allright Boys (& Girls )-
I'm at the WWDC07 and as you can imagine the Buzz is all around the iPhone.
I didn't think to keep you guys up to date until I checked my FRIAM
mailbox today.
Maybe I even assumed one or more of you were here at the Moscone with
me... I
haven't seen a single familiar face (except for Jobs himself!)... back
in the day I
couldn't go to a conference without seeing a dozen familiar faces (and
all of them
older than I). The median age here is about 30 I think...
My purposes.
I'm here to get early intel on the iPhone (those of you from Sandia,
close your ears)
so we (LANL) can get the jump on our competitors (you too Doug...
fingers in ears
now... lalalalalLAlalaLALalalaLaaaa! you caaaaan't hear me!) in the
arena of mobile
applications for Homeland Security (and darker forces too). From here I
proceed to
the HIFLD all-hazards workshop in San Diego (Thursday-Friday).
Development Environment.
It is, as expected, very closed except via Safari using AJAX. Apple
folks here
(numbering about 1000 vs the 5000 attendees!) are very adamant that they
will
not be supporting Java or Flash. JavaScript, QuickTime, GoogleMaps are the
only announced native extensions beyond HTML. I attended a VERY informative
session on developing web services for the iPhone... it covered a lot of
obvious
but also subtle things. More detail below.
iPhone/ATT/unlocking.
There is no reason to believe Apple will openly or deliberately unlock
the phone...
I'm pretty sure their deal with ATT precludes this somehow for some
time. Unless
there is a non-US version. That doesn't mean you won't be able to get
one unlocked...
I just don't know how yet.
A nearly as important announcement was Safari for Winderz and
VisterWinderz...
looks like Jobs is going after Gates' ankles again. The buzz (outside
WWDC) is
that Safari sucks and will never catch up with, much less beat it's
competition...
of course they mix their implications here as it is only Firefox they
claim to be
superior, not IE... and they don't acknowledge that Apple's tech folks
have pulled
some pretty fancy rabbits out of their hats/sleeves/armpits in the past,
and there is
no reason that Safari as the Dark Horse can't pull ahead and kick dust
in IE's face
as it blows past. Especially with the iPhone development/compatibility
angle.
GooglePhone.
There are *lots* of GoogleBrats here. Some great T-shirts... logos with
the myriad
variations on the Goo(ooo)gle they used to put up for holidays. There
is NO buzz
about Google blowing the iPhone out of the water with their own
device. I think
Apple and Google are playing nice this year (decade?), maybe/probably
double-teaming
Redmond like young Coyotes going up against an old, overweight Cougar.
The
WinderzMobile crowd are likely to try to respond... they've had plenty
of warning, no?
iPhone detail.
multi-touch and double-tap
Yes. The multi-touch is that inspired/demonstrated by Han (at TED?)
last year.
Nothing was said about their relationship... if any though and they call
it "pinch-mode"
s maybe they are not on friendly terms with Han (perhaps they have been
developing
multi-touch for decades and Han scooped them?). In any case, it is key
to using the iPhone
effectively.
double-tap is the related trick for contextual zooming. It can bring
up a "block" such as text or image or table to full-screen or it can
zoom text.
There was a whole session on the subtleties of designing for this
device w/o
making bad design decisions for other things... I'm not sure what is
proprietary
and what is not... look for tutorials coming soon. Apple wants as many
web apps
to run well on the phone on June 29 as possible.
The point was made that a finger is not a mouse... they use single fingers
in 4 modes (including mouse) and two fingers (pinch-mode) in
The high points were:
Use columns for text.
Don't use frames
Separate CSS from HTML
use their (added) Viewport (Meta) tags to hint
I didn't do justice to this "report" and I need to go back to my "day job"
(LANL-over-the-wire) before COB... (too late)!
- Steve
PS. We get a beta of Leapord to mess with... it has some kewl features.
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