Apple announced in mid-April that the focus of this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) would be the next version of Mac OS X, code-named Jaguar. Apple will be giving developers a closer look at Jaguar throughout the week and talking to them about the changes the update will bring to the OS.
“One of the big things for us this year is the depth we will be going into on not only what is, but what will be with OS X, Richard Kerris, director of developer technologies at Apple, told MacCentral. “We will be showing Jaguar at the keynote and we’ll be talking about a lot of the things that will be going on with that update.”
WWDC will see a focus on technologies at the heart of Mac OS X like OpenGL and Quartz. Kerris said that Apple is working to do things with Mac OS X that have never been done before.
“We’re going to be doing some things at the core level of the operating system that have never been done on any platform before,” Kerris said. “Allowing this kind of capability to be used by all sorts of applications, we can only imagine what’s going to happen over the next year as developers start to tap into the power of the things that they’ll see in this update.”
The release of Mac OS X opened the door for Apple to attract different types of programmers to the platform. Throughout the past year, Unix and Java developers have joined new and longtime Macintosh developers programming in Carbon and Cocoa to give the platform a product mix not seen in its previous history. Many of these developers have taken an interest in WWDC next week.
“We are seeing a real difference in the amount and quality of the developers that we have,” Kerris said. “There are a lot of Unix developers and an incredible amount of Java developers signed up for the conference. We are seeing lots of developers from places we have aspired to get to — we have over 30 different film studios, a lot of people from the scientific community and the education community. One of the greatest things about OS X is the ability to mix the development environments like Carbon, cocoa, and Unix.”
Session are being offered for some of the company’s recently adopted technologies, such as Bluetooth. In the “Bluetooth in-depth” session, attendees will hear what Apple is doing with Bluetooth. Bluetooth opens up numerous opportunities for Mac OS X developers and Apple will offer developers information on how to extend their stack to support hardware, how to add support for additional profiles required by devices and how to develop applications that take advantage of Bluetooth.
Additionally, WWDC features sessions and hands-on access with Apple engineers and industry experts who can help you get the most out of Mac OS X as a development platform.
WWDC sessions cover the gamut of the Mac OS development experience. Topics include Darwin, Cocoa, Carbon, Java, Digital Media, QuickTime, WebObjects, networking and server-related technologies, and tools. Special events that occur during WWDC include the Apple Design Awards, the Apple Campus Bash, Birds of a Feather sessions and more.
“Now being a Mac programmer means you can be a Unix programmer, a Java programmer or you can be new and develop with Cocoa. The depth of the programmer talent we’re seeing this year is really exciting for us,” said Kerris.