I was lucky enough to get an invitation for the iPhone Tech Talks held in San Jose on 29 October, 2009. The talks were held at the Hyatt in Santa Clara (off Great America Parkway). South bay is a 3 hour drive for me and with the Oakland Bay Bridge closure it might take even longer. I considered staying home to keep working on my next iPhone app. Attending was hanging by a thread, but I wanted to see the show and meet other iPhone developers. In the end, I went and I'm glad I did.
Registration opened promptly at 0800. The registration lady really does ask for photo ID before issuing your badge and mandatory t-shirt. Apple put on a nice breakfast, coffee, fat pills and some fruit. 0800 is rather early for the valley and small talk was hard to drum up.
Shortly before 0900 I was in the large conference room w/Blink-182 (and similar) on the soundtrack. Apple starts promptly and the keynote was a inspiring start for the day. The overall theme: iPhone is cool and popular, write great apps, make money. I like it.
There short video promoting the iPhone and applications. Another video from the very big conglomerate why corporate IT is adopting the iPhone. The speaker had a steady stream of poster children for great apps. I rarely cruise the app store, so this was beneficial for me.
One example was "things" which features a "companion app" - i.e. there is a desktop app and a iPhone app and they share data. I have an application in development which also needs to share data between iPhone and desktop, but I didn't know this arrangement had a name.
There are 3 technical tracks available after the keynote. I stayed in the big hall for "Effective iPhone Development" parts 1 and 2. The talk was good, but I already knew most of the content. One small item I didn't know: don't prefix vars w/a underscore because Apple uses these internally and there might be a collision.
Apple provided a catered box lunch w/a sandwich, salad, etc. Not bad. By lunchtime, people were awake and ready to talk. I picked a table that contained the oldest looking people (being ancient myself) and struck up a conversation. After working from home most of the year, it was fun to meet some new people.
One distressing item: I asked everybody I met if they were able to sustain themselves by creating iPhone apps. The answer was a resounding "no". Perhaps we are all beginners and just haven't paid our dues. Perhaps there really isn't much money in the app store. Not certain, but to actually earn a living from creating iPhone applications seems to be a rare accomplishment.
After lunch I sat through the "Mastering OpenGL ES for iPhone (p1)" - probably should have just snuck out to my truck for a nap. I don't remember much about this talk. If linear algebra scares you... well... perhaps you shouldn't be doing OpenGL. Anyway, less hand wringing/intimidation and more bit twiddling would be an improvement.
Next was "Testing and Debugging Your iPhone Application" - which was disappointingly light. I did get some new information though: when you ship an app, keep the .dSym file for crash analysis (makes sense, I should have already discovered that one). Secondly, Snow Leopard (which I have yet to install) has clang which does a thorough job w/static source analysis. I resolve to upgrade to Snow Leopard as soon as I ship my next app.
Finally, "Maximizing iPhone App Performance" which was also on the light side, but still worth an hour. I probably should have attended the networking presentation instead.
Apple wrapped up the day w/a wine and cheese reception.
Wrapup: the Apple people are accessible, they take questions between sessions and there is a lab where you can bring them specific examples for consultation. The developer outreach is nice, and Apple certainly deserves praise for the effort. There is no paper and AFAIK the slides/sources are not available on the web. Take your notes and be quick.
There are videos from previous "tech talks" available on the Apple developer web site. There is a fair amount of old material, but there is enough new material to make them worth attending.
One factoid tossed out: all the attendees had published iPhone apps (in my case, a very minor application). Write that app if you want to score an invite next year.
It was an inspiring day, even if I didn't meet anybody who has struck gold on the appstore. Maybe next year...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment