So, I can’t talk about anything that isn’t already on the web because, unlike a PDC, everything you learn at WWDC is considered private. What I can say is that while OSX is undeniably kicking XP’s ass and probably going to still come out on top of Vista in terms of user experiece, they sure are lacking in the technology areas.
They’re making great strides in the languages and tools department. In this area it is quite funny to hear them still try to talk trash against C# and Visual Studio because honestly they are living in the Stone Age in some respects. First off, they’re introducing Objective-C 2.0 (see blurb in right hand corner of this page). They’re giving in to the garbage collection craze and are adding things like properties and enumerators into the language as first class citizens. They’re taking some different approaches to GC than .NET however… sheesh, I wish I could get more specific, but I have to bite my tongue for now.
Next, they’re updating Xcode, which is the standard Apple IDE, to support some really nice features that have been around in VS for quite some time. What I must give them serious kudos for though is their new debugging environment called XRay (also on that page near the bottom). That thing is seriously cool and kicks the crap out of any of Microsoft’s debugging tools. Another example of where Apple nailed the visualization of data in an intuitive way that Microsoft just never seems to be able to do.
Finally, they are also coming out with a new “Core” framework called “Core Animation” that aims to provide the equivalent of WPF for OSX Leopard. Again, I can’t talk about specifics, but from what I’ve seen it’s got some advantages as well as disadvantages over what WPF provides.
The future sure looks bright for Apple developers! I look forward to being able to take advantage of all this new, great stuff.