notes as a personal journal app. Whilst MacJounal has some nice touches, and does have a nice Mac interface, I’ve reverted to ecto and SOHO Notes for the two tasks respectively. I really missed being able to drag a picture into a blog entry window in ecto and have a thumbnail automatically created that linked to a full size version when uploaded to my Soapbox. I also like the ability to specify a target when creating links. On the SOHO Notes front I like the way it automatically enters the current date as the title of a note when you create one in the in built Journal folder. Hardly Earth shattering I know but the small touches are nice.