Pulsating App Store wall at WWDC wows attendees

This year at WWDC, Apple is doing something to amaze the attendees. In the Moscone West Center, they have created a “hyperwall” that consists of twenty edge-to-edge 30-inch Apple Cinema Displays, each of which are powered by a Mac Pro running Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. These displays show a live feed of activity from 20,000 popular apps on the App Store, as 3,000 apps are downloaded every minute. When an app is purchased, it pulsates after a five minute delay. The animation is programmed in Quartz Composer using the new OpenCL APIs announced at this years WWDC.

I would love to be in California and able to see this in person, as I don’t believe the photos give the full effect of how awesome it is. That said, I believe Apple’s intention with this was to show the App Store’s popularity in order to prove to the developers present that they are needed and appreciated. I’m sure it would be a great feeling to be in front of this massive display and see the icon to your own app pulsating when someone purchases it. Nice idea, Apple.