WWDC 2009 starts early in San Francisco, as in the day before. First in line this year is Clay, who arrived at 5:30 p.m., June 7. Behind him were hundreds more, all waiting for the keynote at 10:00 a.m. today.
By 5:30 a.m., the line for the keynote stretched a block up 3rd Street, which is relatively short compared with a line for Macworld Expo, but considering WWDC has around 5,000 attendees, it’s impressive. I estimated the line to be about 500 by 6:00 a.m. The crowd was mostly male and decidedly not-tanned, with black a popular color for dress.
The first woman I found in line was part of a group of students from China who had endured a 13-hour flight before they even queued up. They looked forward to learning more about Leopard, as were many of those waiting, but there were also many iPhone developers. “I want tools that work,” said Clay, referring to the iPhone SDK. When I pressed him on the quality of the iPhone SDK, he agreed that developer tools on other platforms were inferior to Apple’s, but that Apple’s could be better.
While developers were focused on tools, there was still a lot of excitement regarding hardware. Everyone was looking forward to a new iPhone, but a few were hopeful that new Pro machines would be introduced. Only a couple of hardcore zealots thought a tablet was in the making. We’ll know soon.
Stay focused on TAB coverage of the keynote at 10:00 a.m.
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