But the latest post by Glen Aspeslagh describes Ecamm Network’s usage of a project which seems to deserve increased exposure: Cocotron, “an open source project which aims to implement a cross-platform Objective-C API similar to that described by Apple Inc.’s Cocoa documentation.” Or, as glibly summarized by the Ecammeratus: “Wrote a Cocoa app? Just add a new Xcode target, hit compile and out shoots a Windows version.”

Sure, it doesn’t work perfectly, but Glen’s warts-and-all description sounds promising. If you have a product that could benefit from a Windows equivalent please give Cocotron a look and contribute code–so it will be easier for me to use when I come up with a product that could benefit from it.

I can’t imagine anyone will be hearing that news from this blog first, but I do want to acknowledge and take advantage of it. My last post felt a bit vague, even to me, about my definition of “iPhone black” and that was partly due to dancing around the NDA. While it was really tempting to be provocative, I felt it would be irresponsible for my current contract work to risk getting smacked with an NDA violation (even though I have yet to hear of an instance) and have the client’s product suffer as a result. I considered screenshots, but felt they were either singling out someone else’s application, or a simplistic straw man if I just used an Interface Builder mockup.

The definition I had in mind of “iPhone black UI” is not simply “any view whose background is black”; it is a UINavigationController whose UINavigationBar's barStyle is UIBarStyleBlackOpaque (instead of UIBarStyleDefault) and is controlling a UITableViewController whose controlled UITableView's rows have either a white or black background. If a UIToolbar is present, its barStyle is also UIBarStyleBlackOpaque. I think most people understood that, but I still prefer to be explicit.

Wow, that feels great to type all those UI* prefixes in public–I encourage everyone to do so!

Brushed Metal

When Apple introduced brushed metal, I was fine with it. I was fine with it for the QuickTime Player (partly because I rarely use it on its own); I was fine with it for iTunes and Calculator.

When other apps started using brushed metal (it was as simple as a checked setting in Interface Builder) and didn’t follow the guideline of “re-creat[ing] a familiar physical device,” I would actually try to find another app. I think many of these developers tried to use brushed metal to make their app stand out, but I agreed with Apple’s HIG that it made many apps look “too heavy” and, while I can’t recall specific examples, I remember it just not behaving as well for visual cues of backgrounded windows.

When brushed metal bled into Safari and iChat, I started hacking their nibs to disable the brushed metal; when it infected the Finder I discovered UNO and disabled it across the board (UNO also had the advantage of enabling the then-nascent “unified toolbar” interface look, which I really liked).

I rather like the idea of a “look” or “mode” which adds contextual information about the app itself, but when people use it with abandon, it loses its contextual purpose. In interior design, there is the concept of an accent wall: A wall (usually) painted a bolder color than the other walls to draw attention and break up the uniformity of the room without domination of the bold color. More than one accent wall in a room, and the room is split-color; all of the walls the accent color, and it’s no longer the accent color–it is the room color. This is what I feel happened with brushed metal.

iPhone Black

If you can remember back that far, think about a stock iPhone devoid of App Store purchases. Phone, Mail, Text, Calendar, Maps, Safari, Settings, and half the tabs in Clock–gray status bar, blue navigation and toolbars. Black is used in the tab bars, and indicates that the icons here behave differently from a toolbar (again, modes). Yes, there are a few “variants”–the Stopwatch and Timer tabs of Clock, Photos, and iPod while playing. These are all fullscreen uses, with the apparent intent to blend the controls into an unobtrusive background.

But notice how even the iPod application uses blue navigation bars when in table/list mode. I don’t believe there is a single Apple application with a black navigation or toolbar displaying a table view. Yet, that is exactly what many third-party applications are doing.

I must confess that when the App Store finally opened, I hadn’t really dived into the SDK very deeply. When I saw the first “black UI” app, I was amused at the work the developer must have done to override the standard color just to make it “sexy black.” Obviously, I didn’t know at the time that black was just another option in Interface Builder. Now I know, and it’s apparent by the large number of applications with the black UI.

WWAD?

As an iPhone user, I appreciate the consistency of interface among the applications. Gratuitous use of a black UI only serves to distance an application from this smooth interface flow–maybe not as bad as a yellow, green or pale blue background, or an application that doesn’t even use standard navigation, tool and tab bars–but distanced nonetheless. Ironically, as more applications use the black UI, any one app using it is no longer differentiated–it’s now just noticeably “not Apple.”

