Only one more day to go! It's been a couple of days of intense techo sessions. I nearly fell asleep in one! Sigh...it's also been two nights of great Apple WWDC Traditions...
But first here's a shot of the Moscone West Conference Centre (That's "mos-co-nee"). Actually speaking of pronunciation you have to tell Americans to say "Melbin" to get them to say Melbourne right. Otherwise they inSIST on overemphasising the R. In fact you could almost characterise a Californian accent by simply saying every single possible r you can find and adding a few extras even when completely unnecessary...
So last night was the first great tradition - Stump the Experts and Movie night! Stump the Experts is an event where Apple drags about 20 of it's gurus on stage, and the audience presents them with challenging questions, and they give a few to the audience, and the two teams compete to win the favour of the comperes since the actual scoring has very little to do with any ability to answer a question - in fact you can get points for just being nice to the comperes - or coming up with such an insanely difficult question they don't even bother asking for answers! Last night was a special occasion as it featured - for the first time ever - a woman expert! Apparently the story goes that a girl bailed up a compere last year and demanded to know why they didn't have any female experts on stage. She became an intern at Apple this year, and was duly appointed :-) The all time winning question was about how to display a hidden image of an obscure Dr Seuss character - bonus points for the fact that Fred the compere was wearing a Cat in the Hat hat - buried in the OS. Nobody had any hope of answering the question - so the audience member who put it forward rattled off an explanation involving japanese fonts and three different applications so smoothly that the room erupted and he was awarded the grand prize without further discussion :-)
After that we watching Finding Nemo on the big screen - as usual another excellent movie by Pixar and Disney...go see it :)
Today we took a 1 hour bus ride to Cupertino - home of the Apple Campus - for the other great tradition - the Campus Beer Bash!
Here's a shot of one of American's amazing freeways...notice the totaly of 10 - countem - lanes of traffic headed in various directions.
Cupertino is on the way to San Jose. Do _you_ know the way to San Jose?
Welcome to the home of the Apple - 1 Infinite Loop (that's a computer joke :)
I think this place is kind of like Mecca for some people, especially after the rather peculiar conversation I overheard on the bus..."Oh, everybody I KNOW is jealous that I'm going to see the Apple campus"...
Apparently - I kid you not - they even have tour buses...
It's not like Steve throws $100 bills into the crowds or anything!
Country, state...and Apple :)
Before you got anywhere, there was a half hour wait to get into the Apple Store to buy all manner of exciting things with Apple logos on them! Yes! :)
I confess I joined the queue - after all, some of the stuff was on sale!
This is the entrance way. The main Apple building - there are several covering a few blocks - is actually octagonal I think...with a big open grassy/treed area and amphitheatre in the middle. You have to pass through this big glass atrium to get in...whee, along with more security...actually that was to make sure nobody under 21 got in, since you're not allowed to drink until you are 21 here...
Inside 1 Infinite Loop. We never got anywhere near the offices :)
This is John-Paul from England, and Steve from Southern California. I ended up spending most of the evening talking to these guys...John-Paul works for Imagineer, a small English firm that designs high-end software for film makers to do image extraction - e.g. picking a skateboard out of a scene without the background - kind of reverse blue-screening, very computationally intensive. Steve is a system administrator for Disney! They're sure friendly in these parts!
Probably only one more update before I leave. I get back to Melbourne on Tuesday 1 July!
Write back, I love to read long emails and since you've read this far I might actually find time to reply!
Only one more day to go! It's been a couple of days of intense techo sessions. I nearly fell asleep in one! Sigh...it's also been two nights of great Apple WWDC Traditions...
So last night was the first great tradition - Stump the Experts and Movie night! Stump the Experts is an event where Apple drags about 20 of it's gurus on stage, and the audience presents them with challenging questions, and they give a few to the audience, and the two teams compete to win the favour of the comperes since the actual scoring has very little to do with any ability to answer a question - in fact you can get points for just being nice to the comperes - or coming up with such an insanely difficult question they don't even bother asking for answers! Last night was a special occasion as it featured - for the first time ever - a woman expert! Apparently the story goes that a girl bailed up a compere last year and demanded to know why they didn't have any female experts on stage. She became an intern at Apple this year, and was duly appointed :-) The all time winning question was about how to display a hidden image of an obscure Dr Seuss character - bonus points for the fact that Fred the compere was wearing a Cat in the Hat hat - buried in the OS. Nobody had any hope of answering the question - so the audience member who put it forward rattled off an explanation involving japanese fonts and three different applications so smoothly that the room erupted and he was awarded the grand prize without further discussion :-)
Today we took a 1 hour bus ride to Cupertino - home of the Apple Campus - for the other great tradition - the Campus Beer Bash!
Cupertino is on the way to San Jose. Do _you_ know the way to San Jose?
Welcome to the home of the Apple - 1 Infinite Loop (that's a computer joke :)
Country, state...and Apple :)
Before you got anywhere, there was a half hour wait to get into the Apple Store to buy all manner of exciting things with Apple logos on them! Yes! :)
This is the entrance way. The main Apple building - there are several covering a few blocks - is actually octagonal I think...with a big open grassy/treed area and amphitheatre in the middle. You have to pass through this big glass atrium to get in...whee, along with more security...actually that was to make sure nobody under 21 got in, since you're not allowed to drink until you are 21 here...
Inside 1 Infinite Loop. We never got anywhere near the offices :)
This is John-Paul from England, and Steve from Southern California. I ended up spending most of the evening talking to these guys...John-Paul works for Imagineer, a small English firm that designs high-end software for film makers to do image extraction - e.g. picking a skateboard out of a scene without the background - kind of reverse blue-screening, very computationally intensive. Steve is a system administrator for Disney! They're sure friendly in these parts!