So the WWDC is nearing an end. Still 5 sessions to go and we will all be heading home without hand luggage it seems, stripped to our underpants. Flying is not my favourite way of travelling and it does not seem like that is about to change anytime soon.

As for what happened on the WWDC, it's simple: I can't tell. Everyone here is under an NDA, and it is a bit of a running gag because anyone that has been following digg can get a lot of information. Of course, since we can't comment on it, we are not allowed to say whether it is accurate or not.

What was not covered by the NDA however, is the keynote speech of mister Jobs. So you can just download that from the apple website and look at it all over again, maybe even giving enthousiastic cheers from your living room couch. I don't need to say what was in there, you should know by now.

It seems this year the tendency in comments is towards the negative. Steve was not his good old self, he looked thinner and unhealthier and last but not least, he did not do the "One more thing" gag we all learned to love. Apple fans are getting slack for clapping too enthousiastically and for bashing Microsoft a little too hard. Hey have you seen a crowd go wild on Steve Ballmer or is that too long ago for anyone to remember?

So, what was it like? I can't say of course, but I will tell you anyway: it was fun. My only experience with conferences so far (ignoring a faint memory of a European Developer Conference in Brussels somewhere around '97) is at the FOSDEM in Brussels. That one is a lot cheaper, at least, and you don't need an airplane to get there if you live in Ghent, like I do.

The WWDC is more of a "We tell you where we want you to go with your applications" conference. That is basically the message here and although a lot of it is fabulously interesting, it generally is only of interest to you if you want to start preparing an application now to be shipped when Leopard ships. The guys at Apple want your applications to be available with all the newest bells and whistles when they ship their next OS, so that many people would be enticed to upgrade.

The FOSDEM, on the other hand, is totally different. There we have a gathering of people that usually just communicate over irc and now finally have a chance to meet, and to code together on the project they have been remotely working on. The atmosphere is one of no secrets, no lies, no tricks, let us all build together towards a better world of software.

Maybe that is why I found the sessions on WebKit here at the WWDC to be the most interesting and fun. Since that is an open source project, coming from an open source environment and still with a big foot in the community they have adopted that atmosphere. I love it when the answer to a question like "when MathML?" is "well, when somebody steps up and codes it we would be happy to integrate it!". For other projects the answer would invariably be "We cannot comment on future directions we are thinking of at this particular moment.", how boring is that?

Other things I can't comment about, but will do anyway: the food and general organization was great! Food and drink was provided in all you can eat or drink quantities and more than decent quality, wireless internet just worked, battery charging stations are all over the place and people are very friendly and always willing to help. That is worth nearly a 1000 dollars to me.

If I will be back next year is hard to tell. San Francisco has been and is great, going out here is amazing, I love to be in the neighbourhood of the sea, but it is a costly adventure and it does take up a big chunck of my time that I could have spent otherwise. I don't know, maybe.

I will be checking out that Leopard DVD however... I am too curious and enthousiastic about all those new features to just let it lie on my desk for too long. I have been underimpressed with Tiger's features, I have disabled spotlight and hardly ever use that sloppy dashboard while everyone else was cheering over it. I may be impressed with Leopard's feature set now that everybody seems to be disappointed I guess. It's the nature of the beast.

the WWDC site the keynote speech FOSDEM There are a lot of opinions about WWDC out there.