What to do before and during WWDC25

What's up, everybody? Welcome to another CompileSwift episode here. And, yes, it is that time of year. It is Christmas for Apple platform developers. So we are going to be talking about all the things you should do to have a good dub dub d c.

Get ready for it. It's almost here, and we got the list to make sure you have a good one because it's all on us. But how are doing, Geoff?

Definitely definitely seems like we're gonna maybe have an eventful WWDC this year. This is this is not gonna be one of the boring WWDC's, which are always the best ones. But, no, we're we're gonna we're gonna have maybe some excitement this year. But we're not here to speculate on what's going to happen about WWDC. We're gonna talk about the things that you should do regardless

of what Yes. Yes. Clean out the solarium. See what I did there? Yep.

Alright. So let's talk about, you know, things this is based on what we do. Right? At least this is what I do every year. And and I usually put out this advice, but

Which is objectively correct.

Objectively correct. But it's always amazing to me that there are some folks who don't take the advice, and then you're like, well, you know, that's what happened. So we're gonna break this down. So let's start by talking about what you should do before the conference gets here, which basically, as of this recording, is next week. So what we're about to say, you should be doing this.

And should be on the call. In fact, you should have already listened to this episode. So if you're listening to it again, hopefully, is what's happening. But number one, we're gonna go through this list. I'll do the first one here.

The second most crucial thing, back up everything. Right? If you are one of those people and you know who you are, it's all of us, let's be honest, who is like, oh, oh, look. A very early beta. I gotta install this on things.

Back everything up. That is that is, like, number one. Hey. You should be backing stuff up anyway, but make sure you go out of your way to do everything. Do all the devices.

After you've got everything backed up, the other thing you're gonna wanna do is clean off your drive. Make sure that you've got room for all these things. You're gonna be downloading a bunch of betas of Xcode, of new versions of macOS, probably depending on how you install it, the restore images for new versions of iOS, all of your other devices. So that's gonna take up a lot of room. Make sure you've got room for it.

It's gonna be not a fun day for you if you're like, oh, man. All this cool new stuff. I'm gonna check out. I'm gonna install the new version of Xcode. And turns out you can't do it because you have four gigs of space left on your hard drive.

So make sure you get everything cleaned off. Make sure that you've got the room to have everything that you're gonna wanna have. And that's a lot, I'm But make sure you

got it. Yeah. I mean, at least with Xcode, right, it's that's an easy enough problem to solve because you can just, you know, if need be, boom. Delete all those 50 betas and RCs that you didn't worry about the rest of the year. Well, we'll get rid of them now.

Right? You only need I I would say keep whatever the current release one is. Right? Probably don't need all the others at this point because I know even on my Mac Mini here, I can get, you know, barely a few versions of Xcode if I need to.

And one way, obviously, that this can be pretty easy is a lot of these things can be just installed or at least saved on separate drives. So if you need to go pick up a small external hard drive to install Xcode on, to have your other install of Mac OS on, take the time to go do that now or or get your external drive, figure out what closet you've buried it in, any of that kind of stuff. So that's one way of handling the space issue is just use an external

drive. And, you know, that's what I do. I I always use external drives for macOS versions. Maybe slightly different this year because I've got two, Thunderbolt four external drives with two NVMEs in, so that gives me four terabytes. So, yeah, I may put them on there this year.

Moving on. So now it's time. It's happened, folks. Right? The conference is here.

And so we wanna give you some advice and some tips for how to get the most out of the conference, and we're gonna do this two different ways. Right? Number one, you're one of those lucky people that's gonna do it in person. Or number two, you are the rest of us, and you will be doing it online. So, Geoff, you wanna you wanna kick off the in person here?

And and let's be clear.

Neither of us are actually either one of

those lucky people. I didn't even try.

We will not be there in person, but I've attended quite a few of the developer conferences in person. And so this is my tips from past years, and hopefully they still apply these days. We're gonna start out with the number one most important tip. This really applies to everybody, but please, for the love of God, if it if if you're in person, if you are away from your home, if you are out of state or out of country, do not install betas on your only phone. Please don't do that.

You're gonna install a beta on your phone. You're gonna not be able to boot your airline app anymore, and you're not gonna be able to make it home. Don't do it. Just don't. If you are away from your home, in general, don't install betas on your production device or on your main personal device.

Just don't do it. If you are in person at a conference, double, triple, quadruple, don't do it. Do not do that.

Yeah. Yeah.

It There there's there's there's my my number one thing.

That you know, if you take nothing else away from this episode, that's the one right there. What in the world makes you think the first beta of a new major version is gonna be something that's gonna make you happy? Right? It's not. Yes.

