I’m writing this at the start of the week post-WWDC. The conference itself this year was an epic event, and not just due to the announcements relating to both iOS 7 & OS X Mavericks - those both were just the beginning of everything.

To be honest, most of the changes within Mavericks really only affect me as an end user. For the moment. I certainly am however, even more excited to want to be able to make the jump to doing some OS X projects - but those will probably have to wait until I can justify the time. However, I was most certainly blown away by what was shown regarding the updates to the SceneKit APIs - for those who are registered with the developer program - the video for that session is a must-see.

As for the iOS front, the changes to iOS 7 are a fundamental reboot in how the OS is interacted with. It means that between now, and the final release later in the year - there’s going to be a lot of work required to get applications ready for it. Besides that, there were a lot of great new features announced as well. For me, the biggest surprise was gaming related - the fact that iOS 7 brings support for gaming controllers, along with the introduction of SpriteKit - a 2D game engine are both things I’m quite looking forward to playing with more.

So, there’s certainly a lot to process - if you’re a registered iOS/OS X developer, I certainly implore you to check the videos out as early as you can - my biggest thanks to everyone at Apple who helped get them up in such a short amount of time - having them available is great for the long flight home, as well as being able to review them as I look into the technologies at a deeper level.

On a personal level, I did better than I thought (but not as well as I’d like) with showing PD around to people. It was great to be able to show that (along with the other prototype I have to hand), and get some comments & thoughts as to the next release or two. I guess it means a few weeks of work ahead, as I’d love to have that release sorted out by the time PAX Australis is on - it’d be nice to do some celebratory bits & pieces there to show the new version off (even as I just wander around the floor).