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Apple offers free passes to its World Wide Developers conference to students. Especially foreign students, so my experience tells me. All you need to do is get a student developer membership (USD 99/year – but you also get a one-time discount for hardware purchases: 20 % off!!). See the link at “WWDC 2006 – Student Program” for further details. WWDC is a great and fun event, even if you just want to get started in mac osx programmin g (better: cocoa programming); apple offers a variety of classes, courses – if you are quick to sign up. There is also a special student program: an extra day before WWDC starts with introductuory talks, chances to meet apple guys, a job fair… as well as some entertainment program during the week, usually much partying going on! You also get a free T-shirt and possibly a good look at OSX 10.5

Be sure to book your hotel ahead — the motels will be full soon, as will the cheaper hotels! And usually it is not really worth staying outside of town and commuting in every day, especially if you are renting a car (as would be the only option for out-of-country students).

Again: students from Europe are almost guaranteed a scholarship! But if you have any questions, feel free to posta comment or send me an email!

What if:

Pandora technology is integrated into iTunes and iTMS. For 15 €/month you can subscribe to three pandora stations (which are defined and modified via iTunes playlists and ratings), whose songs you get like a subscription based service. Protected AAC files that expire once your subscription is over. BUT the selling point will be: you can select 10 songs each month that you can keep like any other song purchased at iTMS.

Subscribing to these pandora stations is as easy as using a podcast, in fact the streams are podcasts with, say, 10 new songs a day.

Just dreaming.

Apple has done it again. This is the new look, possibly for all other iLife apps, Safari and all other brushed metal apps? What may look cool might become stale pretty soon. Inconsistencies in Apple’s GUI design have been appearing for years now – long gone are the days where all apps were equal; where is the updated Human Interface Guideline? Does Apple still adhere to its own standards?

Somehow Ⅰ am always stunned by Apple’s fresh design whenever they change things. It still looks a lot better than anything else – and actually there is no alternative. But Ⅰ am getting annoyed at the inconsistency as well as the diversity within Apple’s own product portfolio. Change is good, but a lack of focus and direction is not.

iPod/iTunes/Podcast-phioliacs: go check out CocoaRadio, a podcast dedicated to developers and programming in Cocoa/Objective Ⅽ.