"Gee," said the man acro the table, clearly pushing for my attention. "You haven't posted anything yet!"I looked up from my complimentary breakfast muffin, confused.
"You're su osed to be blogging this!"
Oh, right. Good idea.
I'm here in Chicago, Illinois, after traveling a great distance (3 miles) to attend Jon "Wolf" Rentzsch's two-day C4 Mac developers conference. And like every Mac conference before it, it makes me giddy with glee.
Glee.
Let's forfeit the pleasantries and get straight to it, shall we? Click on to read my Day One recap of C4.
Yes, glee.
Here are some photos from the event. Excuse the poor lighting. (< an style="font-weight: bold;">Update: DaringFireball points to a flickr album with better photos.)
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Jon "Wolf" Rentzsch welcomes developers to the C4 conference, in their native Objective-C.
C4 is Jon's re o e to the lo of the once-great MacHack/ADHOC conference (which I eulogized after its unfortunate pa ing): he brought together some of the Mac world's most prominent developers and voices (Gus Mueller, Brent Simmo , John Gruber, Drunke atman, Aaron Hillega , etc.) to create a two-day seminar focused on discu ing topics of interest to the tightly-knit and quality-focused community.
Why does it matter to you? Same reason it matters to me: I'm no developer, but to understand this community and the proce -- and thought -- behind their work is to understand the nature of Mac software, and the nature of the Mac itself. These guys are directing the platform -- they are directing its future, and how it influences your life (More on all of this later).
Jon set a 75 member quota on attendance, expecting moderate interest. < an style="font-weight: bold;">98 people registered before he had to cap it.
What does C4 mean anyway? Jon kept it a secret until his opening addre .
I obviously figured it to mean explosive. C4 will be an explosive event! Ha ha!
A arently not.
He even held a contest: correctly gue what "C4" mea , and win your choice of an iPod or Zune. "Come on, go for the Zune," he said. "Don't be a sheep!"
One attendee (< an style="font-weight: bold;">Update: Jonathan Wight) created a script that prints every combination of C words.
Oh those silly programmers.
It actually mea "Code, Culture, Community, Co iracy."
Which is fine I gue . Not quite as cool as "explosive!", but the "co iracy" part makes up for it.
"We need to modernize moof!" Jon proclaimed.
And the only way to do that, of course, in typical A le fashion, is to add a reflection.
"But we don't need a mascot," he continued. "We need a gang sign."
TUAW fave John Gruber takes the stage to talk on A le and UI co istency. "The Gap Theory: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Accept the Fact That the HIG Is Dead" was his topic.
He made a great analogy, attempting to explain the evolution of a uniform UI: In the past, when the system was le complex and offered le o ortunity for variation, creating a UI was like filming an episode of a TV show, a la X-Files: all the episodes are different, but each "feels" the same -- dim lighting ("they could walk into a Wal*Mart or a middle school and it would STILL be dark!"), su e eful, etc.
But now that the system offers so much more, and now that users are trained to understand what things like butto are (and what they do), creating a UI is more like filming a movie: the components are the same (plot, characters, etc.) but the representation is different.
(And to a le er extent, it's kind of like filming episodes of different TV series: as in "Pro Life Show," where all the pro-a tend to embrace a similar theme.)
And that's OK, John argues. It's not great, but it's OK.
"The HIG is dead," he proclaimed. "It's not a living document," referring to the fact that it ha 't changed to match new concepts (i.e., source lists). "I don't know if anyone has write-acce to it anymore."
The conclusion? Functionality co istency is more important than visual co istency. A button should do what you expect it to do.
"Just make something that looks good."
Word.
This so perfectly sums up the atmo here of the event.
When someone's iChat blooped, everyone pounced to their machines. Here, the iChat "bloop" is the equivalent of a cell phone ring at a crowded mall.
After the se io , the group headed out to Jak's Tap, where fun was had by all.
(Except by me, who lost a game of pool on a technicality. Dignity was lost. Self-esteem was destroyed. Adam Goldstein beats me at everything.)
And yes, that's an iBook at a bar.
More coverage to come.
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