WWDC 2013 Day 1

By Rene Ritchie
last updated

I lined up at 2am for the WWDC 2013 keynote. It was early, it was cold. But there were great people in line to talk with and the time passed surprisingly fast. Marc Gurman was there, as was Adam Bell, Grant Paul (chpwn), Marc Edwards, the Nickelfish crew, and many, many others. But that was just the beginning...!

Due to new security procedures -- bag checks -- they let us in earlier than in years before, but that just meant lining up inside after out. There were a couple of additional banners up, but covered in black cloth. Secrets!

We finally got in around 9:30pt, half an hour before the event was scheduled to begin, and I raced to get ready. Seth Clifford was handling the live blogging and I was taking photos. I was shooting with a Canon 5D Mark III and 70-200mm Sigma lens, which I'd accidentally dropped the night before. Luckily only the UV filter shattered and the camera worked fine. Unluckily, I lost my miniUSB cable so I could shoot tethered. That meant I had to shoot a series of pictures, swap cards, start importing in Aperture, export, drag into the Live Blog, and keep shooting with the other card. It was sub-optimal but it worked.

After the keynote the curtains were pulled on the new banners -- OS X Mavericks and the MacBooks, and new Mac Pros were available to be stared at.

I went to the State of the Union. That's the second keynote, and the on that's under NDA which means I can't talk about what was said there. (If you violate NDA's, you're not doing Apple, this business, or yourself any favors.) I can say there was some amazing, and some very candid things shown and discussed there.

Then it was time for the iMore + Debug + Iterate party. We wanted to podcast right after the event so we could bring you all our thoughts and feelings while they were still fresh. We also wanted to thank all the incredible guests we'd had on the shows for the past two years, and honor both our 2012 and 2013 iMore Hall of Fame winners, so we decided to throw a small party. Jessie Char from Pacific Helm was kind enough to handle all the heavy lifting for us. We had some great guests on as well, and we'll post both the video and audio soon.

After that I spent some time with some very, very smart people deconstruction all the events of the day, and pouring over iOS 7 by the pixel and bit. So much has changed, and so much seems unfinished, that I'm still working on collecting my thoughts.

But I'll have a full iOS 7 first impressions article for everyone very soon.

Thanks for reading all our coverage so far, and if there's anything else you'd like to see - or just see more of -- let me know right now!

Rene Ritchie
Rene Ritchie
Contributor

Rene Ritchie is one of the most respected Apple analysts in the business, reaching a combined audience of over 40 million readers a month. His YouTube channel, Vector, has over 90 thousand subscribers and 14 million views and his podcasts, including Debug, have been downloaded over 20 million times. He also regularly co-hosts MacBreak Weekly for the TWiT network and co-hosted CES Live! and Talk Mobile. Based in Montreal, Rene is a former director of product marketing, web developer, and graphic designer. He's authored several books and appeared on numerous television and radio segments to discuss Apple and the technology industry. When not working, he likes to cook, grapple, and spend time with his friends and family.

7 Comments
  • Sit back relax, digest it all. Then when your ready to parse it all, it will be that much easier.
  • When you guys catch your breath I would be interested in hearing from your previous Debug/Iterate UI experts discuss their thoughts on the new IOS direction. Does it signal a direction with enough legs to give Apple a few more years or is this the extent that can be done given the current horsepower of IOS.
  • Do you think you can get Derek Kessler to do a piece on how parts of the iOS 7 functionality seems to be along the same lines as WebOS a couple of years ago. Not trying to start trouble or even a debate. All systems have their goods and bads. It just seems like some of the things I liked about WebOS were brought back to my attention during the presentation as they do with each major iOS update. Particularly, the multitasking looked familiar. I think on the video, they showed flicking off a program to close it, but they didn't expand on it during the live demo. I'm all in with iOS now and my WebOS life seems like one long beta.
  • Honestly, I don't mind them taking elements from webOS. I loved webOS notifications, control center and multi-tasking card system. Being that webOS is dead, I think it's good to carry on the best of webOS; as it died an early death from horrid miss-manegment from Palm and then HP. The idea's themselves were revolutionary and deserved much more than was given.. Look at Android.. it adopted all those elements.. Granted, most on Android say this is taken from the Android OS. ooooo how we quickly and selectively forget! I read earlier today where someone said this is what webOS and Windows 8 Phone would look like if it had kids with it's iOS cousin! ROFL!
  • There are a whole LOT of dudes there. Sausage fest.
  • Rene, what's with the skeuomorphic awards? That's so iOS6.
  • Take all the time you need to form a well thought out opinion on everything. Last thing we need is another rushed opinion piece. Enough of those floating around already.