Maybe I’m just not good enough about developing bleeding edge user interface; I consider myself to be more in line with “WWAD?” than “WWPD?” I’m not going to call out any specific apps as looking bad because of this, but I will give one positive comment: I think Twitterrific is one app that has a really good all-black look although I appreciate and prefer the “light background” preference (which I’d still like to see go all the way to standard colors).

I certainly wish Apple’s HIG had more guidance on this topic, but until then whenever I see a black UI app that doesn’t exhibit a need to take the user into a different mental mode, I consider it just as gratuitous as brushed metal.

Goal #1 (The Personal One): Return to our honeymoon place for our anniversary. For the first 5 years of our marriage, we did an anniversary trip to Sooke Harbour House, the same place on Vancouver Island we honeymooned. It was an awesome indulgence and great way to recharge. Then baby came along, and logistics haven’t worked out. My goal was to get that tradition back on track–it didn’t happen. We (actually, Marya) did find a really nice weekend hideaway closer to home and more affordable, and that’s where we celebrated this year; we also technically still have time to visit Sooke this year, so I’m counting this goal as “half accomplished” and it’s already reappearing on next year’s list of goals.

Goal #2: Attend WWDC. I wanted to take the next step toward creating Mac software, which has long been a hobby/pasttime/fascination. This isn’t really a goal that can give half credit, and I didn’t actually think this was going to happen until (again, with not only my wife’s blessing but encouragement) it was decided at the last minute of early registration to go for it. I haven’t regretted it since, and need to make this another annual tradition.

And now the biggie:

Goal #3: Make some money writing Mac software. This could have been the easiest one, and certainly the most affordable. The size of the check wouldn’t matter–it could have been $5 under the table for all I cared, and it would have been a step forward. I have exceeded that goal.

I now hold in my hand a check for a side contract I accepted to write an iPhone application. I had not really been interested in iPhone apps when I went to WWDC, but I had just thought of an app that would scratch a personal itch and started writing that app when I was approached about this contract so I felt confident enough to accept it. It’s been hectic fitting this development into my schedule, it’s been frustrating to figure out not only how to do things on the phone, but how best to do them. But it’s also been incredibly rewarding even beyond the financial end.

This check was for the prototype of an application. It may never make it to the App Store, and you may never see it. I hope you do, and if it gets that far (and I’m allowed) I’ll make sure people know about it here. I’m proud of what I’ve done on it so far, but if it never goes any further, it will still be the application that accomplished one of my goals.

That’s just software created by attendees. It’s an impressive Who’s Who of companies and applications, all sitting down together in a conference room for the weekend.

Now, C4[2] opened registration and sold out while I was off on a weekend getaway. I hadn’t attended the previous two years, but was hoping to make it happen this year. There’s not much I can do about that except say “bummer” and look on the bright side: I had been very close to booking a flight and room when the dates were first announced, and I haven’t had to spend the day canceling reservations now.

What is the next Mac dev conference this year, and where should I set up my tent for the line?

Previously, you would add frameworks to the Files panel by selecting the “Existing Frameworks…” item from the “Add” contextual menu, or the “Add to Project…” item of the top Project menu. (These methods are still available in Xcode 3.1.)

Both options bring up a file dialog, allowing you to choose your framework from /System/Library/Frameworks or an SDK subdirectory or anywhere else on your computer. Because of the numerous copies of system frameworks, I have never been completely confident that I’m choosing the correct copy of the framework and won’t run into some really frustrating compatibility bug.

Since Xcode 2.5, Apple has been working to make SDKs more self-contained and swappable. Xcode 3.1 has even added an “Active SDK” submenu next to Active Configuration, Target, Executable and Architecture–you can now dynamically swap between SDK frameworks, but you must avoid the file selection dialog path for frameworks to swap between SDKs.

To use the new method, choose the desired Target (not File Group) and select “Existing Frameworks…” from the “Add” contextual menu. In 3.0 this will give you the same file dialog as before, but in 3.1 it will bring up the Target’s Get Info panel to the General tab. The bottom portion of this pane shows the Target’s Linked Libraries. Clicking the “+” button beneath the list will bring up a list of known frameworks for the active SDK.

Choose from the list and you will not only gain the confidence that you have selected the appropriate version of the framework for your current SDK, but Xcode will be as smart as it can about automatically selecting the appropriate version of the framework if and when you target a different SDK.

(You can also get to this panel by double-clicking the Target, or selecting “Get Info” from the Target’s contextual menu, then selecting the General tab–it’s just more direct from the Existing Frameworks contextual menu item.)

