Ground Control Forum

I am wondering how necessary Apple's NDA on the developers attending WWDC 07 is. It seems that it effectively killed the planned Leopard app demos at the Delicious Generation bash (and who knows how many other new apps were similarly hamstrung). Who are they trying to keep the feature set a secret from? I mean, doesn't Microsoft get their own developer preview of 10.5 as developers of one of the most important suite of apps on the platform? Are they the only developer that has to keep using Tiger and Xcode 2.0? Like I'm sure if MS really wanted to get their hands on the feature set, all they would have to do is buy a developer that did attend WWDC. I say that tongue in cheek because I know that many MS programmers attended and they most definitely have their hands on Leopard by now. So, who are they keeping it under wraps for?

I'm sure you could argue as a marketing angle that Apple just wants to build hype on the unknown because people lose enthusiasm for something that's already been previously announced. Case in point: How many people got all excited about Time Machine all over again?

However, I think that the secrecy leads up to overhyped expectations and when everybody is waiting for Apple to reveal the Teletransporter Holodeck Cancer Cure Metabolism Accelerator Widget™ (Patent Pending), they come out with...Stacks, and everybody goes, WTF™? So, that's what they were trying to keep from Microsoft?

Bringing it closer to home, That same NDA affects Ground Control. As a WWDC attendee, Steve Streza is under the same NDA and is not able to share everything he would like about Ground Control development because it is now a Leopard-only app and would divulge too much about Leopard-related technologies.

I just really wonder, is it all really that big of a deal? I could understand early in the development of Leopard, but it's not like MS is going to come out with a OS X Killer with tons of one-ups over Apple anytime soon. To me it seems the potential disapointment when things are overhyped is more of a negative than throwing open the doors and really letting us all take a peek at Leopard (and Leopard-only apps).

But, you never know, maybe there will be, One More Thing™ that just blows everyone out of the water and sends MS home to layoff the entire Vista development team and throw in the towel and call it quits!