Any advice on equipment to bring to the WWDC to be able to get the best experience from the event? Do labs and sessions require you to bring your own Mac with dev tools installed? Or is it better to leave that stuff behind so you're not lugging them all over the conference. I don't have any particular code to discuss in the one-on-one debugging/development appointments at this point.
WWDC 2019: what to bring
Not required, but I'd feel naked attending without at least one macbook and iPhone/iPad...sort of attire of the day.
The opportunity to talk w/engineers face/to/face is invaluable, even if all you want to discuss are concepts. Bring your projects regardless, you might think of something after you arrive and regret it if you leave your work behind. At least bring a pocket full of thumb drives.
Wish you exciting WWDC.
If you are looking for topics to discuss, may I propose you 2 of them 😉 ? They are based on improvement reports I filed some time ago, which I dream I could discuss with designers. They were marked as dupe, meaning I'm not the only one concerned.
1. Allowing to change language setting from within an app.
Here is an example use case :
- Working with a foreign person,
- Need to change the language on the fly, each time one or the other has to interact with the app.
There is no easy or safe way to do this directly from the app without being forced to go through the phone setting, which forces to interrupt use of app and takes a long time (over 30s at best: impractical for this use case).
2. Upside down for notched iPhones
It would be really good to make iPhone X and all future notched devices capable of upside down.
Beyond the fact that having different user experience depending on the model, there are use cases where it is really an issue.
- I have a person in front of who I talk to.
- I want to show him / her some page on py phone.
- I used to just lean the phone and that was done.
Now, I have to turn it physically, really cumbersome and not natural at all.
I guess the bottom bar is the issue. Could it be split in 2 to find its place into the "ears" when the phone is upside down ?
If you are interested, I will send as well the references of reports.
There are three things:
1) Sessions. Don't bother going to WWDC for sessions. That would be a waste of $6000. It is better to watch those from home. At least if you are at WWDC, you may be able to get early access to the session videos and can download them really fast at the conference. At home, you might have to wait a couple of days. You will need an iPad for the sessions in case you get bored or you want to write down questions to ask during the labs.
2) Labs. This is why you spend the money. For whatever question you want to ask, you need your machine all setup and ready to go to demonstrate whatever you are asking about. The Apple engineers in the labs are super nice. They will tell you exactly what you need to do and, in some cases, even type it in for you. Even if there is some concept you don't quite understand, get a demo setup and ready to ask about. This is your chance to ask questions in person. Don't pass it up. Really, skip the sessions and go to the labs instead.
3) Betas. Bring a spare device if you want to test a beta build. Don't do that with your primary device. If you are a Mac developer, you can get away with an external boot device. You'll need a lot of free disk space.