The Keynote (Continued)

Watching the Keynote from the back half of the hall is about the same as watching from home, only as it happens and with more crowded seating. It was an interesting experience and I don’t regret it one bit, but doubt I will worry about getting up early during any future WWDCs I may attend. Overflow seating should be just fine from now on, but I didn’t even want to pretend to be a Keynote-wearied veteran my first time out.

As for the content of the Keynote…

Hardware: iPhone 3G. Even though I usually avoid the rumor sites and discussions, it was fairly obvious that this was coming. I had proposed a bet elsewhere that “3G” would not be in the name, but none of that crowd took me up on it. I try not to be “that guy,” but for a short period there it was hard not to regret paying $200 more (x2, one for my wife) for my iPhone just two months ago, but I’m so much happier without the RAZR that I just can’t be upset. Not so sure that I like the new plastic back, and software features will be coming to my current phone, so I have no plans to run out and buy a 3G.

I was kind of hoping for a new laptop announcement, not so much because I expected one but because I was hoping for a “caught up in the moment” excuse to upgrade my PowerBook G4. I’m pretty sure I had the oldest machine there; when I could see the wireless network set aside for laptops, I got a self-assigned address so I assumed it was 802.11N-only and ended up connecting to the wireless for iPhones (sorry about that, other iPhone users). At one point I thought I saw a TiBook and tweeted that I no longer had the oldest machine at the conference, but in hindsight it was probably a Dell laptop with the lighter colored case edges.

iPhone software demos…iPhone development demo…the iPhone focus was understandable and expected, but I was there for desktop application development–not because I’m down on iPhone development, but because I have a desktop idea, not a phone idea, and I don’t plan to fight to be at the front of the App Store line without a strong idea that would stand out from the crowd.

MobileMe: I’ve been perfectly happy to pay $100 a year for a while now–almost solely for sync. Yes, I use iWeb and the iPhoto sharing features as they have evolved, but I’ve never really used the email. It looks like this is going to be a solid improvement. The name change neither bothers nor excites me; it’s simply understandable to appeal to current PC users.

And finally, Snow Leopard received almost cursory mention and a promise to talk about it later. For non-attendees seeing only the Keynote (and particularly those who spend much energy trying to glean insight out of every tea leaf) I could see that it might seem Apple has lost focus of the desktop in favor of the iPhone. It was slightly anticlimactic for me, too: In the back of my mind, I was hoping for some stunning new announcement to witness my first year. But as the week went on, I became more impressed.

Snow Leopard

I had heard rumors of the next release being code-named “Snow Leopard” (usually as “it’S No Leopard” <wink> <nudge>) and that it would be almost entirely performance enhancement. Sounds boring, to the point of unbelievability. But what they are actually doing is so much more than unrolling some loops and using updated algorithms. I intentionally took strong notes during the Keynote to identify what was not under NDA, but Apple has since announced more than they did at the Keynote. As a result, I feel a little unsure of what is acceptable to talk about so will err on the side of non-specifics.

Performance and Concurrency

Saying that Snow Leopard is “focused on performance” doesn’t convey the impact of what Apple is really planning. They’re aggressively moving to 64-bit support (almost) system-wide, and they have already announced Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL, two great mechanisms to enable developers to take full advantage of the multiple cores on both CPUs and GPUs. But there is a lot more: Much like Core Animation started on the iPhone and spread to 10.5, numerous optimizations made for iPhone will be incorporated in Snow Leopard, exhibiting the leverage of having your desktop and embedded systems share the same OS.

Other features being added are geared toward improving the user experience, but in terms of system response rather than introducing whizzy new interface design. It was fascinating to come to the realization of just how much Apple engineers are questioning everything in the system, even so far as shutting down the computer faster. Some features will require developers to write new code to take advantage of them, but with Apple planning to make these improvements to their own applications I think life will be filled with fewer spinning beach balls out of the box, making this a worthwhile upgrade for every user, not just those needing high-powered computation.

Sessions

The biggest problem with the sessions is the logistical problem of moving so many people around efficiently. Almost every session required a queue out front to get in, and were accompanied by requests to leave each auditorium as soon as possible when finished. The logistics of the crowd always gets grumbles from past attendees (last year’s attendance was “over 5,000″ and this year was 5,200), but I felt the staff did an excellent job of making it all smooth and compact while being friendly and courteous. Even past attendees complimented the staff on being much friendlier than last year’s staff.

