So, I attended C4 over the weekend. Many congrats to Wolf Rentzsch for organizing. Well done.

Friday night Wolf and John Gruber presented. Wolf spoke about the progression from MacHack through ADHOC, the parallel formation and longevity of PSIG, all culminating in C4: The Code Culture Community Conspiracy. He showed off his playful, inquisitive nature by trying to deconstruct an old Jobsian demo, BombApp.app, and recreate it in 0 lines of code.

John Gruber presented on the death of the HIG. Is the HIG no longer a living document? It would seem so given the relative paucity of guidance regarding new UI constucts. Unified source lists, toolbars, "plus" buttons, and gear menus all have to be recreated, developer-by-developer, with no help from Apple. Apple, meanwhile, introduces apps like iTunes 7 with no less than half-dozen different button styles. He related an incident with Apple's Radar system where a bug was submitted with accompanying reference from Apple's HIG over the presence of the Equalizer control being resident in the View menu, instead of under the Window menu where it belongs. The response was short and uninformative: "Works as intended."

He noted as well, that successful apps are also feeling more free to explore new UI territory. A migration to "cinematic" user experience design. The Frence auteur theory applied to desktop apps. When Disco is running, and smoke starts pouring out of the window, responding to mouse movement, that flash is giving user's a more tangible, real, immersive experience. Delicious Library could have been a book, CD, and DVD table-bound library app, but they took it a step further and represented it as a books on a bookshelf, with rich colors and textured windows. These are the kinds of lengths developers have to go to now to stay competitive. Key to it all is a sense of internal consistency instead of conforming to a system-wide aesthetic.

That evening, we went to Jak's Taphouse for some really tasty beer sodas. The rest of the evening (and much of the following morning's wee hours) were a complete blur. What happens at C4 stays at C4.

Brent Simmons talked about integrating Web Services with Desktop apps. Summary: REST is good, SOAP is bad, WebServicesCore.framework is sad. He also spoke about some of the pitfalls of feature requests, tech support, and when to say when. "I never intended to become Mr. Syncing."

Aaron Hillegass cajoled developers to try and solve "real problems". At first, I was excited about the premise. I felt he was going to talk about helping out with my Liberal Guilt bias of what constitutes "real problems". Instead, it seems, real problems are helping orthodontists keep their schedules in order. He admits, it's not the most prestigious work, nor even the most altruistic. Orthodontists simply have technicall problems that can be modeled in software, and for which they are willing to pay through the nose (or teeth). Solving "real" problems becomes solving "profitable" problems. Not exactly an unworthy cause, but it's not Global Warming or getting the Republicans out of the administration.

He did make an interesting observation: When you look at the three big traditional Mac markets (user apps, professional creative apps, and office productivity apps), they're dominated by Apple itself. iLife, Final Cut Pro, Aperture, iWork. And if not by Apple, then by the other big fish: Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office, Intuit Quicken and Quickbooks. When you look at the rest of the software world, those are only three tiny markets. There's a whole realm of untapped potential for enterprising Mac developers that might just keep them from becoming the next Dan Woods.

Gus Mueller showed how to extend applications with embeddable scripting languages. In particular, he showed off a custom build of TextEdit with Lua plugins to give over to the users the power to extend applications in directions he never even considered. "Give them the tools to do what they want, and they'll take your application to a whole new level."

Steve Dekorte offered up a unique look at concurrency problems that are bound to start hitting developers now that 2 and 4 cores are quickly becoming the norm. He described Actors as an alternative to OS-level threads.

Brian Fitzpatrick presented on Subversion, and not necessarily for the Mac. He talked about some of the future design goals and some of the oft-requested, but unlikely (at least Not Definitely Agreed-upon) features.

Drunken Batman ended the festivities with a panel discussion with the presenters (minus John Gruber, plus Paul Kafasis). They discussed what they'd like to see from Apple in terms of help, documentation, and openness. DRM was argued. And argued. And argued. "I can't stand DRM. It doesn't work." "Do you use serial numbers?" "Of course." "That's DRM." "Uh." Bridges into the Objective-C runtime were advocated and shot down. Applescript was decried as a read-only language. Hackles were raised, teeth were bared, fur flew.

Afterwards we all bussed over to Gino's East for some tasty Chicago-style pizza and beer. Rifts were mended over tasty beverages and spicy tomato sauce.

Sunday's trip to the Adler Planetarium was a small, intimate affair. Most of the 60-odd reservations went unfulfilled. Bad, bad non-attendees! Shame. After the 3D show, Thom Brooks gave us a tour of the Cyberlab, and the dusty network closet. A piercing look into the minds of management: "Yeah, it'd be really keen if you guys could move the entire network rack over about three feet. It's just cluttering up the room where it is right now. Can it be done overnight? KTHX."