In an official announcement Apple has confirmed that its World Wide Developers Conference for 2020 will take place virtually, starting June 22. Due to COVID-19 pandemic mandatory social distancing has made the event the first WWDC to be hosted virtually by Apple. It will be streamed for free via Apple Developer app and Apple Developer website.
WWDC 2020 Goes Virtual
Despite the new setting for WWDC20, Apple has shown great optimism to share what they have been working on with the developer community and user base. As per tradition, Apple is expected to announce new versions of its operating systems, as well as the newest updates to its development tools. iOS 14, macOS 10.16, tvOS 14, watchOS 6 and other announcements are expected to be part of WWDC20. As per the press releases:
“WWDC20 will be our biggest yet, bringing together our global developer community of more than 23 million in an unprecedented way for a week in June to learn about the future of Apple platforms,” said Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “We can’t wait to meet online in June with the global developer community and share with them all of the new tools we’ve been working on to help them create even more incredible apps and services. We look forward to sharing more details about WWDC20 with everyone as we get closer to this exciting event.”
Apple always puts special focus on students during WWDC. Usually, Apple gets a select number of students to travel and attend WWDC, and had 350 attendees last year. However, this year, all students will be able to attend the virtual conference. Apple is also arranging a Swift Student Challenge, and will be accepting submissions until May 17.
“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,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “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.”
Students can participate by creating an interactive scene with Swift Playgrounds that can be experienced in 3 minutes. Winners will get an exclusive WWDC20 jacket and pin set. It would have been nicer if Apple was awarding Apple products to the winners, but that is not the case.
Stay tuned to iThinkDifferent as we take you through comprehensive coverage of WWDC in June!
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