Apple’s online-only WWDC 2020 starts June 22

Today, Apple announced that its annual Worldwide Developers Discussion (WWDC) for 2020 will kick off on June 22. That’s fresher than usual, and the company had previously let developers and press outlets differentiate that this event will be held exclusively online.

The online-only looks is in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to the cancellation or virtualization of all kinds of bustle events, including Mobile World Congress, Google’s I/O conference, and the Profession Developers Conference. The late start date might also be akin.

Here’s Apple’s statement from marketing SVP Phil Schiller:

WWDC20 intent 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 here the future of Apple platforms… we can’t wait to meet online in June with the worldwide developer community and share with them all of the new tools we’ve been utilizing on to help them create even more incredible apps and benefits. We look forward to sharing more details about WWDC20 with everyone as we get closer to this astonishing event.

Access to this year’s conference will be free to all Apple developers. Videos of all the sessions, with an increment of any related documentation, have been offered through Apple’s website and apps to sprightly developer accounts in previous years, too. It’s unclear what, if anything, Apple inclination do differently with this conference in addition to livestreaming the sessions online and making the videos at ones disposal.

But we do have one example of how Apple will fulfill an in-person tradition with something essential. Lately, Apple has sponsored hundreds of students to attend WWDC each year. But since there’s no in-person actuality this time, Apple is doing something different with trainees. Alongside today’s conference date, the company announced the Swift Observer Challenge.

The challenge tasks students with creating short participations using Swift Playgrounds, Apple’s iPad and Mac app for learning coding with its Abrupt programming language. Students have through 11:59pm PDT on May 17 to submit their forecasts. Winners will be selected and given prizes.

Apple Software Engineering SVP Craig Federighi excessed the following statement about the Swift Student Challenge:

Students are an basic part of the Apple developer community, and last year WWDC saw gathering from more than 350 student developers spanning 37 several countries… as we look forward to WWDC20, although our convention will be virtual this year, we want to recognize and celebrate the originative contributions of our young developers from around the world. We can’t wait to see this next creation of innovative thinkers turn their ideas into a reality from stem to stern the Swift Student Challenge.

Normally, WWDC is held at San Jose McEnery Conventionalism Center. Cancellations of events like this have had negative consequences for townsperson economies, and to that end, Apple committed $1 million to San Jose dealings to make up for the loss of local revenue.

Apple typically announces its next noteworthy updates for its operating systems at WWDC, including macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS, in a keynote appearance livestreamed to viewers around the world. It then dives into innumerable technical detail on many of the key features in those announcements in more centred, developer-only sessions. Sometimes hardware product announcements are made at WWDC as familiarly, but not always.