3 Sided Cube take WWDC22

Hi there, I’m Sam, an iOS Developer at 3 Sided Cube! Last month I got the opportunity to visit Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, for their annual developer conference, WWDC (World Wide Developer Conference). So while everybody else was watching the announcements from the comfort of their homes, I very smugly got to watch the announcements while jet-lagged, and getting sunburnt.

It’s Apple’s first year back to an in-person event since 2019, and it’s the first WWDC ever at Apple Park, as opposed to a convention centre in San Francisco or San Jose. The far more exciting venue did come with the trade off of a much smaller attendance: there are 30 million developers registered with Apple, but only 1,000 could attend.

I – having only briefly thought about the impracticality and expense of having to make my way to the USA – entered the draw to receive an invite, thinking ‘ahhh, I probably won’t need to deal with the logistics as I probably won’t get an invite anyway!’

And then, on the 13th of May at about 1am, I received an invite.

The invite came through just three weeks before the event, which I must say wasn’t an abundance of time for planning. But we managed to pull something together. A far emptier bank account and an 11 hour flight later, me, my partner Zak, and our massive green suitcase, arrived in sunny California. 

*Big ups to 3 Sided Cube for not only supporting my last minute trek across the pond but allocating my yearly development budget to help with the trip*

‘Oh no,’ we thought, sharing a worried look, ‘are they cheering each other? Or are they cheering the people checking in? I really hope they don’t cheer us — we’re British, it would be embarrassing!’

This question, among others, would be answered for us as we crossed the road and were greeted by exuberant call and response chanting for our arrival of ‘DUB DUB!’, ‘D C!’ Zak and I – the only people there checking in at the time – were whooped and cheered by crowds of staff, as we were directed from person to person to have my code scanned, covid test results checked, and pass issued. We wore beaming awkward smiles as we sheepishly pretended that we were enjoying all the fun.

All of the presentation, pitch, and lecture rooms had surround sound systems. The rooms were so sound-proofed that as you walked into each one, you could hear your voice muffle and quieten. And as if that wasn’t enough, if you’re having any particularly secretive conversations, white noise could be played in the corridors to stop people from listening in.

Secret wall panels in each room opened up into a very Apple-looking tunnel that connected all the rooms in the building. Via this tunnel, we were shown into the Big Sur theatre, a supremely hi-tech space with one of the most comprehensive lighting rigs I’ve ever seen.

We were given a brief presentation about the space (which was mainly an opportunity for them to flex all of the technology weaved through the room), including being shown just how bright their screen can get, and I can attest to the fact that it can indeed get bright.

On our way out, goodie bags were issued containing some little Apple trinkets, which included Apple-designed face masks envisioned by their Engineering and Industrial Design teams – which are incredible. I loved these masks so much I tried to track down where I could get more, but they’re devastatingly not available for purchase.

(Also in the Swift logo tote bag: an Apple water bottle, some WWDC pins, a Swift logo cap, and some fancy moisturising sun cream.)

Up the Apple-looking stairs (apples and pears anybody? no?) there’s a rooftop viewing platform, where you can just see the top of the glass donut spaceship that is the main building.

With my bank account $40 lighter and an Apple Park t-shirt in tow, we headed back to the hotel.

It was main check-in time now, far busier than the previous day, and the cheering for attendees continued. (It looked maybe a little less awkward now that it was crowds moving around rather than just me and Zak)

And my god, if the benches and lamps and stairs were Apple-looking, this is this most Apple-looking building you could conceive. And it’s pretty damn impressive: 2.8 million square foot of office and lab space, all inside of a spacecraft. (And 1.5 million square foot of underground parking!)

They open up the entire 4-story wall of the building to let sun and fresh air in. Oh yeah and there are full size trees in the cafe. The architect was on something I swear. (I later heard from an Apple Engineer that someone has to stand there holding a button on a remote for 8-10 minutes while these things open and close)

My attempt at not socialising backfired (in a positive way) as I ended up socialising. Sat next to me were three developers from the iOS team at Disney, who were a fun chat. (The 3SC marketing team will be pleased to hear that I smoothly name-dropped Cube, throughout the day, to a lot of people.)

During the presentation, we got to see iOS 16, macOS Ventura, iPadOS 16, watchOS 9, the M2 chip, and the newly redesigned MacBook Air.

We then were given an introduction to a swathe of new Swift language features and developer frameworks that we’d be able to take advantage of in our apps. Download stations in the inner ring were set up so we could start playing around with all this stuff immediately.

I ended up at a table of 5 blue t-shirted Apple software engineers, who very much gave the vibe that they sat at that table every day, in the same seats, every lunch time. They were on the Security & Privacy software team and were genuinely fascinating to talk to. Getting past the Apple-polish on everything to talk to some real people that worked there was really interesting.

I was told that the breakfast and lunch services are the same on a normal office day, except they normally have to pay for it. (Daily caviar bagels anybody?)

I also got to hear inside stories of keycards not working, birds slamming into the innumerable glass panels of the campus, and the introduction of “Jony Ive’s Tears” – the employee-nicknamed safety stickers that were retrospectively applied to the glass walls and glass doors around the park to stop the employees from doing the same thing as the birds. Despite this, as I walked around the cafe I still had to second guess whether or not I was about to walk into an opening, or a glass wall.

The weather had stayed gorgeous all day. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the day’s UV index was 10. And while I did see some very radiantly red casualties of the sun, I came away fairly unscathed.

Apart from the backs of my hands which apparently I didn’t suncream at all, which got painfully burnt, but have at least now turned into a gorgeous dark tan which I have maintained nowhere else on my person.