As expected, the iPhone sessions were the star attractions, but I tended to avoid them in favor of other desktop technologies. I was shocked when a session on Bonjour networking was packed–it’s a ten-year-old technology now, it should be old hat–until I realized that it’s the preferred network discovery mechanism for the iPhone, too.

I attended a session every period one was offered, except for two end-of-the-day sessions so I could have time to head back to “home base” and return later. Sometimes I had to make a tough decision between two sessions I was very interested in (I look forward to videos of the sessions being available) and other times I just chose which current session looked least boring, but I was determined to take full advantage of session times.

Labs

Most people will tell you one of the most useful yet woefully overlooked aspects of WWDC is the labs. You can look up the scheduled times for certain topics of discussion, sign up for a time slot, and get one-on-one time with an Apple Engineer to answer your questions and/or give you feedback on your design.

Sadly, my development is neither in a state where I need help getting past a problem I’ve been banging my head against, nor far enough along that I feel I could expect any useful review feedback. Coupled with always being able to find a session I could find interest in, I did not attend any lab sessions. I do know of plenty others, though, who got great constructive criticisms on their UI, concise answers to questions, and even a full day (or more) of working through issues. I fully intend to shift my focus to labs if I attend next year.

Socializing

Ask any previous attendee, and you will almost universally be told the biggest takeaway from WWDC is the socializing and networking opportunities, and I completely agree. I may not agree with the occasional attitude of networking to the point of skipping sessions, but even at that extreme it holds true that there is the promise of videos of the sessions being available later–missed networking opportunities like these will not come again.

I am not a naturally gregarious person; I have always tended to fear that if I can’t follow up “Hi, my name is Paul” with a reason that person should be interested in me, I have only intruded on their time. But this attitude is borne of going out to meat-market bars or standing in book signing lines as a fan; WWDC is most certainly different. There are many Apple engineers there, and they are interested in what you are doing with their systems, how you felt about learning them, and what kind of wild hair-brained ideas you may have for them. Most of the attendees there are also interested in what you are doing, but they are a bit more likely to be distracted by trying to extract knowledge just as you are. At WWDC at least, you are really rewarded by putting yourself out there to give others the opportunity to find you interesting.

There are structured opportunities for socializing: Labs are a form of socializing, primarily with Apple engineers; the Welcome Reception on Monday evening (which I did not attend) and the the WWDC Bash on Thursday (which I did attend, and enjoyed the Barenaked Ladies concert greatly). But there are also less formally planned (by Apple, at least) events: The MacSB sfMacIndie soiree on Sunday night was excellent; I had planned to attend Buzz Andersen’s 5th Annual Party but got sidetracked by dinner and wine with my in-laws; Tuesday I attended a damn good A’s game with my brother-in-law (damn, I wish Seattle had a BART equivalent); Thursday was the aforementioned Bash featuring Barenaked Ladies which would only have been better if I’d figured out a way to drop my laptop bag somewhere beforehand.

Wednesday deserves special mention. The Sync Services team hosted a wine-and-appetizers dinner at District which I attended (after the Apple Design Awards) because sync fascinates me. I certainly felt like a little fish swimming in a big pond, with other attendees being from Mark/Space, Spanning Sync and Marketcircle, yet I still had no solid code (or even complaints) to discuss. Regardless, the team was gracious, generous and great to talk with. After that wound down, Twitter came through and let me connect with colleagues for a continuing night on the town.

Day-After-Drinking Tip: The Tempest bar shows up on credit card receipts as “Kubalas Kitchen”; when entering receipts later, it took me a while to figure out that I had not eaten two lunches–the 1:30 timestamp was am, not pm.

I had made Corporation Unknown business cards to hand out; I didn’t hand out a great deal of them since I didn’t want to feel pushy about something that had no product released yet. But I did tuck one of them into my badge holder during the sfMacIndie event Sunday, then toned it down to just a logo sticker the rest of the week. It got many positive comments and broke the ice a number of times; I recommend everyone do it (it’s not even my original idea, but I forget where the idea did come from).

