Stump the experts
Encyclopedia
Worldwide Developers Conference
The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, commonly abbreviated WWDC, is a conference held annually in California by Apple Inc. The conference is primarily used by Apple to showcase its new software and technologies for developers, as well as offering hands-on labs and feedback sessions...
(WWDC) conference. The first Stump took place at the WWDC92 in San Jose
San Jose, California
San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...
.
Structure
Stump the Experts is structured as a game show in which the audience acts as one team, and the experts on stage are another. The audience may ask the experts any question related to Apple in an attempt to "stump" them, hoping to earn a point for their team. Conversely, experts may ask the audience questions that any audience member may try to answer. Any and all resources are allowed including source code, the Internet (e.g., WikipediaWikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
) and cell phones. Host Fred Huxham describes it as an "open book test".
Stump the Experts is chaotically hosted by Fred Huxham and Mark "The Red" Harlan.
Question Types
- Songs - The 7-9 songs played before Stump the Experts begins are chosen by Fred, the leader of the show from day one. Audience members may come up to the microphones and guess the artist and name of the songs to win prizes and get points for their team.
- Images - The experts create cryptic images that represent Apple-related phrases or information. The audience must decipher the image's meaning. This innovation was introduced by Craig Marciniak in 2006.
- Standard - Questions about arcane Apple knowledge.
#20: 2011
As the Swiss scorekeeper was not present this year, it is unclear who won.One of the first questions intended to stump the experts was 'How did the WWDC app pass the approval process.' A jab at the fact that the app crashed a lot and had issues throughout the time the conference was running.
1 audience member was volunteered to test 15 unmarked flavors of Mountain Dew
Mountain Dew
Mountain Dew is a citrus-flavored carbonated soft drink brand produced and owned by PepsiCo. The original formula was invented in the 1940s by Tennessee beverage bottlers Barney and Ally Hartman and was first marketed in Marion, VA, Knoxville and Johnson City, Tennessee. A revised formula was...
, and present the answers at the end of the show. He got 3.5 points for the audience which sealed the Expert's fate and gave the audience a convincing lead.
Other highlights included a dance contest and a 'Will it Blend'-style question where the audience had to identify an Apple Pro Mouse
Apple Pro Mouse
The Apple Mouse was originally introduced at the July 2000 Macworld Conference & Expo in New York City. Apple Computer was one of the first companies to ship an optical mouse as the standard input device...
that had been run through a Blendtec
Blendtec
Blendtec is a company that sells professional and home blenders, with their key product being the Total Blender. It is a division of K-Tec...
blender.
#19: 2010
The audience won this year.Bill Atkinson
Bill Atkinson
Bill Atkinson is an American computer engineer and photographer. Atkinson worked at Apple Computer from 1978 to 1990. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, San Diego, where Apple Macintosh developer Jef Raskin was one of his professors...
was given a well-deserved standing ovation from the audience for his work on the original Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
and a question about the original proposed name for HyperCard
HyperCard
HyperCard is an application program created by Bill Atkinson for Apple Computer, Inc. that was among the first successful hypermedia systems before the World Wide Web. It combines database capabilities with a graphical, flexible, user-modifiable interface. HyperCard also features HyperTalk, written...
, WildCard (hence the creator code
Creator code
A creator code is a mechanism introduced in pre-Mac OS X versions of the Macintosh operating system to link a data file to the application program which created it, in a manner similar to file extensions in other operating systems. Codes are four-byte OSTypes. For example, the creator code of the...
of 'WILD').
A new type of question debuted this year called "List". In a List question there are numerous valid responses. Each respondent takes turn giving one valid response without duplicating responses already heard. This year the question was to list Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
video interfaces. The valid responses ranged from VGA to composite (used on AppleTV. Participants were each given false start warnings when their responses were deemed duplicates or invalid.
The t-shirt for 2010 featured 19 stumps of gray on a black background.
#18: 2009
The experts were victorious again, grabbing victory from the clutches of victory.The best comedic moment of the night was when the experts were huddled, debating the question, "What was the worst Mac?", which host Mark Harlan described as "a sociological denial of service attack" on the experts.
Fred Huxham inducted Bryan Stearns into the Stump The Experts Hall of Fame for attending as an expert every year. He was awarded an object which would look good in a trophy case.
The t-shirt for 2009 was identical to the previous year except that it was printed in blue
Blue
Blue is a colour, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 440–490 nm. It is considered one of the additive primary colours. On the HSV Colour Wheel, the complement of blue is yellow; that is, a colour corresponding to an equal...
instead of amber
Amber
Amber is fossilized tree resin , which has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Amber is used as an ingredient in perfumes, as a healing agent in folk medicine, and as jewelry. There are five classes of amber, defined on the basis of their chemical constituents...
on a black
Black
Black is the color of objects that do not emit or reflect light in any part of the visible spectrum; they absorb all such frequencies of light...
background. The number on the front of the T-Shirt was incremented to 0x0000000000000012 (hexadecimal for 18). The front of the t-shirt featured a solitary stump in white ink and a blue Apple Logo on the back.