You wanna try the new shiny. You wanna see it. You wanna say, like, oh, I saw the new interface, and it's great. Everything's made of glass, and I can see through all 50 windows at once. It will get old quickly.

And at some point, if you have to ship something, you ain't shipping it with that version. Let's put it like that.

And and again, you know, just to reiterate, it's not just shipping stuff. It's it's being able to

Turn the phone on.

Call home. Yeah. Turn the phone on.

Yeah. Cool. Cool the cool the roadside service to replace that wheel.

Yeah. Yeah. No. It just just don't do it. Bring, if you can, a test device.

Bring something else to install it on. If you really only have one particular device of a kind, just make sure that nothing life important is on there. You know, if I were going in person, yeah, I would probably install the new Vision OS on my only Vision Pro because I don't have a spare $4,000 to spend on another Vision Pro. But, you know, I'm not relying on my Vision Pro to get home. That that that's that's

where I'm at. In fact, even if you even if you had to use the production version, you're not gonna get home with it. Know? Simple as that. Yeah.

The worst is you'll have a long plane flight because you won't be able to watch anything in a huge virtual screen. Right? Yep. Yep. Alright.

Next one.

Anyway, now that we've got that that, planned out, Peter, do you wanna talk about, what kinds of things you should do at the

actual conference? So if you are at the conference, right, anybody who's ever read anything online knows there is a ton of activities around the conference. Right? So we are talking about, you know, third party conferences, social gatherings, all of these cool things. And you should make it about those.

Right? This is the time of year, right, everybody can come together. You can meet people you've never met. You can hang out with the folks you already know. Make the most of it.

Be sociable. Right? And, you know, go to these separate conferences. Go to these gatherings. Hang out.

You know, Geoff did deep dish this year. Right? So, you know, go hang out with folks. Talk about things. It's a fantastic social experience.

And and, Geoff, you know, having that you've been there yourself, you can probably talk more about this.

This is one of the few times a year that you have people in the industry kind of all gathering in one spot. And so in addition to WWDC itself, there's a bunch of ongoing, like, side parties and side gatherings and whatnot. Two of the big ones are the One More Thing conference and Community Kit, which is, like, it's just a bunch of separate meetups and stuff. Definitely go to those. I would also keep an eye out for different gatherings and stuff that are unrelated to those two.

I know I think Revenue Cat is like having a happy hour somewhere that may be already sold out by the time you hear about this. I think there's another couple ones. Go look online. There's there's a whole bunch of these kinds of things going on, and just just keep an eye out for events that are happening around WWDC. So if you get a chance to go to one of those, it's another great place to hang out with people that are interested in app development and get to meet a bunch of new people.

Alright. And so that's in person. Now this next one is gonna be for everybody else online, and I'll kick this one off here. The keynote is arguably the most boring part of the week. I know that sounds weird, but think about it, folks.

Right? We all pretty much complain about this every year. The keynote is really just Apple sales and marketing. Right? Let let's be honest about it.

Yeah. It's commercial. And and and I'm not saying that doesn't serve a purpose. I'm just saying for us, you know, it's like, okay. But this is a developer conference.

Let them get their marketing bid out the way. Right? Yes. We know whatever they've got is the fastest thing ever. Numbers are great.

Life is fantastic. Yada yada yada. Right? Arguably, I think, you know, focusing on the platform state of the union is is the real first key insight as to what's gonna happen in this conference. And so pay attention to that one.

If need be, like, if if you can only make one of them, make state of the union. Right? And if you're online, you can watch all of these later again anyway. But it's always fun to watch the state of the union in real time so that by the time it's done, it's safe to go back to social media, and they won't spoil it for you.

There is time to take in and absorb everything and figure out what it is that is interesting, what is not interesting, you know, what's great, what's awful. After the platform state of the union, we will typically get the full schedule after that, and this is the time for you to start planning out what are you doing for the rest of the week. Very quick and easy thing to do at that point is to open up Apple's developer app, take a look at all of the sessions that you see in there, and go in and immediately bookmark all of the ones that sound interesting to you. So go in there, say, I wanna watch, you know, this video, this video, this video, this video. These are the ones that matter to me.

And and just be ready to go in there and take a look at those as they get posted. They think they typically get posted, I believe, AM Pacific every day of the week. As soon as that's ready there, you can sit in and hop in and watch all of those videos and be ready to learn whatever it is that Apple wants to share with you in those videos. In addition to the sessions, we also have the ongoing labs. Now this year, they did also do something new with the labs, which is that they've got these new group labs that you can sign up ever for in advance.

