WWDC Afterthoughts

WWDC left us with some very exciting technology to look forward to. I’ve started learning ObjC again – with a sprinkling of Cocoa so maybe I can turn into a programmer. The additions to ObjC, such as garbage collection and a lot of script-to-framework libraries will make a difference to who is able to create Mac apps. Apple is also embracing ruby a lot more by including Rails and Mongrel as part of the distribution on Mac OS X Server.

More and more of the older Carbon APIs are dissappearing ( QuickDraw, Code Fragment Manager, Sound Manager, etc ) and being replaced with modern Cocoa equivalents and Carbon itself is being updated so it can use modern Cocoa views.

We’re liking some of the other features (Spaces, Time Machine) purely from a user perspective and it’s not hard to see where Apple is going with some of their new options.

Resolution independence should be better implemented. I see this as being a way that I can reduce the size of some windows, while retaining control over them in exactly the kind of Expos???-type hack I’d been hoping for.

We’re putting in an order for a Mac Pro in the next week or two as well. It won’t really mesh with us being Bedouin and Aidan will have a hard time wandering around with it strapped to his back, but he needs the exercise 🙂

I guess we all know by now that Apple is releasing iCal Server as part of their Mac OS X Server suite sometime next year. We’re obviously affected by this but only peripherally.

• iCal Server is only useful if you have or can maintain a Mac OS X Server.
• It needs to be live on the net if you’re going to use it when you’re on the road.
• Access to iCal Server means putting people onto your Open Directory

Some of these things are real show stoppers for the road warrior. The limitations of keeping a server behind NAT as well as live on the net (which are real limitations). Small businesses don’t have the resources to maintain their own server and putting one in place for your family and friends to share calendars seems over the top. Lastly, much like you wouldn’t give friends and family access to your company server data files, you may not want them to have access to your iCalendar server.

We’re working on adding CalDAV support to SyncBridge for the future and we’ve got the guts of three quarters before it’s going to be released so we’re not worried about the timeframe. I’m glad that Apple is stepping up to the plate and realising that calendaring and groupware are important. The next thing we’re working on, howver, is Google Calendar compatibility.