Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

I understand as much as any technical person that the point of WWDC was to give other technical people their first look at upcoming technologies in Leopard and face time with Apple engineers. Most (if not all) of that information is covered by non-disclosure agreement. It’s not intended for public consumption. Apple doesn’t want the world to know about the guts of Leopard until the software is officially released.

The WWDC keynote, however, is not covered by NDA. It’s very public, and you could probably argue that it’s staged primarily for the benefit of the press rather than WWDC attendees. The keynote is where Apple reveals what it wants the public to know about Leopard, and for those who don’t or can’t attend WWDC, it’s our only source of information so far about the OS upgrade coming our way next spring.

Some people, most notably Leander Kahney of Wired, have commented that they found the keynote disappointing. Kahney is known for his blanket treatment of Mac users as cultist freaks, and it’s easy and maybe even appropriate for those who aren’t cultist freaks to dismiss him outright. However, in this particular instance, I agree with him to some extent.

As the public face of Leopard so far, the keynote was ho-hum, in my opinion. OS X is reaching a point where new releases are incremental on the surface rather than revolutionary. I understand that. It’s mature. The incurious mainstream media, where most people will get their information about Leopard, and non-technical users likely don’t realize what under-the-hood changes must occur to make something like a completely 64-bit OS and Time Machine possible. They see the face, not the organs. And as the face goes, Leopard looks good, but not great.

My personal opinion of the keynote, or anyone else’s for that matter, doesn’t dampen my enthusiasm for Leopard. I understand (or at least, I think I do) what the new underlying technologies mean for the OS going forward. Some of the “top secret” features could be revealed over the coming months and they could blow us away. Additionally, one keynote that doesn’t meet the expectations of some doesn’t necessarily indicate the implosion of the entire company or the failure of an entire OS.

The keynote is over. Leopard is coming. There’s a lot of time between the two, and Apple engineers and developers aren’t spending it asleep, or worrying about what anyone thought of the keynote.