As I mentioned before, I’m not naturally gregarious. I had a particular advantage to socializing this year by being fortunate enough to have gotten to know many other Xcoders, many of whom are successful indie developers. Not only did I get to know most of them better and met more of their co-workers, but to a fault, they were very generous in introducing me to yet other indie (already successful or just working toward it) developers. A (woefully abridged, I am sure) list of people I met, in something resembling chronological order:

• Tom Harrington of Atomic Bird
• Lemont Washington of Cocoa Labs Software
• Marco Pifferi of Tweakersoft
• Jacqui Cheng and Clint Ecker of Ars Technica
• Ruben Bakker of Uncomplex GmbH (maker of Mailplane)
• Mike Piatek-Jimenez of Gaucho Software
• AJ of Marketcircle
• Kevin Ballard of TildeSoft
• Joe Pezillo of Metafy
• Blake C. of Yet Another Mac Dev Blog
• Dan Messing of Stunt Software
• Mike Lee and Tristan O’Tierney of Tapulous (I already knew Mike from Xcoders before Tapulous, and I got to pick up my lemur!)
• Ash Ponders of United Lemur and Moneydance
• Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software (whose MarsEdit I’m using right now)
• Paul Kim of Noodlesoft
• Guy English of Rogue Amoeba
• shook hands with bbum

The combination of networking and learning make WWDC an incredibly invigorating experience; I fully intend to return next year, and am working on clearing my schedule for C4[2].

This was my first time attending WWDC. I’ve wanted to for a long, long time but could never justify the expense for something that was effectively a software hobby. But with a newly solidified application idea, and a perfect storm of situations, I couldn’t resist on the year that turned out to be the biggest WWDC yet.

Perfect Storm, Part One: My sister-in-law and her husband live in San Francisco, they were going to be in town that week, and they were perfectly happy to have me stay with them during the week. That cut out the great big expense of lodging. Pacific Heights is not as convenient as the local-to-Moscone hotels, but it was really only an inconvenience when I needed to carry my bag during the Bash Thursday night instead of dropping it off in a hotel room. Staying with them will probably become a tradition as long as they will have me.

Perfect Storm, Part Two: Alaska Airlines offered a great flight price ($170 round trip). Even though it required departing Seattle early Sunday morning and returning Saturday night, that actually worked out perfectly due to Part One: I got the opportunity to have family brunch Sunday, and had time to take them out to dinner Friday night to thank them for their hospitality. (I can now highly recommend Argentine steak house El Raigon, and their wonderful selection of Malbecs.) I also had the opportunity to catch all of Friday’s sessions instead of having to cut out early to make it to the airport.

Perfect Storm, Part Three was a huge factor, but the briefest to describe: I was generously given permission by my boss to go into vacation time debt. Without that, I don’t think I could have justified the trip.

These factors all started lining up in the last days before early registration ended. I booked my held flight reservation from my iPhone late Thursday night, after an Xcoders meeting; I purchased my WWDC ticket and ADC Select membership (another first) on the last day of early registration. I certainly felt like I just made it under the wire when they announced the conference was sold out.

The Keynote

Since this was my first WWDC, I figured I had to bathe in the Reality Distortion Field and see the Keynote. I overslept and woke up at 4:30 instead of my planned 3:30, figured out which bus was running at that hour only to miss it by less than a block, and ended up walking the entire way. I was in line just before 6:00, about halfway down Minna (before the first “everyone get to know your neighbor better” compression of the line).

Keynote Line Swag Tip: If you’re interested in swag (t-shirts, MacTech magazines and more) while in line, staying to the street side of the packed-in line will increase your chances of not being ignored.

Stand in line, eventually get let into Moscone. I had already registered on Sunday, so I followed the majority of the crowd up to the second floor “holding pen” (my term; I never actually heard the staff call it that) where we were told that we were guaranteed to get into the main auditorium. Comfortable in the knowledge I didn’t need to hold my spot, I made a quick restroom break.

Keynote Line Coffee Tip: The Starbucks right near Moscone is insanely packed at this time. Luckily my walk had earlier taken me past an uncrowded Starbucks on O’Farrell, but also try the Peet’s at 2nd and Mission.

I stopped paying attention to time; no easier way to get frustrated than watching a clock while waiting. After some period of time, we were led up to the third floor and another “holding pen” area in the hallway. After another period of time, we were let into Presidio, the largest available conference hall, where I quickly realized that unless I wanted to fight my way into the first ten rows it would look the same from any other row in the hall. So I casually settled into a seat about four rows behind the left side projection screen and awaited my first in-the-flesh Keynote.

If you have read this far, I apologize for the cliffhanger but this post has already become longer than expected. I will follow up on the rest of the week soon.

Most significant is the new logo done by our friends at SkyCubeMedia. Thanks to Sky (and my wife’s initial sketch), I now have a site identity I can carry around (in the form of business cards) to WWDC.