First Impressions from the WWDC Keynote

Might be best to think twice before spending the time to develop (to say nothing of building a business around) something that Apple is bound to add to iOS, sooner or later. Like, let's say, a full-featured Chat client.

But then again, perhaps you can't always be that confident. One of my absolute favorite cannot-live-without aspects of the iOS platform is Instapaper, and now Apple will be building that functionality in, to a certain degree. I love the app, it's not an exaggeration to say I use it every day, and the developer seems swell, and I feel badly for him by proxy. (This was not entirely a surprise — it's been lurking in the Lion beta, and I suppose it's an obvious addition to the iOS, as well — but still.)

Developer beta of iOS 5 today -- for Developers. And I'm a developer! (Paid for and everything.)

I've spent some time reading the developer documentation. (I think I understand some of it, at least.) It's — interesting, this feeling of trying to learn from a moving target. Not just the new stuff, it's the changes in the behavior of current classes that worry me. I had a similar experience when one of the first books I read was built around iOS 3, when 4 had already introduced all sorts of changes (which led to the occasional problem with the sample code). I have an unsettled feeling by the time I'm comfortable with iOS 5, something else will have superseded it. Gotta start somewhere, though.