Apple has confirmed its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2020 is going to be an online only affair to abide with the social distancing norms in place in most parts of the world due to the Covid 19 pandemic. The conference can be joined via the Apple Developer app or Apple Developer site. The conference which is going to be the 31st edition this year kicks off on June 22.
The company however exuded confidence the WWDC20 is going to be a huge success with the shift to a virtual venue to have the least effect on its prospects. As Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing put in, the WWDC20 is going to be the biggest so far and will see more than 23 million of the company’s global developer community coming together to decide on the future of Apple’s software side of things.
Typically, the WWDC is where we get to have the glimpse of what Apple platforms – iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS will be like in future. The company also makes known all the new tools and features they have developed, which in turn form the basis for the developers to come up with even more engaging apps and services.
The WWDC is also where developers get to feel the early build of the various OS versions for testing and evaluating. This goes on for the months in the run up to the final launch of the OS later in the year and is crucial for debugging and fine tuning the user experience before their eventual public release.
Also, as it usually happens during the event, there is going to be a lot of focus on the student developers as well where they get to exchange their ideas of what the future OS versions should be like and so on. Towards that, there is going to be a Swift Student Challenge as well where the young developers will be tasked to create the Swift playground of their choice.
Meanwhile, Apple isn’t alone to cancel its developers conference only to hold them in the virtual space. Microsoft too has announced their annual developer’s meet is going to held online starting May 19 while Google has cancelled altogether its Google I/O meet for the year.
