Chris Adamson's Blog

May 2006 Archives

Apple's 2006 JavaOne BoF

It wasn't easy staying up for a 10:30 BoF from Apple, but it's a tradition, so Daniel, Josh, Cooper and I hung out at Moscone until the wee hours.

It was worth it.

Apple's Alan Samuel set out to break some widely-held misconceptions, by making two interesting releases. The first misconception was that since Apple had released a Mustang developer preview for Intel Macs, that it had already turned its back on PowerPC. This was dispelled by the announcement of Developer Preview 2, which supports both Intel and PPC.

The other misconception was that Apple was not supportive of SWT. At this point, Alan welcomed engineer Scott Kovatch, who showed off a demo of a new compatbility library that allows SWT widgets to coexist with AWT and Swing widgets. In his example, an SWT text field shared a window with a Swing JTree and some AWT widget I don't recall.

They marked the occasion by clearing the bug in Ecilpse's Bugzilla... well, they put a comment into Bugzilla, but forgot to change the status from NEW to FIXED, so a few hundred developers tracking the bug got an e-mail about the new comment, and presumably will get a more complete update later.

Both of these announcements were mirrored in a java-dev mailing list entry Ann: Java SE 6 for PPC and Intel and SWT Compatibilty Libraries now available!, so those not at JavaOne could join in the fun too.

In a remarkably impressive demo, Scott showed the Aerith demo from Tuesday's general session, running in the pre-release Mustang for Mac. While a little pokey, it maintained all of the lavish JOGL-powered graphics, seamlessly rendering in the Swing environment, in all of Aerith's OSX-inspired 3D reflective goodness.

A Shark demo was planned, but time ran out.

Late night, but well worth it.

Phishing for JavaOne attendees

I thought the "fake wifi network so we can steal your passwords" schtick was played out two JavaOnes ago, nevertheless, here's what the air looked like in the Tuesday morning general session:

Sigh. Who are these bottom-feeders, and how did they get into JavaOne?

Come for the power, stay for the community

I spent part of yesterday afternoon at the java.net booth, helping set up for podcasting the mini-talks, which start today at 11.

The booth arrangement is really nice this year: on one side, we have the kiosks for signage, literature, and computers, which allow community leads and project owners to show their stuff and meet with people. At the opposite side is the screen, speakers and podium for the mini talks, with a backdrop behind the screen so the light from nearby booths doesn't distract you. In front of the podium is seating for about 16-20.

And in between we have a pair of comfy sofas for java.net members to hang out in and enjoy the mini-talks from the back row. The sofas have a coffee table for your drinks/snacks/laptop, and on top of the table we have the rarest of all things at JavaOne: a power strip. Yes, you can relax and recharge in the booth... literally... while you meet other community members and get the 20-minute info dumps that are the mini-talks.

I did an interview with java.net Community Manager Marla Parker while the booth was still under construction, which you can hear as our latest podcast.

So do come by. Booth 532. Under the big orange "java.net" banner. Just listen for the sound of community and innovation.

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