End WWDC

April 25th, 2013

Daniel Jalkut thinks WWDC has run its course:

Instead of a week each year when a developer must enter a lottery for a chance at talking directly with a knowledgable Apple engineer in the labs, beef up the existing Developer Technical Support process and workflow so that vexing issues can be driven to the point of resolution, and so that the fruits of those discoveries can be shared with others. For every “lifesaving” tip a developer has received in the WWDC labs, how many others continue to struggle in anguish because the effort was never made to codify that wisdom in the form of a developer technote or other reference material? It doesn’t make sense … it’s a bug, if you will … that so many Apple developers feel that their only opportunity to solve a problem is by meeting in person with an Apple engineer at WWDC.

I agree. Apple needs to re-think how they achieve WWDC’s goals, and Daniel has some excellent ideas for how to do it.