I am hard at work on a vlog of my WWDC experience, including mini-interviews with six wonderful women from WWDC.

In the meantime, here are two pictures from our group photo. For the record, this is nowhere NEAR all the women at the conference. Just the most women we could rally together on short notice:

So you may have heard the recent rumor that Ballmer is supposed to take up 7 minutes onstage at WWDC. I’ve spent the morning asking myself what this could mean.

If VS 2010 supports developing iPhone/iPad apps, what dose that mean in terms of language? Will VS 2010 support Objective-C? Or will C# compile into binaries that can be run on iPhones? The latter blatantly violates what Apple stated in the iPhone Developer program:

“Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).”

So the only thing this COULD mean, if this is true, is that VS 2010 will support Objective-C, and load in all the Apple CocoaTouch frameworks, so you can develop in Objective-C and CocoaTouch, on a PC and in Visual Studio. This would mean Apple sees the future as mobile, and not Macs, but we knew that already when Apple announced the only design awards for WWDC 2010 would be given out to iPhone/iPad apps, not for Macs.

I wrote this entire blog on my iPad. It took twice the time to get it on the web as it took me to write it, and edit all images, in Pages on the iPad.

No headphones? Really?
The lack of headphones seems unnecessarily cheap, and very un-Apple. I mean, they gave us free water and free Starbucks in the line to get this thing, but no headphones with your iPad? LAME.

Ipad keyboard

It feels a little awkward not to have the tactile response. The keyboard also feels a little bit cramped. I am definitely not spreading my fingers out as much as I normally do on a real keyboard. I am, however, doing my best to type as i do on a normal keyboard (not looking at the keys, left fingers placed on ASDF).
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I’m on page 58 of the second edition of Erica Sadun’s “iPhone Developer’s Cookbook,” and here are the most important lessons I’ve learned so far:

1. Zombies!
2. What’s inside that XIB?
3. The Clear Log Button

Zombies!
Did you know that, by default, your XCode project is NOT enabled to catch Zombies?  And by zombies, I mean objects that you have released, but then subsequently try to access?  THEY ARE ZOMBIES! They are the dead that still roam.  This is good for horror films, but very bad for your code.  But, by default, XCode’s debugger has no way to catch these nasties.

If you try and access a destroyed or released object, you’ll get back a cryptic objc_msgSend.  But!  If you ENABLE THE ZOMBIES as Sadun suggests, you’ll get back a much better message. In my case, I’m trying to access an array (via this call: CFShow([array self])) that I’ve already released. This gives me the following message in my gdb console:

2010-03-30 21:39:28.180 HelloWorld2[2398:207] *** -[CFArray self]: message sent to deallocated instance 0x1810260

Getting inside those .xib files
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I recently picked up the Second Edition of Erica Sadun’s “The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook,” that focuses on the iPhone 3.0 SDK.

Now, admittedly, a third edition is now required given that the iPad comes along with SDK 3.2. However, I still feel that completing all 163 recipes outlined in Sadun’s book will bring me from iPhone development amateur to iPhone development expert–and give me a leg up in understanding the next version of the SDK.

So, my goal is to get through all 163 recipes over the remaining 347 days left this year.

Thanks to Julie & Julia for the inspiration on this one.

I’ve written a guest blog over at Technostraddle on the recent iPad announcement, and why you should be very, very excited: The iPad App Revolution: A Look at the Card Up Apple’s Sleeve

There are three main resources I’ve been using to teach myself Objective-C, Cocoa Touch and iPhone programming:

• The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook by Erica Sadun
• The lecture videos from Stanford’s class on iPhone development
• The podcasts available on OS 3.0 from ADC (Apple Developer Connection; only available to registered iPhone developers)

The cookbook is excellent as a reference, and as a human-readable, easy-analogy alternative to the lecture slides.
The class itself holds your hand with their assignments, and I have been slowly builing up my Obj-C development skills through their carefully thought-out assignments.

Finally, the ADC videos provide an excellent window into what iPhone OS 3.0 can do, and code samples to help you start actually doing it.

Now, you may be asking, “that’s all fine and good, but where do the LOLCATS come in?”

SO, you only need look at someone and you can quickly make an assessment if they’re an apple or a PC person.  Apple’s TV marketing depends on it.  But I would like to argue that you need only look at their EDUCATIONAL SLIDE MATERIAL to make the same assessment.

Sure, this isn’t from WWDC, but this is on iTunes to help people understand how to use iPhone OS 3.0.  If I wasn’t a Mac convert before, this truly would have made me a believer:

Brilliant.  Bloody fucking brilliant.