I can't really say too much about them because they're brand new, and so I don't really have a thrilling opinion on those. But for the other labs, absolutely go take advantage of these labs. They are the secret gem of WWDC. This is your one time a year and I know we said that line earlier, but whatever. This is your one time a year that you get to sit down with somebody inside Apple and say, hey, you built this thing.

I can't figure it out, or it doesn't work the way that I expect, and have them respond to you. Do you understand how rare that is to get somebody from Apple to actually listen to you and talk to you? If you are not taking advantage of these, you're missing out. That's all I can say is you get a chance to come in with whatever question you want, with whatever thoughts or opinions you have, and get Apple to listen to you, and you can give feedback directly to the engineers that matter without having a radar

stuck

in the middle of of you and you and them. The way that these work is typically you go in, you fill out a time for lab, you say, hey. I want to talk with this lab. I wanna talk with this team. And they make you put in why it is that you wanna talk to them.

That's usually just so that they can be prepared for something like that. The more popular labs do some amount of filtering based on what it is that you're actually asking. And if it's not worthy enough, quote unquote, they may be like, oh, I'll just go to the forums, or go to the whatever. If the lab is not one of those that's super popular, they're not even filtering based on that. They are happy to have people to talk to.

And so there is one lab that I've gone to. I'm not gonna say which one because everybody's gonna come in and steal steal my lab time away. There's one group that I've gone to the last three years, and what I fill in in that box is, I just wanna chat with the team. And they've always done it. And just go in, and I chat with that team for half an hour, an hour, I think.

I don't remember how long these sessions are. And I've always found it super useful to just go in and say, I want to go talk to these people and discuss how I'm using their framework, what kinds of things that I'm doing, and have them chat with me back and really give me tips on like, oh, well, have you tried doing x, y, z? Have you tried doing this? And this isn't technically allowed, but we can probably guarantee that it's not gonna destroy your app. And and it's this nice chance to have an open discussion with Apple that you just would not get any other way.

So that's my main advice there is go take advantage of the labs. This is a rare occasion to get to talk to Apple, and so you should take advantage of it.

Yeah. I couldn't agree more. I I think that underestimating how important it is to have this access to these engineers. Right? The folks that build the things you are trying to use.

It is, absolutely crucial, to take advantage of this. So another thing you can

do

here is Apple in previous years, and we don't know yet if there is one this year. If there is, they will list in the developer portal, I am sure. But Apple has actually had an official Slack for the developer conference. So, you know, if you're a Slack user or you wanna get involved with that, you absolutely should because, again, this is you know, think about it. It's a twenty four seven thing.

Right? It doesn't end when the conference ends at the end of the day. Now along with that, of course, there are lots of other Apple developer communities out there, lots of Slacks, lots of Discords. Hey. You know what?

You should join the dev club Discord. Just saying. We'll put a link in the show notes for that one, but take advantage of them. Now, of course, the beauty of these is they exist all year, right, not just the conference. But, naturally, there is a heightened activity level during June because of the conference, and so you will find a lot more people to engage with on those platforms during the week.

And just like we were mentioning earlier online, in person, new relationships there, and you will, you know, find new folks that maybe you get to work with or, you know, some of them are even posting projects they're gonna work on, those kind of things. But get involved with those now during the conference because you never know where that's going to take you. And especially if you're someone starting out, that is a great place to start when you don't know what to do or where to go. That will start your journey off this year nicely with the developer conference and take it from there. Okay.

So that is our advice, for the conference this year. Hey. Enjoy it. Right? There's bound to be some things you're gonna absolutely get super excited about.

There might be some things that'll frustrate you, but enjoy it. That that is the key takeaway here. So we're gonna be doing that. You know, hopefully, are listening to this ahead of time. That was the goal here, and enjoy the conference.

There will be, I am sure, content from us covering some of the conference and things like that once we get over the shock of whatever they tell us. But, Geoff, where can they find you?

You can find everything that I have, all my apps, links to my livestreams, all of that kind of stuff at cocoatype.com. I do plan on doing what I do every year and and livestreaming most of the week of WWDC. And so if you are excited to see somebody come check out all of the new shiny or if you have questions about things you want me to check out and try to get the answers before you do, come check that out. I'll I'll be there all week.

Alright. And you can find me as always at PeterWitham.com, and you can find this podcast at compileswift.com. I'm gonna try and do some live streams too, but in all honesty, if Geoff gonna be live streaming, it's much more fun for me to hang out in his chat and give him hell rather than him give me hell. So that's it folks. It's gonna be a week.

We will speak to you next time.