The Verge Technology
Welcome to Camp Apple: a week inside WWDC
Peering into the depths of Dub-Dub
By Ellis Hamburger on
It was the second day of
Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, and a heated
argument was breaking out at the bar on the terrace of the W Hotel.
"It’s Helvetica neue, like noy," said New York Times developer Brian Capps.
"No, see it's new-ay, like nuway," retorted a short, bearded man. "Are you sure?"
"I’m pretty sure," Capps says. The bearded man growled defiantly.
The W Hotel is a couple blocks
from the Moscone Center, where Apple holds its once-a-year Worldwide
Developers Conference, known as WWDC, or more colloquially as "Dub Dub."
This time of year, it’s not unusual to see two grown men having a
heated argument about the pronunciation of an obscure font.
"Whatever," says Capps. "Let’s
have another drink." They take sips as Studio Neat developers Dan
Provost and Tom Gerhardt storm the stage and perform "Hunger Strike," by
Temple of the Dog in front of a five-piece live band. Gerhardt was
Chris Cornell, and Provost was Eddie Vedder.
Welcome to Camp Apple.
This is WWDC's 24th year, which
makes it the longest running of any developer conference. Developers
and designers set up myriad hacks to know when WWDC tickets go on sale
each year, and once they do, scoop them all up within minutes. This
year, it took just 71 seconds for the conference to sell out. Tickets
alone cost $1,500, setting aside the cost of a flight (often, from
overseas), a hotel, and the fact that Apple also posts most of its
sessions and labs for free online. Still, developers brag on Twitter if
and when they acquire tickets as if they’ve won the lottery — a trip to
Mecca.
The conference centers around a
massive keynote on Monday, followed by a week of classes where
developers can learn about the latest APIs from Apple — which has paid
them (indirectly, of course) upwards of 10 billion dollars. It's a
symbiotic relationship.
A moment later, a man walked up and bared his chest, inked with a detailed tattoo of Steve Jobs' face
One workshop, called UI Lab,
gives developers the chance to sit down one on one and get a personal
review of their app’s interface. Developers line up around the block,
waiting hours for their moment. Once their appointment comes around, an
Apple engineer proceeds to tear apart their app, first tapping with
three fingers on the screen to zoom in and scrutinize any jagged icon
edges.
It wasn’t all hard knocks for
the developers. Another session began with an out-of-character admission
from Apple: "We’re sorry." The company finally admitted iCloud Core Data was broken
and needed fixing, sources at the session say. Apple had thus far been a
brick wall to developers, and kept almost completely quiet about the
unstable file-syncing feature, which customers demanded but developers
couldn’t reliably provide.
A developer account with Apple
entitles you to just two direct questions per year from the company, so
the opportunity to ask questions during "office hours" is an important
one. "If I get a few big questions answered, it’s worth the trip,"
Second Gear developer Justin Williams told me as we sat down for lunch
at the nearby Yerba Buena Gardens cafe. A moment later, a man walked up
to Williams and bared his chest, inked with a detailed tattoo of Steve Jobs’ face.
As any WWDC veteran knows,
it’s about the scene as much as it is about the learning sessions Apple
offers. It’s about the standing around at bars wearing backpacks filled
with nests of white cables. It's about drinking with actor Damon Wayans,
who is apparently now an app developer, at the Macworld party. Many of
the attendees can’t yet drink, but have already made thousands (or
hundreds of thousands) of dollars on the iTunes App Store. The air is
full of playful gossip amongst friends, some of whom had never met in
person. "Did you hear that Jony Ive personally called Marissa Mayer to
congratulate her on the Yahoo Weather app?" says one man to another.
There was something a little
different this year. Apple’s iOS, the platform many WWDC attendees build
for, got its biggest facelift ever. iOS 7 is shocking to behold, not
necessarily because of the way its apps look, but because of the way its
app icons look. It’s not unusual to pay hundreds of dollars for a
custom-designed icon from a company like The Iconfactory, since App
Store customers so frequently judge a book by its cover. Yet, most
designers seem to agree that Apple’s new icons are ugly and inconsistent.
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