It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of Apple events: the secrecy, the frenetic guessing games, the lines at Starbuck’s. It’s like Christmas–before your older brother ruined Santa for you–and it happens a couple of times a year.
So Cult of Mac got the inside scoop from developer Chris Lott, who was sitting inside on this unusually warm San Francisco day with a restless crowd of developers at the World Wide Developer Conference, for his take on the keynote announcements. Lott works with Darren Murtha Design; the two currently have eight iPhone/iPad apps in the iTunes store, most of them nifty learning games aimed at the preschool set.
On iOS 6:
“For iOS 6, there are so many enhancements I’m still trying to wrap my head around it all. I’m impressed by the “Do Not Disturb” feature and now I can leave my phone on when I go to sleep and still get important phone calls (if the dialer continues to call me over and over). For our games, the “Guided Access” feature is important to give younger children the ability to use the iPad without supervision.”
On the new MacBook Pros:
“It’s really amazing how the original MacBook Air shook things up with how people thought of how a laptop should work and now they’ve done it again with the new MacBook Pro. I don’t know of any other laptop that has that sharp of a screen and when it comes down to how much time you spend staring at your screen, it’s totally worth the price from a developer perspective. I just ordered one.”
On the retina display:
“Mac developers will have to update to retina for that new MacBook. That piece of hardware is stunning in person.”
And – this at my insistence – on breakfast:
“The food they give us is amazing and very diverse. They have pastries of all kinds, scones, muffins, donuts, etc. I ate a few blueberry scones while waiting in line upstairs. Also they provide lots of coffee, juice and tea which makes for long bathroom lines. Whenever we get out of a session, they provide us nerd fuel to keep going.”
