
Looking Back at WWDC 97 - mrpippy
http://bslabs.net/2017/06/01/wwdc-1997/
======
mclide
Apple invited me to present at WWDC97 as a young independent developer with a
startup making software for "webmasters" on the Apple internet platform; "What
cool sites use" according to Apple's marketing back then. Little did I know
what a turning point it would be for Apple, although I had already placed my
eggs firmly placed in their basket.

I got to demo my Common Lisp based social web application server and showcase
how to extend it with dynamic, hot-loaded components. Apple said I could talk
about pretty much whatever I wanted within the scope of the conference, so I
included an introduction to how it used what I labeled Light Weight SGML, soon
better known as XML.

It was a blast from the past seeing my presentation again 20 years later. I
had prepared the slides to be displayed in a web browser, generated from
extensible markup using my WebSlides tool, but my handler at Apple insisted on
converting them to PowerPoint. They weren't all sold on the web eating the
world yet.

Despite having a complementary ticket for the conference, I had no time to
stick around, flying straight back home the day after to prepare the next
product release. The following years were quite a ride, like having a tiger by
the tail. Then came 2001.

~~~
mrpippy
Very cool! You're the last one here?
[http://s3.bslabs.net/wwdc/1997/401%20Web%20Server%20Programm...](http://s3.bslabs.net/wwdc/1997/401%20Web%20Server%20Programming.pdf)

~~~
mclide
Correct, that's me attempting to spread the gospel of Common Lisp web server
programming to what seemed like an endless mass of Apple developers at WWDC
97.

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speps
I found this one [0] particularly interesting :

\- speech recognition as input

\- support for Microsoft devices

\- Marathon game engine details

[0]
[http://s3.bslabs.net/wwdc/1997/107%20Game%20Sprockets.pdf](http://s3.bslabs.net/wwdc/1997/107%20Game%20Sprockets.pdf)

~~~
duskwuff
Game Sprockets were a neat concept for the time -- bundle a bunch of useful
tools for building games into a set of standard system libraries. A response
of sorts to ActiveX. Perhaps my favorite feature was the standardized control
remapping interface -- many games were still rolling their own user interfaces
for this, or simply not allowing controls to be remapped.

Unfortunately, not very many games ended up using Sprockets. (And the
framework never made into Mac OS X at all.) Shame.

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mamp
I didn't go to this one, but I was at the 96 WWDC. I remember all the shocked
faces in the audience when Apple couldn't demo all the System 8 features in
one build, and the weakened memory protection to be almost useless. There was
a realisation that Apple's software story was bogus and they couldn't build a
modern OS.

The purchase of Next was an acknowledgment of this. It's amazing how it turned
out.

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tjr225
Always interesting to read about Apple in the 90s. As someone who was born in
the late 80s and by no means could afford Apple until after my secondary
education, I grew up a Windows guy. I'm somewhat of a diehard Linux/Apple guy
now but it's great to see the parallels of then and now...a lot of distrust of
Apple these days but I knew nothing of it at the time(back then).

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microtherion
Interesting to see Craig Federighi as a presenter, since he left Apple in 1999
and did not return until 10 years later.

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valuearb
I stopped going to the WWDC almost a decade prior to this.

~~~
valuearb
Don't understand the downvotes. The 1989 WWDC was the best one ever, they
announced System 7, how could I ever top that?

And I even participated in a panel and gave a speech!

It would have been all downhill from there for me.

