While attending my niece’s birthday party yesterday, I overheard my grandfather and brother-in-law’s grandfather chat as they watched my toddling nephew run around. These two men have seen economic booms and depressions. They’ve been in war. They’ve labored physically, raised families, and built legacies for themselves.

Last Thursday, Apple’s developer site (ADC) abruptly went into maintenance mode. It’s not uncommon for the site to be put into maintenance while Apple pushes new tools and evaluation software out to developers. The maintenance window became uncommon when it lingered into Friday. As early as Friday afternoon, the tone from developers was turning from curiosity to speculation, with hints of anger and demands for updates from Apple.

Since tickets to WWDC sold out in less than two minutes last Thursday, a flurry of angry tweets and blog entries has flooded the Cocoa community. Overwhelmingly, the voices of long-time Mac developers are saying that changes to WWDC are badly needed. Many hold the opinion that Apple is ignoring a problem, and some have even called for Apple to simply end the conference and find a different way to engage developers. While Apple’s platforms have gotten wildly popular, the makeup of their flagship conference has remained largely unchanged.

Last night I made a shocking discovery as I caught up on my ADN feed:

Last night, I listened to President Obama address the nation following the capture of the second Boston Marathon bombing suspect. His remarks were heard following a press conference by the Massachusetts State Police.

A few days ago, I asked the following question on ADN:

Twitter’s explosive growth is often attributed to the early availability of an API. When other social services were only available through their respective interfaces, Twitter allowed developers to put their own unique style into the presentation of tweets. The service has always been available as a web site, but a large number of users have found their Twitter home inside the screens of Tweetie, Twitterrific, Tweetbot, and a profusion of others. These apps gave the service unique personalities, as well as innovated on the platform. Things at Twitter have changed radically since those early days, and developers are now strongly discouraged from build anything that resembles a traditional Twitter client.

Google Set to Release iOS Maps App Tonight

When I was building Static, one of the things I really wanted to do was support old devices. This goal goes against everything Apple and most Mac/iOS developers will tell you: support the very newest stuff possible. The reality is, however, that people have old devices sitting around, and what better way to breathe new life into them than by installing a noise generator!