Mac Daddy World

You can separate the OS X feature engineering work done by Apple into two categories. There’s the features that are exciting to the typical Mac user, and then there’s the features that are only exciting to software developers. When Apple says that they’re “hitting the pause button on new features”, they’re talking about that first category of features. From a developer’s perspective, Snow Leopard is overflowing with exciting system enhancements, tantalizing new goodies to allow for faster development and huge performance improvements.

The tradeoff triangle. Image credit: Microsoft

Pausing to focus on stability and performance is every large software company’s fantasy. The typical process of software development is a cycle: New feature requirements are handed down from on high, developers work furiously on the new features, cut corners to get them just to the point where they’re (mostly) working, and then rush them out the door on a slipped deadline. Fixes to critical bugs come iteratively as point release updates, but the majority of the engineering team has already moved on to the next batch of new features. There’s never any time to go back and improve on things.

It’s unprecedented for a company to have this luxury: To be able to pause the infinite loop and concentrate entirely on making the current feature set work better. In the large part, working better means running faster. It also means adding new frameworks and paradigms to allow future features to be built on a firm foundation. They’re improving the underpinnings of the OS. You can think of it like Verizon’s FIOS project. Customers might not see a huge benefit today, but by replacing their copper infrastructure with fiber-optic, they’re enabling future technologies. Similarly, Apple is building a powerful new infrastructure for the future of the platform. Competitors are going to be left with crackly old wiring.

A winning strategy

Clearly, I’m very excited by this strategy. By taking a whole engineering cycle to focus on enhancements and create performance-improving technologies, Apple is going to move so far ahead of competition that the competition might never be able to recover. They’re going to skunk the competition.

Concentrating on performance improvements isn’t something new for Apple. I haven’t verified this scientifically, but from personal experience, upgrading to Leopard actually results in a speed boost for things like boot time and application launch time. This comes as a surprise to many people. We just assume that a newer OS will require a faster machine and say things like: “I’m not sure my old laptop can handle Leopard.” In fact, Leopard is a faster operating system than its predecessors. Upgrading will actually result in a performance increase.

The things I saw this week at WWDC made my eyes bug out. They’re determined to squeeze every last cycle out of the CPU (and the GPU for that matter), constantly asking the question “How can we make this faster?”. I imagine a big banner, a la Office Space, hanging above the cubicle farm in Cupertino. Another important focus is enabling 3rd party developers to easily (or even automatically) benefit from these new technologies.

With each normal development cycle, performance might move up by some small amount. (In the competition’s case, it might actually go down.) In the Snow Leopard release, it’s going to make a huge jump.

Putting all your cores in one basket

While every shipping Mac is now a multi-core machine, programming languages and application architectures have not kept up in a way that allows developers to easily take full advantage. Until now, efficiently and properly taking advantage of all available cores has been a tricky and error-prone process even for the most brilliant of engineers. Snow Leopard will solve this problem in many ways, with new language features, and a new operation paradigm which shifts the burden of threaded programming away from the developer and into the capable hands of the OS.

Who needs so many bits?

For developers, moving to 64-bit is a cheerless and time consuming process, made even worse by the fact that consumers will not even notice an immediate difference. Apple is going to do it in Snow Leopard because they know it will make things better over the long run. It’s like getting your wisdom teeth removed when they’re not yet causing any discomfort. It’s going to need to happen at some point, and better to do it now when you can schedule a convenient time for the procedure. You won’t feel better right afterwards. In fact, for a short period of time afterwards you’ll feel worse. But once you’re recovered, you’ll be glad you did it. Apple’s investing in a healthy future. Competitors are going to end up wearing braces.

As hip as a software engineer

I love that Apple doesn’t try to use the current buzzwords and trendy technologies. They could be trying to generate investor excitement with things like XML and social networking, but they’re not. Instead they’re putting lay-people to sleep with things like OpenCL and gigaflops. It’s as if they’ve put the developers in charge and everyone else is out to lunch.

Way to go Apple. Power to the Programmers!

The introduction of the iPhone SDK has brought many fresh faces to WWDC. Specifically, developers who have been sent by their company to learn about the iPhone SDK are completely new to the Apple community.

It’s a little odd to look down the aisle at a session and see an uptight PC guy dutifully transcribing the presentation into his IBM Thinkpad. Meanwhile, Mac types on either side of him are busy in Xcode or Twitter on their sticker-covered MacBook Pros. For one thing, seeing a Windows laptop here is unprecedented. For another thing, us Mac guys traditionally don’t pay very close attention to the sessions. We’re too busy checking out the sample code or pinging friends using the hippest new methods.

I hope we see these guys again next year sporting MacBook Airs, and they’ll know to leave the necktie at home.

Peace.

Once a year, Apple hosts the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. This year there are 5000+ developers here. A lot of developers wonder if going to WWDC is a good use of time and money. The short answer is that this is the event of the year for Apple developers and it should not be missed.

Just as important as the sessions, lectures and labs is meeting and hanging out with the people who have gathered here. The first WWDC I attended in 2005 was my initiation into the Apple dev community… I didn’t know a sole. I started working on Ecamm full-time shortly afterwards and now, three years later, I’ve met so many great people both here and at other events that I can hardly turn a corner without seeing a familiar face.

I know I’ll see many of them later this year at C4, some of them at MacWorld in January, and probably all of them next year at WWDC 2009.

Thanks to everyone for a great week!

???????? At WWDC, there’s always the guy with the hat. Just sayin’.

See you at WWDC, hat guy!

From Apple’s pre-WWDC mailer today:

Confidential Information
With the exception of the Keynote, all information presented or provided to you by Apple during WWDC is considered Apple Confidential Information, the unauthorized disclosure of which is strictly prohibited. Please ensure that your communications with others outside WWDC, including your blogs, do not contain any Apple Confidential Information.

Shhh, don’t tell anyone what you learned in “Safari and WebKit Overview” session. It’s a secret! “Getting Started With OpenGL”? Sorry, can’t help. Maybe Apple will make that information available via iTunes U some time in mid-November.

See you at the conference!