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July 14, 2004
Bloggers & Bigfoot Take Over Apple!
Steve Ruben falls on his face by starting with a "best guess" that Apple has a policy against employee blogging and ending with an exhortation that "Apple needs to follow Microsoft's lead by quickly letting their employees blog."
Of course, he's wrong. Apple has no such policy. Numerous Apple employees blog - from the officially-sanctioned weblog of David Hyatt to the Apple bloggers who were almost half the attendance at the WWDC 2004 Weblogger's Dinner this year.
Foolishness.
Posted by jim at 01:51 PM | Comments (0)
July 07, 2004
[WWDC] Shaving the edges
Apple definitely applied a regimen of slimming measures to WWDC, designed to cut their costs to throw the $1600/attendee conference and to even help generate profits. I've only been to last year's and this year's, but here are some of the things I noticed:
- Lower quality "swag": The backpack supplied this year was of noticably lower quality than the shoulder bag from last year (and, viewing some people carrying older bags, it looks this has been an ongoing trend). No notepad-in-binder this year. Last year attendees received free iSight cameras - this year we got an Apple Remote Desktop CD. Sure, it's a $500 retail value, but it's just a CD and license number for Apple. The iSight was tangible goods.
- Lighter catering: No Clif Bars at the mid-day snack tables, and a much smaller menu at the Apple Campus Bash.
- No movie: Normally there's a evening movie on Wednesday night. Last year, some attendees were grumbling over the selection of "Finding Nemo" (Steve, being CEO of Pixar, prolly didn't have to pay a fee to show it). This year - no movie.
- No video: Last year, all sessions were taped. The video was available online for attendees (to get the sessions you missed due to conflicts), and DVDs were delivered to all attendees a month or so later. This year, only a few sessions were taped, and no mention of DVDs. Hell, I doubt any will be online.
- No pre-release OSX updates: This is the biggie. Last year, all attendees received preview releases of 10.3, and updated builds were available for download right up until golden master. This year, while we received a very early preview release of 10.4, there will be no further builds available unless you buy an Apple Developer Connection membership ($400 for Select, $3000 for Premier).
Granted, I shouldn't complain much. Our Apple Rep made of gift of 3 WWDC registrations to UW this year, and I happened to be a recipient - all my work paid for was travel. Still, it's obvious that Apple's trying to minimize the expense of WWDC - when they really should continue to be sucking up to developers.
Posted by jim at 12:11 PM | Comments (0)
July 05, 2004
[WWDC] Photos and Metalist
I've posted my WWDC photos - with only a few exceptions, all are from the RSS on MacOS X "Birds of a Feather" session. No photos from the Apple Campus Bash, as they asked attendees not to take photos (and I respected the request). Some of the BOF photos are a bit blurry - in consideration to those present, I turned off the flash and used available light.
I'll have some more specific comments about WWDC (well, the stuff I can talk about) later. I was busy enough with sessions and events later in the week that I wasn't able to get a lot of blogging in. Until then, Buzz has some good commentary (including an RSS BOF rundown) - and he has a metalist of many WWDC bloggers here.
Posted by jim at 10:43 AM