Dan Wood: The Eponymous Weblog (Archives)

OK, just kidding. This post is actually a recap of last week's Macworld Expo activity.

The headline is a joke that I came up with at the "Mac Small Business" gathering last Wednesday. Fellow developers and the few Apple employees there appreciated the idea that maybe if Karelia software announced a developer's kit, then Apple would be quick to get one released. :-)

The iPhone-lacking-a-developer's kit issue has become a big issue on the internets; I'm glad I'm not alone in wishing that one could develop software for it. That's what I do for a living, and the iPhone is a droolworthy mini-micro-computer that is just begging for third-party add-ons.

In any case, the iPhone may have been big news, but it only a tiny part of my week. I arrived at the Expo on Wednesday; immediately before entering I bumped into StuFF mc of Pomcast; he had interviewed us a while back about Sandvox. I then spent most of the day wandering around the booths. One of the best activities on the show floor is running into old friends, many from my days working with BMUG in the early days of the Macintosh. I checked out the booths run by developers whom I know; many like MemoryMiner were at small "pod" booths and a few, like Plasq, had a larger setup. (I find that the large booths run by the big companies are usually much less interesting than to the smaller ones run by small companies!)

Wednesday evening, there were three events I wanted to go to. I was scheduled to do a demonstration of Sandvox at a BoF (Birds-of-a-Feather) gathering hosted by Dori Smith. Alas, the video projection equipment had been taken away. So I headed over to the aforementioned Mac Small Business gathering, which was a great opportunity to connect and re-connect with fellow developers who also wear the business-owner hat. One of my more interesting conversations was with Paul of Rogue Amoeba, who had organized the very successful MacSanta event a few weeks ago. After that petered out, I went literally around the corner to another restaurant to spend some time with some other friends who had a big gathering there.

Friday, I headed back into San Francisco for more fun. I had a lunch meeting scheduled with a well-known User Interface Guru from Apple to pick his brain and get ideas for the UI of the next generation of our application. We got a bit sidetracked, and instead he picked my brain about how can Apple's developer program be improved, including its website and developer conference. It was fun to provide constructive feedback and brainstorm some ideas. We ran out of time before we could talk about User Interface, so we'll have to set up another meeting down the road.

After lunch, I wandered around some of the "pods" that I had missed on Wednesday. On Brent's recommendation, I visited Dan of Stunt Software. Some very nice stuff from a small shop! I also stumbled upon a cool-looking offsite backup utility called CrashPlan when Tim beckoned me over. This is an application that looks like it is going somewhere (and will probably double its usefulness when Leopard, with its "Time Machine" capabilities, is available).

Overall, it was a good expo, and even though the SteveNote didn't have any Macintosh content to it, it's clear from the expo floor that the Macintosh software industry is alive and well.