If you think that America is a free country, try driving through Illinois. Their state motto is Give us all of your spare change
. As I mentioned before, one of the Mac OS X Leopard Tech Talks was held in Chicago yesterday. (Except that it wasn’t yesterday when I mentioned it before.) I was there, and I had a good time. As you would expect, security was tight: I was asked for my name before receiving a name tag. Apple was kind enough to provide food and drink for the free event, which was much appreciated, though the NDA prevents me from disclosing the items on the menu. I will, however, reveal the latest secret Leopard feature. I can confirm that seeded builds now include a Spotlight-searchable C++ GUI Programming Guide. Thanks, PC guy!
I believe that I can also reveal, since I discovered this information myself by testing, that Vienna is Leopard-ready. Or at least, nothing appeared broken when I played with it for 5 minutes. Yay!
I met a number of people at the event, including fellow blogger Geoffrey Schmit of Sugar Maple Software. The biggest celebrity was Sal Soghoian, AppleScript product manager for Apple. Indeed, he was so famous that he wasn’t required to wear the standard Apple employee uniform, or the 15 pieces of flair. To their credit, the ‘software evangelists’ who gave the tech talks were open and honest. They answered my questions, and they also convinced me to shave my head and dance with an iPod at airports. I would like to thank them, as well as Apple for bringing the show on the road to a location near me.
All I can really say about the content of the talks is that Leopard has a lot of cool stuff for developers. I’m tempted now to get an ADC Select Membership, so that I can receive seeds. (In case you’re wondering, Leopard seeds are not distributed to the attendees of Leopard Tech Talks.) Perhaps that was their insidious purpose. Anyway, I would recommend attending if there’s a Leopard Tech Talk in your area. Amen!
Hi. I was also at the Leopard tech talk in Chicago. I already live here, so it was just $2 each way on the el for the day. Not a bad value for $4. At any rate, I just thought I’d mention that I’ve been happily using Vienna on Leopard (PPC) for over a month without problems.
Thanks for the note. Sorry I missed you there!
How soon before the tech talk did you hear you could go? I submitted the day they posted it and I still haven’t heard if I can attend yet. The trouble is that I need to book a hotel for the night before and I’d like to get that done soon. The Boston tech talk date grows ever closer.
Stephan, I received my confirmation around two weeks before the event. Many hotels allow you to cancel without a fee if you give them at least 24 hours notice, so you might want to try booking a room now.
Thanks! That is a good idea. I certainly hope I get to go, I’d love to have a good course in Xray and some of the new APIs.