Apple’s most high-profile event of the year, aka Worldwide Developers Conference or WWDC 2020, will kick off from June 22, Cupertino has announced. It will take on an entirely new online format this year, in the wake of the novel coronavirus outbreak — this is something that Apple confirmed in March. Being an online-only event means all the WWDC 2020 proceedings will be accessible via the Apple Developer app and on the Apple Developer website for free for all developers.
Apple usually hosts a keynote on the opening day of WWDC where it talks about all things software, from iOS to tvOS, the sort of things that would set the tone for the rest of the year. Hardware announcements are rare. The floor is then opened up, for the next few days, for developers (and enthusiasts) to gain insights into Apple software as well as lay the groundwork for how they’ll make best use of all this through apps – existing and new ones that may be under development.
In the words of Apple, WWDC is “an opportunity for millions of creative and innovative developers to get early access to the future of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS, and engage with Apple engineers as they work to build app experiences that enrich the lives of Apple customers around the globe.”
Apple seems to be focusing a great deal on student developers this year. “Students are an integral part of the Apple developer community, and last year WWDC saw attendance from more than 350 student developers spanning 37 different countries,” Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering said.
In a bid to encourage them, Apple has also announced a “Swift Student Challenge” wherein student developers from around the world can create and submit an “interactive scene in Swift Playgrounds that can be experienced within three minutes.” Swift Playgrounds is Apple’s in-house coding app that allows users to learn its Swift programming language on the iPad and Mac. Winners of the challenge will get an exclusive WWDC20 jacket and pin set.
“As we look forward to WWDC20, although our gathering will be virtual this year, we want to recognize and celebrate the creative contributions of our young developers from around the world. We can’t wait to see this next generation of innovative thinkers turn their ideas into a reality through the Swift Student Challenge.”
Apple usually does all this on-the-ground, in San Jose, California. But things are different this year with the novel coronavirus pandemic taking down one tech event after another, as a precautionary measure to avoid potential spread. Google has cancelled its I/O 2020 developers conference, Microsoft has cancelled Build 2020, and Facebook isn’t hosting F8 2020 on-ground either.
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