Leopard: Preparing for disappointment

May 31, 2007

Don’t get me wrong, Leopard is shaping up as a great release… for developers. Xcode 3, Objective C 2, Interface Builder 3, and Xray and a huge improvement over the current generation of developer tools, but these aren’t things that will have a direct impact on the average user. And while Core Animation is neato, it also has the potential to become to Mac software what the blink tag was to web pages some time ago.

For the average user, Leopard adds Time Machine, Spaces and assorted enhancements to existing applications and OS functionality. These things are nice, but $129 nice? <shrug> But wait! Jobs spoke of “Top Secret” features that could not be revealed during his keynote at WWDC 2006. I expect we’ll finally find out what those top secret features are during the next WWDC keynote on June 11th.

With that in mind, I turned to the WWDC07 schedule and noticed something a bit odd. It seems to me that there aren’t so many TBA/TBDs in this year’s schedule. These holes usually indicate one of two things: a topic on a feature that hasn’t yet been publicly announced, or a repeat of a popular session. The repeats typically are scheduled later in the week. Usually Friday afternoon. This year there are 20 sessions that have not yet been announced. 11 of those are on Friday.

Now it just so happens that I still have my WWDC 2004 conference guide. You may recall that Tiger was introduced at that conference. WWDC 2004 also marked the final appearance of Jamba Juice at WWDC. <wipes away a tear>. Anyway, the schedule was riddled with 31 sessions to be announced. Only 9 of those were on Friday.

Given the scarcity of unannounced sessions this year, versus years past, it seems probable that the most of Leopard’s big features have either already been announced or will be unrelated to the Mac developer community. I really hope that I’m wrong and Leopard has a lot more tricks up its sleeve that developers will be able to take advantage of, but I’m not going to get my hopes up. At the very least I hope there are a few more really compelling features to encourage users to upgrade so we can take advantage of all the improvements made to the development process. Hopefully much more than a coat of paint to the GUI. If the GUI is updated, new guidelines with lots of sessions would be great. Oh, and I really hope there’s Jamba Juice… and backpacks… and a pony! I want a pony!