I’m ready to go home. Not to say I’m not learning a lot and enjoying all the Apple goodness, but I miss the girls (and jellybean) and am tired of the shower in my room. Don’t get me wrong, the residence suite we’re in at the Ritz-Carlton Club is awesome (thanks, Forrest). It’s more square footage than my house! But…I got the handicap bathroom. The shower-head hangs about kidney-height. And the pressure stinks. It’s one of those hand-held jobs, so I don’t have to kneel on the marble to wash my hair, but it’s just a little annoying.
The sessions have been very good overall. There have been a few duds (mostly due to people who should probably not be presenting), but I’ve learned a lot so far. I just hope my poor brain can absorb it all. I’ve learned a lot about Internationalization/Localization, the voodoo magic of Interface Builder, and a bunch of Xcode tips, tricks and shortcuts to make using that IDE a little more natural and me more productive. We’ve fixed a few small things we were struggling with before while we’ve been here and we’ve talked to the Apple engineers about some other stuff. It was very cool to just sit and talk with some of these guys that do “Apple” all day, every day.
Last night, we went to the Apple Design Awards presentation. They showcased several really slick-looking Mac apps and handed out the coveted trophies (and apparently 30″ Cinema displays, MacBook Pros, and WWDC tickets for next year) to the winners. Then, it was “Stump the Experts” where Apple Engineers who have been here longer than dirt (seriously, they had the the project engineer for Hypercard 1.0 and at least one guy that worked on some part of the IIgs project there) took the stage, answered obscure questions from the audience, and asked the audience obscure questions. I randomly ended up with a “Stump” T-shirt which is pretty cool because apparently, they’re pretty coveted. The MC for the night just walked around, pointed to us, and said, “go get a shirt!”
Today is the last day and there are still plenty of good sessions (this afternoon looks pretty packed). Then, tonight, there’s a WWDC “Bash” at Yerba Buena Gardens, so hopefully that’ll be cool. There are sessions tomorrow, but we’re flying out in the morning since it takes nearly all day to get back across the country.