O'Reilly
October 28, 2002

O'Reilly's First Mac OS X Conference Forges a New Community

Sebastopol, CA--Just a stone's throw from Apple's Cupertino campus, over 500 developers, power users, and programmers inaugurated O'Reilly & Associates' first Mac OS X Conference in Santa Clara, CA. Participants took stock of past forces that converged to create Mac OS X, explored why the operating system is creating such a surge of interest across a variety of technologies, and speculated on what changes and enhancements might be in store for the platform.

Hailed by Adam Engst, a respected fixture in the Mac community, as "the first major new Macintosh conference in years," the four-day event brought together members of the Mac, Unix, and Java camps. "We realize that a new community is being forged out of the fusion of the 'old' Mac community, and many 'switchers' (whether from Windows or other versions of Unix) who weren't previously part of the Mac community," observes Tim O'Reilly, president and founder of O'Reilly & Associates.

After a full day of in-depth tutorials (Sal Soghoian's two-part AppleScript workshop was a runaway hit), three busy days of conference sessions and events followed. Highlights include:

One of Pogue's predictions--that wireless will have an increasingly important role in future Mac operating systems--was already playing out at the conference. The sleek terminal room Apple stocked with "drool-worthy" hardware was nearly devoid of visitors. Attendees preferred to use the wireless capabilities already built into their Apple laptops, turning the session rooms and break areas into informal connectivity rooms.

O'Reilly Network Editor and professional photographer Derrick Story describes another side of Mac OS X: "As I was sitting in the audience at the conference watching David Mash create beautiful music with his talent and a TiBook running Mac OS X applications, it seemed like a good time to dispel one of the lingering myths for this platform: 'Mac OS X is just for Unix geeks'...It's true, Mac OS X is great for geeks. Guilty as charged. But as a photographer, amateur movie maker, and former (bad) musician, I can also tell you that this is a great platform for creativity."

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If you are interested in exhibiting or sponsoring an O'Reilly conference, contact Andrew Calvo at 707-827-7176, or andrewc@oreilly.com.

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