#17: 2008
Ian Meyer, bearing a spork in the plastic wrapper as set forth in the rules, volunteered to eat the legendary Pork Brains in Milk Sauce. However when it was opened, Mark Harlan rescinded the offer due to the extreme odor, and the brains were not consumed. On his trip to the prize table, he attempted to take the mysterious pile of black boxes and cabling that turned out to be an old NeXTstep
NEXTSTEP
NeXTSTEP was the object-oriented, multitasking operating system developed by NeXT Computer to run on its range of proprietary workstation computers, such as the NeXTcube...
NeXTstation
NeXTstation
NeXTstation was a high-end workstation computer developed, manufactured and sold by NeXT from 1990 until 1993. It ran the NeXTSTEP operating system. The NeXTstation was released as a more affordable alternative to the NeXTcube at about US $4,995 or about half the price...
Color and printer, only to be told they were not prizes. Later, however, it was announced that they were. Nobody else accepted it as a prize and it was taken by three student developers, Jacob Eiting, Sahil Desai, and Jesús Cruz.
Fred Huxham announced the induction of Bryan Stearns into the Stump The Experts Hall of Fame for attending as an expert every year. The official induction ceremony is to be held in 2009.
The t-shirt for 2008 was identical to the previous year except that it was printed in amber
Amber
Amber is fossilized tree resin , which has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Amber is used as an ingredient in perfumes, as a healing agent in folk medicine, and as jewelry. There are five classes of amber, defined on the basis of their chemical constituents...
instead of green
Green
Green is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 520–570 nanometres. In the subtractive color system, it is not a primary color, but is created out of a mixture of yellow and blue, or yellow and cyan; it is considered...
on a black
Black
Black is the color of objects that do not emit or reflect light in any part of the visible spectrum; they absorb all such frequencies of light...
background. This was to represent the evolution parallel with computer screens. The number on the front of the T-Shirt was incremented to 0x0000000000000011 (hexadecimal for 17). The front of the t-shirt featured a solitary stump in white ink and an amber Apple Logo on the back.
The usual question about songs played before the event was answered by a gentleman who used audio recognition software running on an iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
to correctly identify all but one of the songs using technology from Landmark Digital Services. Another song was identified by another attendee using Shazam music ID software (a licensee of Landmark Digital Services) on an S60v3 phone.
#16: 2007
- Laughs made by the audience for a joke made from the audience: 9
- Laughs made by the audience for a joke made by Mark "the Red" Harlan: 14
- Accusations of cheating: 3 for the Experts, 1 for the audience.
- Applause that didn't result in a point: 9 for the audience, 7 for the Experts
The 2007 scorekeeper, Sandro Boccuzzo, was selected by Mark "the Red" Harlan from the audience.
Mahboud Zabetian, who attained the status of Stumper Emeritus, ran out the clock arguing with Scott Knaster
Scott Knaster
Scott Knaster is an American technical writer who has written many books, mostly dealing with Macintosh programming and using the Macintosh. He has worked for such companies as Apple Inc., General Magic, Microsoft, Danger Inc., and Google....
over which was the first 512K Mac.
T-Shirt for 2007 showed the number on the front in hexadecimal notation 0x0000000000000010. The front of the t-shirt featured a solitary stump in white ink and green Apple Logo on the back.
#15: 2006
In 2006, the experts cheated again, but lost, 11 to 7. The audience moved into the lead on a technicality, pointing out that although the Centris 610 was on the market for only about a year, at the time of the competition, the Mac ProMac Pro
The Mac Pro is a workstation computer manufactured by Apple Inc. The machines are based on Xeon microprocessors, but are similar to the Power Mac G5 they replaced in terms of outward appearance and expansion capabilities...
was released just the day before, thus qualifying as the Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
computer on the market the shortest amount of time.
History
In 1991, Fred Huxham and Bo3b Johnson gave a talk on debugging. It was voted best session of the conference. The following year, Fred was given an hour and a half time slot to talk about some research he was doing. The research ended up not providing any interesting info, so two weeks before the conference, he informed the WWDC staff he had nothing to say. They were not amused. A bunch of folks were sitting around Apple's Developer Tech Support group trying to come up a replacement at the upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference. Someone (Mark Johnson?) came up with the idea that Fred would host a game show instead.Future
The future of Stump the Experts is in doubt for future WWDCs after 2011. At WWDC 2010 the audience was asked to provide feedback to the conference to encourage its survival on the conference agenda.Sample Questions
Q: What does IDME stand for?A: Internet Download Made Easy
Q: Whose phone number is 321-XXX-1321?
A: An Apple employee who coordinates Stump logistics (an expert held in the highest esteem)
Q: What do you get if you send this code to a fully equipped LaserWriter type such-and-so (question included full details as to make of the Laserwriter and the (probably obfuscated) PostScript code)
A: A Burrito. The LaserWriter engineers needed to test the FAX module in the printer. So they built in test code in the ROM to FAX in an order at their favorite local burrito shop. This question was submitted by Gustavo Fernandez.