WWDC 2010 - Sold Out!

In only 8 days, this year’s WWDC in San Francisco has been sold out! This is the third year in a row that the conference is a sell out. This year though it was in only 8 days and not in a month like last year. I think this clearly demonstrates that the iPhone OS platform is a very serious platform and that more and more developers are seeing its potential. In only 2 years, Apple has fundamentally changed the developer world. Only a small percentage of developers would have ever considered developing apps for the Mac platform using Xcode and Objective-C, but 2 years on, that is not the case anymore. Developers are realising the potential and power of this new platform, and are flocking by the thousands to events like the WWDC.

This of course fundamentally changes the potential of developing not just for the iPhone OS platform but ultimately for the Mac OS platform. Could this be a repeat of what happened to Apple after it launched the first iPod? Before Apple launched the iPod and iTunes, the company was pretty much bankrupt. Users started liking the iPod and eventually thought, and rightly so, that “if their iPod is this good - then their computers must be too”. Apple very cleverly lured people away from PCs & Windows to the simplicity of the Mac. Could this be happening now for developers?

I couldn’t help but wonder, could this really be a time of major shift in developers? Could we see more and more developers shifting to the Mac/Objective-C platform? After all, “if it is this easy to develop for the iPhone OS - then it must be easy to develop for the Mac platform”. It is not easy for any developer to switch to Objective-C, but it is easy enough for a developer with the right foundations. Anyone with good understanding of object-oriented concepts and C could do the jump quite easily. The rest is simply just syntax! A good creative author that writes novels in English can write equally good novels in French, they would just need to learn French.

It is certainly an exciting time for all of us. I think that people who choose to ignore the Mac and iPhone OS platforms are doing so at their own peril.

See you all 5,000 developers in San Francisco in exactly one month from now!