This year was my first WWDC, and with it came the excitement not only of new hardware and learning about Leopard (Yes, even employees don’t always know the details), but also getting to meet and mingle with other Mac developers - people whose work I admire, whose blogs I read, and who I was truly giddy about meeting. Gus Mueller, John Gruber, Jonathan Wight, Brent Simmons, David Watanabe, Greg Hulands,… the list goes on. So what is it about the Mac platform and its rockstar developers? I know I wasn’t the only one - even a few of the people I was excited to meet, told me how much they wanted to meet somebody else. I get the feeling this phenomenon doesn’t happen on other platforms, or in other lines of work.
Is the software just better? Do people use a Windows app and think “This is brilliant, I really want to meet the person who built this!”
Is the community just smaller? Is it not possible on other platforms to have a grasp of who some of the bigger players and also have those people be relatively accessible?
Is it just more important to Mac users and developers that their developers have blogs and ideas besides just writing software?
I think it was Brent Simmons who suggested that the phenomenon starts at the top - Steve Jobs - and from there flows an importance on personality and opinion in addition to powerful, well-designed software. Is there more of a cult of personality on the Mac?
In the end, it’s probably a combination of everything above - without a small-ish community, maybe it would be impossible to keep track of all the blogs and software that talented Mac developers are putting out there. And the Mac platform definitely cares about style and design in addition to functionality. Whatever the reason, between getting to meet so many new people, ordering a new Mac Pro, and seeing the first glimpses of Leopard, I think my first WWDC was a good one. It’s a good time to be a Mac developer.
What do you think? Which rockstar Mac developers do you look up to?
I would have to say that I look up to Wil Shipley the most. Mainly because he is hilarious and brilliant at the same time. I was too much of a coward to talk to him at WWDC though. It was cool to know that I was in the same room as him for a couple of the sessions.
Rockstar my arse.
ohmygod, Jonathan Wight even has the surly rockstar attitude perfected!!
Aaron: *Definitely* Wil Shipley - I didn’t see him at WWDC, but I did stop and briefly talk to him at MacWorld in January. Definitely one of the platform’s rockstars.
I look up to Blake Seely of course!
Gus Mueller a rockstar- hahahaha. Oh wait, I do have a guitar…
I would concur with your list and also agree about Wil Shipley, despite his personality conjuring up ire in the hearts of some. I happen to think his egotism is relatively well-earned
There are so many and they span the ages, but I think any such list should include Wolf Rentzsch.
Attempting to brainstorm this question also begs the question of how to classify the “introvert rockstars” such as the many relatively quiet engineers at companies like Apple, Bare Bones, Omni Group, etc., who are not particularly public but whose work speaks for itself.
I guess those are the “studio session rock stars” of Mac OS X
I’m not a rockstar, but maybe I could be the surly bass player at the back of the stage?
I heard Brent and some groupies totally trashed his hotel room.
Without a doubt: Steven and Cabel of Panic. They are humble and self efacing to a fault, their blogs are interesting and funny, they do cool extra stuff (Beagle Bros museum, Spamusement, CocoaDev, etc), AND they make great Mac software that I love spending my money on.
I don’t think you can get to be a Mac developer without having some sort of passion for making great things. Passion makes a rock star.
Mac developers tend to step back and ask “what do real people actually want?” It’s less about being interested in computers for the sake of computers, and more about the end result. What all this code can actually do for us as real people.
I’ve been to a bunch of WWDC’s and the general concensus from talking to developers was that this was the best one yet.
BTW Scott, I mentioned your site in a session of mine… Fan mail, on its way…